Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, vol. 2 and Memorials of Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau

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Harriet Martineau, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, vol. 2 and Memorials of Harriet Martineau [1855]

Edition used:

Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography and Memorials of Harriet Martineau, ed. Maria Weston Chapman (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1877). 2 vols. Vol. 2.

Author: Maria Weston Chapman

Author: Harriet Martineau

Thinking she was close to death Martineau wrote her autobiography in 1855 but lived for another 20 years. She recounts her activities in various mid-19th century reform movements, her struggle to become a professional writer, and her work in popularizing the ideas of free market political economy. Vol. 2 also contains memorials of HM by Chapman.

Copyright:

The text is in the public domain.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

HARRIET MARTINEAU’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

SIXTH PERIOD.

SECTION IV.

SECTION V.

SECTION VI.

SECTION VII.

SECTION VIII.

SECTION IX.

INDEX.

MEMORIALS.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

INFANCY.

YOUTH.

WOMANHOOD.

PRIVATE.

FAME.

TO MRS. MARTINEAU.

FOREIGN LIFE,—WESTERN.

TO MRS. MARTINEAU.

JOURNAL.

LETTER TO HER FAMILY.

EXTRACTS FROM THE PHILADELPHIA, BALTIMORE, AND WASHINGTON JOURNAL.

ELLIS GRAY LORING TO HARRIET MARTINEAU.

DR. FLINT’S SONNET TO MISS H. MARTINEAU’S EAR-TRUMPET.

EXTRACT OF LETTER FROM DR. FOLLEN TO H. MARTINEAU.

CONSEQUENCES OF FOREIGN LIFE, — WITHOUT.

LETTER TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

CONSEQUENCES OF FOREIGN LIFE, — WITHIN.

ACCOUNTS OF THE YEAR 1837.

CONSEQUENCES,—TO LIFE PASSIVE.

TO MRS. HENRY G. CHAPMAN.

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

TO MRS. HENRY G. CHAPMAN.

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM HARRIET MARTINEAU.

FOREIGN LIFE, — EASTERN.

EASTERN JOURNAL.

HOME.

Memorial OF A Testimonial. H.M.

SERVICE.

MRS. MARTHA ANDREWS TO MISS MARTINEAU.

TO MRS. MARTINEAU.

HOSPITALITY.

PHILOSOPHY.

MR. ATKINSON TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

LETTER FROM M. AVEZAC-LAVIGNE TO H. MARTINEAU.

THE LIFE SORROW.

WORK.

TWO TRUE STORIES ABOUT CLAIRVOYANCE.

FIRST STORY.

SECOND STORY.

FRESH FOREIGN INTERCOURSE.

To the Editor of the “Daily News.”

HARRIET MARTINEAU TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

CONVERSATIONS.

EXTRACTS OF LETTERS TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

LETTER TO MRS. F. G. SHAW.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE “STANDARD.”

TO MRS. F. G. SHAW.

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

WAITING FOR DEATH.

LETTER TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

H. MARTINEAU TO MARY CARPENTER.

THE LADIES’ NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE REPEAL OF THE CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS.

TO THE WOMEN OF COLCHESTER.

OLD ENGLAND! PURITY AND FREEDOM!

LETTER FROM HARRIET MARTINEAU TO MRS. BUTLER.

The Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone.

MR. GLADSTONE TO MRS. H. MARTINEAU.

THE “CAT.”

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

LAST LETTER OF MRS. MARTINEAU TO MR. ATKINSON.

HARRIET MARTINEAU TO WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

LAST LETTER OF MRS. MARTINEAU TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

SELF-ESTIMATE, AND OTHER.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHIC MEMOIR.

SURVIVORSHIP.

LETTER FROM MISS NIGHTINGALE TO MISS JANE S. MARTINEAU.

FROM MISS CONSTANCE MARTINEAU TO HER COUSIN.

FROM MRS. SAMUEL BROWN.

FROM MR. ATKINSON TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF MR. ATKINSON.

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HARRIET MARTINEAU’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY,

EDITED BY MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN;

and MEMORIALS OF HARRIET MARTINEAU, By MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN.

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Harriet Martineau 1850

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HARRIET MARTINEAU’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

“Etiam capillus unus habet umbram suam.”

— Proverb.

“And this dear freedom hath begotten me this peace, that I mourn not that end which must be, nor spend one wish to have one minute added to the uncertain date of my years.”

— Bacon.

edited by MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN.

VOLUME TWO.

BOSTON:

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.

1877.

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Copyright, 1877.

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.

University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge

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CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

PERIOD VI. (Continued.)

Section IV. — Chartism in 1848. Whig notions of popular management. Official whig mind and manners. “Lake District.” Lectures. Building Society. Three invitations. Death of my mother. “History of the Thirty Years’ Peace” . . . Page 1

Section V. — Currer Bell. “Household Words.” “Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development.” Convictions as to the source of wisdom. Science of Human Nature. Articles for “Household Words.” For Sartain’s Magazine. “Sketches from Life.” Mr. Jerrold. Mr. Fonblanque. “Letters on Cow Keeping.” Farming experiment . . . . . . . 21

Section VI. — Anticipations of the results of the Atkinson Letters. Necessity of avowal of opinions in my case. Preparation of the volume. Its reception . . . . . . . . 36

Section VII. — Scheme of translating Comte’s “Positive Philosophy.” Summer journey. Mr. Thackeray. Mr. Dickens. Abortive scheme. Mr. Lombe’s gift. More work. Completion of my version. Method of working. Ignorance of critics of the “Positive Philosophy.” Letter of Mr. Atkinson . . . . 57

Section VIII. — Introduction to “Daily News.” Irish journey. Servant’s wedding. “Daily News.” Visit to London. Settlement at home. Troubles and pleasures of the summer. Death of Mr. Frederick Knight Hunt . . . . . . . 82 Edition: current; Page: [vi]

Section IX. — Fatal illness. Home and preparation. Mistake of life-long dwelling on prospect of death. Its proximate aspect. Interest of the position. Its pleasures. View of the world from the horizon. Political state of England. Of the civilised world. Prospects of the Human Race . . . . . . . 101

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

| PAGE
PORTRAIT OF HARRIET MARTINEAU. 1850 | Frontispiece
THE KNOLI, Ambleside. 1856 | 102

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HARRIET MARTINEAU’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

SIXTH PERIOD.

SECTION IV.

The same mail which brought back my M. S. from Mr. Murray brought the news of the flight of Louis Philippe. My petty interests seemed unworthy of mention, even to myself, in the same day with that event. Mine were re-arranged in three days, while the affairs of the Continent became more exciting from hour to hour. Towards the end of March, when my book was finished, and nearly ready for publication, letters came in, in increasing numbers, appealing to me for help, in one form or another, for or against popular interests, so far as they were supposed to be represented by Chartism. Of these letters, one was from the wife of a Cabinet Minister, an old acquaintance, who was in a terrible panic about Feargus O’Connor and the threatened Chartist outbreak of the tenth of April, then approaching. She told me that she wrote under her husband’s sanction, to ask me, now that they saw my book was advertised for publication, to use my power over the working-classes, to bring them to reason, &c., &c. The letter was all one tremor in regard to the Chartists, and flattery to myself. I replied that I had no influence, as far as I knew, with the Chartists; and that, as a matter of fact, I agreed with them in some points of doctrine while thinking them sadly mistaken in others, and in their proposed course of action. I told her that I had seen something Edition: current; Page: [2] in the newspapers which had made me think of going to London: and that if I did go, I would endeavour to see as many political leaders (in and out of parliament) as possible, and would, if she pleased, write her an account of what should seem to me the state of things, and the best to be done, by myself and others. It was an advertisement in the newspapers which had made me think of going; — the advertisement of a new periodical to be issued by Mr. Knight, called “The Voice of the People.” It was pointed out to me by several of my friends, as full of promise in such hands at such a time. The day after my letter to Lady — was sent, I heard from Mr. Knight. He desired to see me so earnestly that he said, if I could not go to town, he would come to me, — ill as he could just then spare the time: or, he would come and fetch me, if I wished it. Of course, I went immediately; and I helped to the extent Mr. Knight wished, in his new periodical. But I saw immediately, as he did, that the thing would never do. The Whig touch perished it at once. The Whig officials set it up, and wished to dictate and control its management in a way which no literary man could have endured, if their ideas and feelings had been as good as possible. But the poverty and perverseness of their ideas, and the insolence of their feelings were precisely what might be expected by all who really knew that remarkably vulgar class of men. They proposed to lecture the working-classes, who were by far the wiser party of the two, in a jejune, coaxing, dull, religious-tract sort of tone, and criticised and deprecated every thing like vigour, and a manly and genial tone of address in the new publication, while trying to push in, as contributors, effete and exhausted writers, and friends of their own who knew about as much of the working-classes of England as of those of Turkey. Of course, the scheme was a complete and immediate failure. On the insertion of an article by a Conservative Whig, (which was certainly enough to account for the catastrophe,) the sale fell to almost nothing at all; and Mr. Knight, who had before stood his ground manfully against the patrons of the scheme, threw up the business.

Meantime, the tenth of April arrived (while I was near London) and passed in the way which we all remember. Lady Edition: current; Page: [3] — wrote to me in a strain of exultation, as vulgar, to say the least, as Feargus O’Connor’s behaviour, about the escape of the government. She told of O’Connor’s whimpering because his toes were trodden on; and was as insolent in her triumph about a result which was purely a citizen work as she had been abject when in fear that the Chartists would hold the metropolis. I felt the more obliged to write the promised letter, when I had seen several leading politicians of the liberal party; and I did it when I came home. I did it carefully; and I submitted my letter to two ladies who were judges of manners, as well as of politics; and they gave it their sanction, — one of them copying it, with entire approbation. Lady —’s reply was one of such insolence as precluded my writing to her again. She spoke of the “lower classes” (she herself being a commoner by birth) as comprising all below the peerage; so that she classed together the merchants and manufacturers with “cottagers” and even paupers; and, knowing me to be a manufacturer’s daughter, she wrote of that class as low, and spoke of having been once obliged to pass a week in the house of a manufacturer, where the governess was maltreated with the tyranny which marks low people. My two consultees reddened with indignation at the personal insolence to myself; which I had overlooked in my disgust at the wrong to my “order,” and to the “cottagers” with whom she classed us. By their advice, I wrote a short note to this lady’s husband, to explain that my letter was not a spontaneous address, as his lady now assumed, but written in answer to her request. This little transaction confirmed the impression which I had derived from all my recent intercourse with official Whigs; — that there was nothing to be expected from them now that they were spoiled by the possession of place and power. I had seen that they had learned nothing by their opportunities: that they were hardened in their conceit and their prejudices, and as blind as bats to the new lights which time was introducing into society. I expected what became apparent in the first year of the war, when their incapacity and aristocratic self-complacency disgraced our administration, and lowered our national character in the eyes of the world, and cost their country many thousands of lives and many millions of Edition: current; Page: [4] treasure. I have seen a good deal of life and many varieties of manners; and it now appears to me that the broadest vulgarity I have encountered is in the families of official Whigs, who conceive themselves the cream of society, and the lights and rulers of the world of our empire. The time is not far off, though I shall not live to see it, when that coterie will be found to have brought about a social revolution more disastrous to themselves than any thing that could have been rationally anticipated from poor Feargus O’Connor and his Chartist host of April 10th, 1848.

What Mr. Knight wanted of me at that time was not mainly my assistance in his new periodical, but to carry on an old enterprise which had been dropped. The “History of the Thirty Years’ Peace” had been begun long before; but difficulties had occurred which had brought it to a stand for two years past. That his subscribers should have been thus apparently deserted, and left with the early numbers useless on their hands, was a heavy care to my good friend; and he proposed to me to release him from his uncomfortable position by undertaking to finish the work. I felt tempted; but I did not at all know whether I could write History. Under his encouragement, I promised to try, if he could wait three months. I was writing “Household Education,” and I had promised him an account of the Lake District, for the work he was publishing, called “The Land we live in.” It was on or about the 1st of August that I opened, for study, the books which Mr. Knight had been collecting and forwarding to me for the sources of my material.

This year was the beginning of a new work which has afforded me more vivid and unmixed pleasure than any, except authorship, that I ever undertook;—that of delivering a yearly course of lectures to the mechanics of Ambleside and their families. Nothing could have been further from my thoughts, at the outset, than such an extension of the first effort. On my return from the East, I was talking with a neighbour about the way in which children, and many other untravelled persons, regard the Holy Land. When Dr. Carpenter taught me in my youth, among his other catechumens, the geography of Palestine, with Edition: current; Page: [5] notices from Maundrell’s travels there, it was like finding out that a sort of fairy land was a real and substantial part of our everyday earth; and my eagerness to learn all about it was extreme, and highly improving in a religious sense. I remarked now to my neighbour that it was a pity that the school-children should not learn from me something of what I had learned in my youth from Maundrell. She seized upon the idea, and proposed that I should give familiar lectures to the monitors and best scholars of the national school, — sometimes, when convenient, to escape visitation, called the Squire’s school. I was willing, and we went to the school-mistress, whose reception of the scheme amused us much. She said she knew, and had taught the children, “all about the sources of the Nile;” but that she should be glad to hear any thing more that I had to tell. We could hardly refrain from asking her to teach us “all about the sources of the Nile:” but we satisfied ourselves with fixing the plan for my addressing the children in the school-house. I was more nervous the first time than ever after, — serious as was the extension of the plan. After the first lecture, which was to two or three rows of children and their school-mistress, a difficulty arose. The incumbent’s lady made a speech in School Committee, against our scheme, saying that the incumbent had found so much discontent in the parish from a dissenter having been allowed to set foot in the school-house, that its doors must be closed against me. She added some compliments to me and the lectures, which she expressed a great wish to hear, and so on. My neighbour immediately took all the blame on herself, saying that I had not even known where the school-house was till she introduced me to it; and that what I had done was at her request. She went straight to the authorities of the chapel which stands at the foot of my rock, and in an hour obtained from them in writing an assurance that it would give them “the greatest pleasure” that I should lecture in their school-rooms. Armed with this, and blushing all over, my neighbour came, and was relieved to find that I was not offended but amused at the transaction. I proposed to have the children in my kitchen, which would hold them very well; and that we should invite the incumbent’s lady to be present. My neighbour said “No, Edition: current; Page: [6] no: she does not deserve that,” and produced the Methodists’ gracious letter. I may add here that last year the incumbent’s lady said, in a railway carriage, in the hearing of a friend of mine, that there was great alarm among the clergy when I first came to live at Ambleside: but that it had died away gradually and completely (even after the publication of the Atkinson Letters) from their finding that, while I thought it right to issue through the press whatever I thought, I never meddled with any body’s opinions in private. I may add, too, that I have been treated with courtesy and kindness, whenever occasion brought us together.

It occurs to me also to add an anecdote which diverted me and my friends at the time, and which seems more odd than ever, after the lapse of a few years. There is a Book-club at Ambleside, the members of which are always complaining to outsiders of the dullness of the books, and the burdensomeness of the connexion. I had had hints about the duty of neighbours to subscribe to the Book-club; and when one or two books that I wished to see were circulating, I told a member that I was not anxious to join, at an expense which could hardly be compensated, — judging by what I heard about the choice of books: but that, if I ever joined, it should be then. She mentioned this to another member; and it was agreed that I should be proposed and seconded. But the gentleman she spoke to — always a friendly neighbour to me, — called on her to communicate, with much concern, his apprehension that I might possibly be black-balled. He was entirely uncertain; but he had some notion that it might be so. The lady came, very nervous, to ask whether I would proceed or not. I had half a mind to try the experiment, — it would have been such a rich joke, — so voluminous a writer, and one so familiar in literary society in London, being black-balled in a country book-club! But I thought it more considerate not to thrust myself into any sort of connexion with any body who might be afraid of me. I profited by an invitation to join a few families in a subscription to a London library, by which, for less money, I got a sight of all the books I wished to see, — and no others; for my friends and I are of the same mind in our choice of reading.

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At the second lecture, some of the parents and elder brothers and sisters of the children stole in to listen; and before I had done, there was a petition that I would deliver the lectures to grown people. I saw at once what an opportunity this was, and nerved myself to use it. I expanded the lectures, and made them of a higher cast; and before another year, the Mechanics of Ambleside and their families were eager for other subjects. I have since lectured every winter but two; and with singular satisfaction. The winter was the time chosen, because the apprentices and shop-keepers could not leave their business in time, when the days lengthened. No gentry were admitted, except two or three friends who took tea with me, and went as my staff, — in order to help me, if any difficulty arose, and to let me know if I spoke either too loud or too low; a matter of which, from my deafness, I could not judge. It is rather remarkable that, being so deaf, and having never before spoken in any but a conversational tone, I never got wrong as to loudness. I placed one of my servants at the far end of the room; and relied on her to take out her handkerchief if she failed to hear me; but it always went well. I made notes on half-a-sheet of paper, of dates or other numbers, or of facts which might slip my memory; but I trusted entirely to my power at the time for my matter and words. I never wrote a sentence; and I never once stopped for a word. — The reasons why no gentry were admitted were, first, because there was no room for more than the “workies:” and next, that I wished to keep the thing natural and quiet. If once the affair got into the newspapers, there would be an end of the simplicity of the proceeding. Again, I had, as I told the gentry, nothing new to tell to persons who had books at home, and leisure to read them. — My object was to give rational amusement to men whom all circumstances seemed to conspire to drive to the public-house, and to interest them in matters which might lead them to books, or at least give them something to think about. My lectures were maliciously misrepresented by a quizzer here and there, and especially by a lawyer or two, who came this way on circuit, and professed to have been present: but they were welcome to their amusement, as long as it was an indisputable matter that they had not been present.

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The second course was on Sanitary matters; and it was an effectual preparation for my scheme of instituting a Building Society. In a place like Ambleside, where wages are high, the screw is applied to the working men in regard to their dwellings. The great land-owners, who can always find room to build mansions, have never a corner for a cottage: and not only are rents excessively high, but it is a serious matter for a working man to offend his landlord, by going to chapel instead of church, for instance, when he may be met by the threat — “If you enter that chapel again, I will turn your family out of your cottage; and you know you can’t get another.” When the people are compelled to sleep, ten, twelve, or fourteen in two rooms, there can be little hope for their morals or manners; and one of the causes of the excessive intemperance of the population is well known to be the discomfort of the crowded dwellings. When the young men come home to bad smells and no room to turn, they go off to the public-house. The kind-hearted among the gentry tend the sick, and pray with the disheartened, and reprove the sinner; but I have found it singularly difficult to persuade them that, however good may be wine and broth, and prayers and admonition, it is better to cut off the sources of disease, sin and misery by a purer method of living. My recourse was to the “workies” themselves, in that set of lectures; in which I endeavoured to show them that all the means of healthy and virtuous living were around them, — in a wide space of country, slopes for drainage, floods of gushing water, and the wholesomest air imaginable. I showed them how they were paying away in rent, money enough to provide every head of a household with a cottage of his own in a few years; and I explained to them the principle of such a Building Society as we might have, — free from the dangers which beset such societies in large towns, where the members are unknown to each other, and sharp lawyers may get in to occasion trouble. They saw at once that if twenty men lay by together, instead of separately, a shilling a week each, they need not wait twenty weeks for any one to have the use of a pound; but the twentieth man may have his pound, just the same, while the other nineteen will have had earlier use of theirs, and be paying interest for it. Edition: current; Page: [9] Hence arose our Building Society; the meeting to form it being held in my kitchen. A generous friend of mine advanced the money to buy a field, which I got surveyed, parcelled out, drained, fenced, and prepared for use. The lots were immediately purchased, and paid for without default. Impediments and difficulties arose, as might be expected. Jealousy and ridicule were at work against the scheme. Some who might have helped it were selfish, and others timid. Death (among a population where almost every man drinks) and emigration, and other causes impeded an increase of members; and the property was less held by working men, and more by opulent persons, than I had desired and intended; but the result is, on the whole, satisfactory, inasmuch as thirteen cottages have arisen already; and more are in prospect: and this number is no small relief in a little country town like Ambleside. The eye of visitors is now caught by an upland hamlet, just above the parsonage, where there are two good houses, and some ranges of cottages which will stand, as the builders say, “a thousand years,” — so substantial is the mode of building the gray stone dwellings of the district. I scarcely need add that I made no reference, in the lectures or otherwise, to the form of tyranny exercised by the owners of land and houses. My business was to preclude the tyranny, by showing the people that their own interests were in their own hands, and by no means to excite angry feelings about grievances which I hoped to mitigate, or even extinguish.

The generous friend who enabled me to buy the land declined to receive the money back. She is the proprietress of two of the cottages and their gardens; and she placed the rest of the money at my disposal, for the benefit of the place, as long as it was wanted. Since my illness began, three months ago, I have transferred the trust to other hands; and there is reason to hope that the place will be provided with a good Mechanics’ Institute, and Baths, — which are now the next great want.

In the two last lectures of the Sanitary course, there was an opportunity for dealing with the great curse of the place, — its intemperance. Those two lectures were on the Stomach and Brain. I drew the outline of the stomach on a large expanse of Edition: current; Page: [10] paper, which was fixed in front of the desk; and I sent round the coloured prints, used in Temperance Societies, of the appearances of progressive disease in the drunkard’s stomach, — from the first faint blush of inflammation to the schirrous condition. It was a subject which had long and deeply engaged my attention; and my audience, so closely packed as that the movement of one person swayed the whole, were as much interested as myself; so that my lecture spread out to an hour and twenty minutes, without my being at all aware of the time. The only stir, except when the prints were handed round, was made by a young man who staggered out, and fainted at the door. He was a recent comer to the place, and had lately begun to tipple, like his neighbours. After that night, he joined my Building Society, that he might have no money for the public-house. Many told me afterwards that they were sick with pain of mind during that lecture; and I found, on inquiry, that there was probably hardly a listener there, except the children, who had not family reasons for strong emotion during an exposure of the results of intemperate habits.

The longest course I have given was one of twenty lectures on the History of England, from the earliest days of tradition to the beginning of the present century. Another was on the History of America, from its discovery by Columbus to the death of Washington. This was to have been followed by a course which I shall not live to offer; — the modern History of the United States, — with a special view to recommend the Anti-slavery cause. Last November and December, I addressed my neighbours for the last time, — On Russia and the War. At the close, I told them that if I were alive and well next winter, we would carry on the subject to the close of the campaign of 1855. I should be happy to know that some one would take up my work, and not allow my neighbours to suffer by my departure. I found myself fatigued and faint during the two last lectures; and I spoke seriously when making my conditional promise for another season; but I had no clear notion how ill I was, even then, and that I should never meet that array of honest, earnest faces again.

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There was some fear that the strong political interests of the spring of 1848 would interfere with the literary prosperity of the season. Whether they did or not, I do not know. For my own part I cared more for newspapers than books in that exciting year; but my own book had an excellent sale. The remembrance of the newspaper reading of those revolutionary times recalls a group of circumstances in my own experience which may be worth recording, — to show how important a work it is to give an account of the constitution and politics of a foreign nation. — Ten years before this, — (I think it was the year before my long illness began) a gentleman was brought to a soirée at my mother’s house, and introduced to me by a friend, who intimated that the stranger had a message to deliver to me. The gentleman had been for some time resident in Sweden, where he was intimately acquainted with the late Prime Minister. The Crown Prince Oscar of that day (the present King) was earnestly desirous of introducing constitutional reforms on a large scale, many of which, as we all know, he has since achieved. The retired Prime Minister desired my guest of that evening to procure an introduction to me, and to be the bearer of an invitation to me to spend a Swedish summer at the Minister’s country-house, where his lady and family would make me welcome. His object was, he said, to discuss some political topics of deep interest to Sweden; and he conceived that my books on America showed me to be the person whom he wanted; — to be capable, in fact, of understanding the working of the constitutions of foreign nations. He wanted to talk over the condition and prospects of Sweden in the light of the experiments of other countries. I could not think of going; and I forgot the invitation till it was recalled to memory by an incident which happened in April 1839. I was then going to Switzerland with three friends, and our passage to Rotterdam was taken, when a friend of my family, the English representative of an Irish county, called on me with an earnest request that I would suspend my scheme, for reasons which he would assign in a few days. I explained that I really could not do so, as I was pledged to accompany a sick cousin. In a day or two, Edition: current; Page: [12] my friend called, to insist on my dining at his house the next Wednesday, to meet Mr. O’Connell on business of importance. Mr. O’Connell could not be in town earlier, because the freedom of some place (I forget what) was to be presented to him on Tuesday; and travelling all night would bring him to London only on Wednesday afternoon. I could not meet him, as we were to go on board the packet on Wednesday evening. — My friend, hoping still to dissuade me, told me what Mr. O’Connell wanted. He had private reasons for believing that “Peel and the Tories” would soon come into power: (in fact, the Bedchamber Question occurred within a month after) and he feared more than ever for the liberties of Ireland, and felt that not a day must be lost in providing every assistance to the cause that could be obtained. He had long been convinced that one of the chief misfortunes of Ireland was that her cause was pleaded in print by authors who represented only the violent, and vulgar and factious elements of Irish discontent; by Irish people, in fact, who could not speak in a way which the English were willing to listen to. He considered that my American books established my capacity to understand and represent the political and social condition of another country; and what he had to request was that I would study Irish affairs on the spot, and report of them. He offered introductions to the best-informed Catholic families in any or every part of Ireland, and besought me to devote to the object all the time I thought needful, — either employing twelve months or so in going over the whole of Ireland, or a shorter time in a deeper study of any particular part, — publishing the results of my observations without interference from any body, or the expression of any desire from any quarter that my opinions should be of one colour rather than another.

It was impossible for me to say any thing to this scheme at the time: but my family and friends were deeply impressed by it. It was frequently discussed by my comrades and myself during our continental journey; and one of them, — the same generous friend to whom I have had occasion to refer in connexion with my Ambleside schemes, — offered to accompany Edition: current; Page: [13] me, with a servant, to help and countenance me, and hear for me, and further the object in every possible way: and she was not the only one who so volunteered. It stood before my mind as the next great work to be undertaken: but, in another month, not only were “Peel and the Tories” sent to the right-about for the time, but I was prostrate in the illness which was to lay me aside for nearly six years. On our return from Italy, we fell in with the family of Lord Plunket, to whom, in the course of conversation about Ireland, we related the incident. Miss Plunket seemed as much struck with the rationality of the scheme as we were; and, after some consultation apart, Miss Plunket came to me with an express offer of introductions from Lord Plunket to intelligent Protestants, in any or every part of Ireland where this business might carry me. My illness, however, broke up the scheme.

This incident, again, was recalled to my memory by what happened the next time I was abroad. It occurred in the spring of 1847. Our desert party agreed, at Jerusalem, to make an excursion of three days to the Jordan and the Dead Sea. On the eve of the trip, three European gentlemen sent a petition to Lady Harriet K—, that they might be allowed to ride with our party, on account of the dangerous state of the road to Jericho. They joined our troop in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and rode among us all day. It did not occur to me to ask who they were. In the course of the next morning, when the ladies of the party were going through the wood on the bank of the Jordan, to bathe northwards, while the gentlemen went southwards, we met one of these strangers; and I told him where he might find his companions. I never doubted his being English, — he looked so like a country squire, with his close-cropped, rather light hair, and sunburned complexion. He appeared to be somewhere about five-and-thirty. On leaving the Jordan, we had to traverse an open tract, in excessive heat, to the margin of the Dead Sea. The hard sand looked trustworthy; and I put my horse to a gallop, for the sake of the wind thus obtained. I soon heard other horses coming up; and this gentleman, with two others, appeared: and he rode close by Edition: current; Page: [14] my side till an accident to one of the party obliged him to dismount and give help. I was among those who rode on when we found that no harm was done; and presently after I was asked by Lady Harriet K— whether I would allow Count Porro to be introduced to me, — he being desirous of some conversation with me. For Silvio Pellico’s sake, as well as Count Porro’s father’s and his own, I was happy to make his acquaintance; and I supposed we should meet at our halting place, — at Santa Saba. But Count Porro and his companions were to strike off northwards by the Damascus road; and they were gone before I was aware. — A few weeks afterwards, when we four, of the Nile party, rode up to our hotel at Damascus, Count Porro was awaiting us; and he helped us ladies down from our horses. He had remained some days, in order to see me. He desired some conversation with me at a convenient time; and that convenient time proved to be the next morning, when he joined me on the divan, in the alcove in the quadrangle. He was so agitated that he could scarcely speak. His English, however, was excellent. He told me that in what he was going to say he was the mouth-piece of many of his countrymen, as well as of his own wishes; and especially of several fellow-citizens of Milan. What he said was as nearly as could be a repetition of O’Connell’s plea and request. He said it was the misfortune of his country to be represented abroad by injured and exasperated patriots, who demanded more than the bulk of the people desired, and gave forth views which the citizens in general disclaimed. It was believed by the leading men in Lombardy that the changes which were really most essential might be obtained from Austria, if sought in a temperate and rational manner; and that the best way of obtaining these changes would be by means of a report on the condition of affairs by some traveller of reputation, who had shown, as they considered that I had done by my work on the United States, a capacity to understand and report of a foreign state of society. He was therefore authorised to request that I would reside in Milan for six months or a year, and to say that every facility should be afforded for my obtaining information, and all possible Edition: current; Page: [15] respect shown to my liberty of judgment and representation. All they wanted was that I should study their condition, and report it fully, on my return to England. He told me (in consideration of my deafness, which disabled me for conversation, though not, of course, for reading, in a foreign language) that every educated Milanese speaks English; and that every thing should be done to render my abode as pleasant as possible; and so forth. — I positively declined, being, in truth, heartily homesick, — longing for my green, quiet valley, and the repose of my own abode. My duties there seemed more congenial and natural than investigating the politics of Lombardy; and I did not therefore think it selfish to refuse. With increasing agitation, Count Porro declared that he would take no refusal. He asked how much time these home duties would occupy; said, in spite of all my discouragements, that he should go to England the next spring; and declared, when taking his leave next day, that, on landing at Southampton, his first step would be to put himself into the train for Ambleside, whence he would not depart without my promise to go to Milan.

When that “next spring” arrived, — the anniversary of those conversations of ours at Damascus, — Count Porro was a member of the Provisional Government at Milan, telling Austria by his acts and decrees what it was that Lombardy required. The mention, in my narrative, of the revolutions of 1848 brought up these three stories at once to my recollection; and their strong resemblance to each other seems to show that there must be something in them which makes them worth the telling.

I began my great task of the History under much anxiety of mind. My mother was known to be dying from the spring onwards; and she died in August. She was removed, while yet able, to the house of her eldest surviving son, at Edgbaston; and there, amidst the best possible tendance, she declined and died. Her life hung upon perfect quiet; and therefore, as all her children had seen her not long before, it was considered best to leave her in the good hands of one of the families. I saw her at Liverpool, on my return home from the East. By evil offices, Edition: current; Page: [16] working on her prejudice against mesmerism, she had been prevented from meeting me after my recovery: but such a cause of separation was too absurd to be perpetual. I knew that the sound of my voice, and my mere presence for five minutes, would put to flight all objections to my mode of recovery: and we did meet and part in comfort and satisfaction. I did hope to have had the pleasure of a visit from her that summer, though I proposed it with much doubt. She was now blind; and she could not but be perpetually hearing of the charms of the scenery. She could walk only on smooth and level ground; and walking was essential to her health: and it is not easy to find smooth level ground in our valley. Yet, as one main inducement to my building and settling here was that there might be a paradise for any tired or delicate members of my family to rest in, I did wish that my mother should have tried it, this first practicable summer: but she was too ill to do more than go to Edgbaston, and find her grave there. She was in her seventy-sixth year. — I have never felt otherwise than soundly and substantially happy, during this last term of my life: but certainly those months of July and August 1848 were the most anxious of the whole ten years since I left Tynemouth. The same faithful old friend to whom I have often referred, must come into my history again here. She came to me when I was becoming most anxious, and remained above two months, — saving me from being overwhelmed with visits from strangers, and taking me quiet drives, when my work was done; — a recreation which I have always found the most refreshing of all. Some of my own family came before the event, and some after; and a few old and dear friends looked in upon me, in the course of the season.

When I had laid out my plan for the History, and begun upon the first portion, I sank into a state of dismay. I should hardly say “sank;” for I never thought of giving up or stopping; but I doubt whether, at any point of my career, I ever felt so oppressed by what I had undertaken as during the first two or three weeks after I had begun the History. The idea of publishing a number of my Political Economy series every month was fearful at first: but that was only the quantity of work. The Edition: current; Page: [17] Discontented Pendulum comforted me them, — not only because every month’s work would have its own month to be done in, but because there was a clear, separate topic for each number, which would enable the work to take care of itself, in regard to subject as well as time. In America, I was overwhelmed with the mass of material to be dealt with; but then, I was not engaged to write a book; and by the time I had made up my mind to do so, the mass had become classified. Now, the quantity and variety of details fairly overpowered my spirits, in that hot month of August. I feel my weakness, — more in body than (consciously) in mind — in having to deal with many details. The most fatiguing work I ever have to do is arranging my library; and even packing my trunks for a journey, or distributing the contents when I come home, fatigues me more than it seems to do other people. In this case, I fear I afflicted my friend by my discouragement, — the like of which she had never seen in me. At times, she comforted me with assurances that the chaos would become orderly; but, on the whole, she desired that I should throw up the work, — a thing which I could not even meditate for a moment, under the circumstances in which Mr. Knight found himself. No doubt, the nervous watching of the post at that time had much to do with my anxiety. My habit was to rise at six, and to take a walk, — returning to my solitary breakfast at half-past seven. For several years, while I was strong enough, I found this an excellent preparation for work. My household orders were given for the day, and all affairs settled, out of doors and in, by a quarter or half-past eight, when I went to work, which I continued without interruption, except from the post, till three o’clock, or later, when alone. While my friend was with me, we dined at two; and that was, of course, the limit of my day’s work. The post came in at half-past ten; and my object was to keep close to my work till the letters appeared. When my mother became so ill that this effort was beyond my power, I sent to meet the coach, and got my letters earlier; but the wear and tear of nerve was very great. One strong evidence of the reality of my recovery was that my health stood the struggle very well. In a few Edition: current; Page: [18] weeks, I was in full career, and had got my work well in hand. My first clear relief came when I had written a certain passage about Canning’s eloquence, and found in the course of it that I really was interested in my business. Mr. Knight, happily, was satisfied; and I was indebted to him for every kind of encouragement. By the 1st of February, the last M.S. of the first volume was in the hands of the printer. I mention this because a contemporary review spoke of “two years” as the time it had occupied me, — calling it very rapid work; whereas, from the first opening of the books to study for the History to the depositing of the M.S. of the first volume at press was exactly six months. The second volume took six months to do, with an interval of some weeks of holiday, and other work. I delivered the last sheets into Mr. Knight’s hands in November 1849.

During the year 1849, the dismal cholera year, — I found that I had been overworking; and in the autumn I accepted Mrs. Knight’s invitation to join their family at St. Leonards for a month, and then to stay with them for the remaining weeks which were necessary to finish the History. The Sunday when I put the last batch of M.S. into Mr. Knight’s hands was a memorable day to me. I had grown nervous towards the end; and especially doubtful, without any assignable reason, whether Mr. Knight would like the concluding portion. To put it out of my mind, I went a long walk after breakfast with Mr. Atkinson, to Primrose Hill (where I had never been before) and Regent’s Park. My heart fluttered all the way; and when I came home, to meet a farewell family party at lunch, I could not eat. Mr. Knight looked at me, with an expression of countenance which I could not interpret; and when he beckoned me into the drawing-room, I was ready to drop. I might have spared myself the alarm. His acknowledgments were such as sent me to my room perfectly happy; and I returned to my Knoll with a light heart. I was soon followed by an invitation from Mr. Knight to write the introductory period, from the opening of the century to the Peace, to be followed by the four years to 1850, if we should live to see the close of that year, so as to make a complete Edition: current; Page: [19] “History of the Half Century.” The work would be comparatively light, from the quantity of material supplied by the Memoirs of the statesmen now long dead. I was somewhat disappointed in regard to the pleasure of it from Mr. Knight’s frequent changes of mind as to the form in which it was to be done. I imagine he had become somewhat tired of the scheme; for, not only was I kept waiting weeks, and once three months, for a promised letter which should guide me as to space and other particulars; but he three times changed his mind as to the form in which he should present the whole. He approved, as cordially as ever, what I wrote; but finally decided to print the portion from 1800 to the Peace as an Introductory volume, relinquishing the project of completing the Half Century by a History of the last four years. I state these facts because it was afterwards believed by many people, who quoted his authority, that he broke off the scheme, to his own injury, from terror at the publication of the Atkinson Letters, — as if he had been taken by surprise by that publication. I can only say that it was as far as possible from being my intention to conceal our plan of publishing those Letters. I not only told him of it while at his house in the autumn of 1849, and received certain sarcasms from him on our “infidel” philosophy; but I read to Mrs. Knight two of the boldest of Mr. Atkinson’s letters: and it was after this that Mr. Knight invited me to write the Introductory volume. Moreover, it was after some of his changes of plan that he staid at my house (May 1850) with Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Jerrold, and considerately took Mr. Jerrold for a walk, on the last day of their visit, to leave Mr. Atkinson and me at liberty to read our manuscript. He was certainly panic-stricken when the volume appeared, in January, 1851; but, if he was surprised, it was through no fault of mine, as the dates show. In July, 1851, half-a-year after the “Letters” appeared, when he paid me for my work at his own house, he expressed himself more than satisfied with the Introductory History, and told me that, though the Exhibition had interfered with the publishing season, he had sold two thirds of the edition, and had no doubt of its entire success in the next. Before the next season opened, Edition: current; Page: [20] however, he sold off the whole work. With his reasons for doing so I have no concern, as the preceding facts show. In regard to him, I need only say, — which I do with great pleasure, — that he has continued to show me kindness and affection, worthy of our long friendship. In regard to the History, — it has passed into the hands of Messrs. Chambers of Edinburgh, who invited me, last summer, to bring the History of the Peace down to the War. I agreed to do so; and the scheme was only broken off by my present illness, which, of course, renders the execution of it impossible.

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SECTION V.

On the last evening of my stay at Mr. Knight’s a parcel arrived for me, enclosing a book, and a note which was examined as few notes ever are. The book was “Shirley;” and the note was from “Currer Bell.” Here it is.

“Currer Bell offers a copy of “Shirley” to Miss Martineau’s acceptance, in acknowledgment of the pleasure and profit she [sic] he has derived from her works. When C. B. first read “Deerbrook” he tasted a new and keen pleasure, and experienced a genuine benefit. In his mind, “Deerbrook” ranks with the writings that have really done him good, added to his stock of ideas, and rectified his views of life.”

“November 7th, 1849.”

We examined this note to make out whether it was written by a man or a woman. The hand was a cramped and nervous one, which might belong to any body who had written too much, or was in bad health, or who had been badly taught. The erased “she” seemed at first to settle the matter; but somebody suggested that the “she” might refer to me under a form of sentence which might easily have been changed in the penning. I had made up my mind, as I had repeatedly said, that a certain passage in “Jane Eyre,” about sewing on brass rings, could have been written only by a woman or an upholsterer. I now addressed my reply externally to “Currer Bell, Esq.,” and began it “Madam.” — I had more reason for interest than even the deeply-interested public in knowing who wrote “Jane Eyre;” for, when it appeared, I was taxed with the authorship by more than one personal friend, and charged by others, and even by relatives, with knowing the author, and having supplied some of the facts of the first volume from my own childhood. When I read it, I was convinced that it was by some friend of my own, who had Edition: current; Page: [22] portions of my childish experience in his or her mind. “Currer Bell” told me, long after, that she had read with astonishment those parts of “Household Education” which relate my own experience. It was like meeting her own fetch, — so precisely were the fears and miseries there described the same as her own, told or not told in “Jane Eyre.”

A month after my receipt of “Shirley,” I removed, on a certain Saturday, from the house of a friend in Hyde Park Street to that of a cousin in Westbourne Street, in time for a dinner party. Meanwhile, a messenger was running about to find me, and reached my cousin’s when we were at dessert, bringing the following note.

Currer Bell

Bell, Currer

December 8th, 1849

December 8th, 1849

.

“My dear Madam,—

I happen to be staying in London for a few days; and having just heard that you are likewise in town, I could not help feeling a very strong wish to see you. If you will permit me to call upon you, have the goodness to tell me when to come. Should you prefer calling on me, my address is ... ... ... ...

“Do not think this request springs from mere curiosity. I hope it has its origin in a better feeling. It would grieve me to lose this chance of seeing one whose works have so often made her the subject of my thoughts.

“I am, my dear Madam,
“Yours sincerely,

“CURRER BELL.”

My host and hostess desired me to ask the favour of C. B.’s company the next day, or any subsequent one. According to the old dissenting custom of early hours on Sundays, we should have tea at six the next evening: — on any other day, dinner at a somewhat later hour. The servant was sent with this invitation on Sunday morning, and brought back the following reply.

“My dear Madam,—

I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at six o’clock today: — and I shall try now to be patient till six o’clock comes.”

“I am, &c., &c.”

“That is a woman’s note,” we agreed. We were in a certain state of excitement all day, and especially towards evening. Edition: current; Page: [23] The footman would certainly announce this mysterious personage by his or her right name; and, as I could not hear the announcement, I charged my cousins to take care that I was duly informed of it. A little before six, there was a thundering rap: — the drawing-room door was thrown open, and in stalked a gentleman six feet high. It was not “Currer,” but a philanthropist, who had an errand about a model lodging-house. Minute by minute I, for one, wished him away; and he did go before any body else came. Precisely as the time-piece struck six, a carriage stopped at the door; and after a minute of suspense, the footman announced “Miss Brogden;” whereupon, my cousin informed me that it was Miss Brontë; for we had heard the name before, among others, in the way of conjecture.—I thought her the smallest creature I had ever seen (except at a fair) and her eyes blazed, as it seemed to me. She glanced quickly round; and my trumpet pointing me out, she held out her hand frankly and pleasantly. I introduced her, of course, to the family; and then came a moment which I had not anticipated. When she was seated by me on the sofa, she cast up at me such a look, — so loving, so appealing, — that, in connexion with her deep mourning dress, and the knowledge that she was the sole survivor of her family, I could with the utmost difficulty return her smile, or keep my composure. I should have been heartily glad to cry. We soon got on very well; and she appeared more at her ease that evening than I ever saw her afterwards, except when we were alone. My hostess was so considerate as to leave us together after tea, in case of C. B. desiring to have private conversation with me. She was glad of the opportunity to consult me about certain strictures of the reviewers which she did not understand, and had every desire to profit by. I did not approve the spirit of those strictures; but I thought them not entirely groundless. She besought me then, and repeatedly afterwards, to tell her, at whatever cost of pain to herself, if I saw her afford any justification of them. I believed her, (and I now believe her to have been) perfectly sincere: but when the time came (on the publication of “Villette,” in regard to which she had expressly claimed my promise a week before the book arrived) Edition: current; Page: [24] she could not bear it. There was never any quarrel, or even misunderstanding between us. She thanked me for my sincere fulfilment of my engagement; but she could not, she said, come “at present” to see me, as she had promised: and the present was alas! all that she had to dispose of. She is dead, before another book of hers could (as I hoped it would) enable her to see what I meant, and me to re-establish a fuller sympathy between us. — Between the appearance of “Shirley” and that of “Villette,” she came to me; — in December, 1850. Our intercourse then confirmed my deep impression of her integrity, her noble conscientiousness about her vocation, and her consequent self-reliance in the moral conduct of her life. I saw at the same time tokens of a morbid condition of mind, in one or two directions; — much less than might have been expected, or than would have been seen in almost any one else under circumstances so unfavourable to health of body and mind as those in which she lived; and the one fault which I pointed out to her in “Villette” was so clearly traceable to these unwholesome influences that I would fain have been spared a task of criticism which could hardly be of much use while the circumstances remained unchanged. But she had exacted first the promise, and then the performance in this particular instance; and I had no choice. “I know,” she wrote (January 21st, 1853) “that you will give me your thoughts upon my book, — as frankly as if you spoke to some near relative whose good you preferred to her gratification. I wince under the pain of condemnation — like any other weak structure of flesh and blood; but I love, I honour, I kneel to Truth. Let her smite me on one cheek — good! the tears may spring to the eyes; but courage! There is the other side — hit again — right sharply!” This was the genuine spirit of the woman. She might be weak for once; but her permanent temper was one of humility, candour, integrity and conscientiousness. She was not only unspoiled by her sudden and prodigious fame, but obviously unspoilable. She was somewhat amused by her fame, but oftener annoyed; — at least, when obliged to come out into the world to meet it, instead of its reaching her in her secluded home, in the wilds of Yorkshire. There was little hope that she, the frail Edition: current; Page: [25] survivor of a whole family cut off in childhood or youth, could live to old age; but, now that she is gone, under the age of forty, the feeling is that society has sustained an unexpected, as well as irreparable loss.

I have often observed that, from the time I wrote the Prize Essays, I have never come to a stand for work; — have never had any anxiety as to whether there would be work for me; — have, in short, only had to choose my work. Holiday I have never had, since before that time, except in as far as my foreign travels, and a few months of illness could be called such: and it had now been a weight on my mind for some years that I had not got on with my autobiography, — which I felt to be a real duty. I find that I wrote this to Mr. Atkinson, when under uneasiness about whether Murray would hold to his engagement to publish “Eastern Life” (February 1848.) “It is a very great and pressing object with me to go on with my own Life; lest it should end before I have recorded what I could trust no one to record of it. I always feel this a weight upon my mind, as a duty yet undone; and my doing it within a moderate time depends on my getting this book out now.” It was got out; but then came the History, which could not be delayed, and which I should have done wrong to refuse. Now that those three great volumes were nearly done, Mr. Dickens sent me an invitation to write for “Household Words.” That kind of work does not, in my own opinion, suit me well; and I have refused to write for Magazines by the score; but the wide circulation of “Household Words” made it a peculiar case; and I agreed to try my hand, — while I was yet a good way from the end of my History. I did this with the more ease because a scheme was now rising to the light which would relieve me of much of the anxiety I felt about recording the later experiences of my life. The Atkinson Letters were by this time in preparation.

The publication of those letters was my doing. Having found, after some years of correspondence with Mr. Atkinson, that my views were becoming broader and clearer, my practice of duty easier and gayer, and my peace of mind something wholly Edition: current; Page: [26] unlike what I had ever had experience of before; and, being able to recognize and point out what fundamental truths they were that I had thus been brought to grasp, I thought that much good might be done by our making known, as master and pupil, what truths lay at the root of our philosophy. If I had known — what I could not know till the reception of our volume revealed it to me, — how small is the proportion of believers to the disbelievers in theology to what I imagined, — I might have proposed a different method; or we might have done our work in a different way. In regard to disbelief in theology, much more had already taken place than I, at least, was aware of. But there is an essential point, — the most essential of all, — in regard to which the secular and the theological worlds seem to need conviction almost equally: viz., the real value of science, and of philosophy as its legitimate offspring. It seems to us, even now, the most impossible, or, speaking cautiously, the rarest thing in the world to find any body who has the remotest conception of the indispensableness of science as the only source of, not only enlightenment, but wisdom, goodness and happiness. It is, of course, useless to speak to theologians or their disciples about this, while they remain addicted to theology, because they avowedly give their preference to theology over the science with which it is incompatible. They, in the face of clear proof that science and theology are incompatible, embrace theology as the foundation of wisdom, goodness and happiness. They incline, all the while, to what they call philosophy; — that is, to theologico-metaphysics, from which they derive, as they say, (and truly) improvement in intellectual power, and confirmation of their religious faith in one direction, nearly equivalent to the damage inflicted on it in another. The result must be, when the study is real and earnest, either that the metaphysics must dwindle away into a mere fanciful adornment of the theology, or the theology must be in time stripped of its dogmatic character, exhausted thereby of its vitality, and reduced to a mere name and semblance. Examples of the first alternative are conspicuous in the argumentative preachers and writers of the Church of England, and other Christian sects; Edition: current; Page: [27] and, we may add, in the same functionaries of the Romish Church, who thus unconsciously yield to the tendencies of their age so far as to undermine the foundations of their own “everlasting” church. Examples of the second alternative are conspicuous, in our own country and in America, in the class of metaphysical deists, — who may be, by courtesy, called a class because they agree in being metaphysical, and, in one way or another, deists; but who cannot be called a sect, or a body, because it is scarcely possible to find any two of them who agree in any thing with any approach to precision. One makes the Necessarian doctrine his chief reliance, while another denounces it as atheistic. One insists on the immortality of the soul, while another considers a future life doubtful, and a matter of no great consequence. Others belong, amid an unbounded variety of minor views, to one or another of the five sorts of pantheism. All these claim to be philosophers, and scientific in the matter of mental philosophy; while observers discover that all are wandering wide of the central point of knowledge and conviction, — each in his own balloon, wafted in complacency by whatever current he may be caught by, and all crossing each other, up and down, right or left, all manner of ways, hopeless of finding a common centre till they begin to conceive of, and seek for, a firm standpoint.

The so-called scientific men, who consider themselves philosophers, are, for the most part, in a scarcely more promising condition. Between their endless subdivision as labourers in the field of research, before they have discovered any incorporating principle; and the absorbing and blinding influence of exclusive attention to detail; and some remaining fear of casting themselves loose from theology, together with their share of the universal tendency to cling to the old notions even in their own department, — the men of science are almost as hopelessly astray, as to the discovery of true wisdom, as the theologians. Well read men, who call themselves impartial and disinterested, as they stand aloof and observe all these others, are no nearer to the blessed discovery or conviction. They extol philosophy, perhaps; but it is merely on the ground that (conceiving metaphysics Edition: current; Page: [28] to be philosophy) it is a fine exercise of the subtle powers of the intellect. As to science, they regard it either as a grave and graceful pastime, or they see no use in it, or they consider it valuable for its utilitarian results. As for the grand conception, — the inestimable recognition, — that science, (or the knowledge of fact, inducing the discovery of laws) is the sole and the eternal basis of wisdom, — and therefore of human morality and peace, — none of all these seem to have obtained any view of it at all. For my part, I must in truth say that Mr. Atkinson is the only person, of the multitude I have known, who has clearly apprehended this central truth. He found me searching after it; and he put me in clear possession of it. He showed me how all moral evil, and much, and possibly all, physical evil arises from intellectual imperfection, — from ignorance and consequent error. He led me to sympathise in Bacon’s philosophy, in a truer way than the multitude of Bacon’s theological and metaphysical professed adorers; and to see how a man may be happier than his fellows who obeys Bacon’s incitements to the pursuit of truth, as the greatest good of man. There is plenty of talk of the honour and blessedness of the unflinching pursuit of truth, wherever it may lead; but I never met any one else who lived for that object, or who seemed to understand the nature of the apostleship. I have already told where I was in (or in pursuit of) this path when Mr. Atkinson found me. Learning what I could from him, and meditating for myself, I soon found myself quite outside of my old world of thought and speculation, — under a new heaven and on a new earth; disembarrassed of a load of selfish cares and troubles; with some of my difficulties fairly solved, and others chased away, like bad dreams; and others, again, deprived of all power to trouble me, because the line was clearly drawn between the feasible and the unknowable. I had got out of the prison of my own self,* wherein I had formerly sat trying to interpret life and the world, — much as a captive Edition: current; Page: [29] might undertake to paint the aspect of Nature from the gleams and shadows and faint colours reflected on his dungeon walls. I had learned that, to form any true notion whatever of any of the affairs of the universe, we must take our stand in the external world, — regarding man as one of the products and subjects of the everlasting laws of the universe, and not as the favourite of its Maker; a favourite to whom it is rendered subservient by divine partiality. I had learned that the death-blow was given to theology when Copernicus made his discovery that our world was not the centre and shrine of the universe, where God had placed man “in his own image,” to be worshipped and served by all the rest of creation. I had learned that men judge from an inverted image of external things within themselves when they insist upon the Design argument, as it is called, — applying the solution from out of their own peculiar faculties to external things which, in fact, suggest that very conception of design to the human faculty. I had learned that whatever conception is transferred by “instinct” or supposition from the human mind to the universe cannot possibly be the true solution, as the action of any product of the general laws of the universe cannot possibly be the original principle of those laws. Hence it followed that the conceptions of a God with any human attributes whatever, of a principle or practice of Design, of an administration of life according to human wishes, or of the affairs of the world by the principles of human morals, must be mere visions, — necessary and useful in their day, but not philosophically and permanently true. I had learned, above all, that only by a study of the external and internal world in conjunction can we gather such wisdom as we are qualified to attain; and that this study must be bonâ fide, — personal and diligent, and at any sacrifice, if we would become such as we hint to ourselves in our highest and truest aspirations. The hollowness of the popular views of philosophy and science, — as good intellectual exercise, as harmless, as valuable in a utilitarian sense, and even Edition: current; Page: [30] as elevating in their mere influence, — was, by this time, to me the clearest thing I ever saw: and the opposite reality, — that philosophy founded upon science is the one thing needful, — the source and the vital principle of all intellectuality, all morality, and all peace to individuals, and good will among men, — had become the crown of my experience, and the joy of my life.

One of the earliest consequent observations was, of course, that the science of Human Nature, in all its departments, is yet in its infancy. The mere principle of Mental Philosophy is, as yet, very partially recognized; and the very conception of it is new. It is so absolutely incompatible with theology that the remaining prevalence of theology, circumscribed as it is, sufficiently testifies to the infant state of the philosophy of Man. I have found Mr. Atkinson’s knowledge of Man, general and particular, physical, intellectual and moral; theoretical and practical, greater than I ever met with elsewhere, in books or conversation; and I immediately discovered that his superior knowledge was due to his higher and truer point of view, whereby he could cast light from every part of the universe upon the organisation and action of Man, and use and test the analogies from without in their application to the world within. I had long desired that the years should not pass over his head without the world being the better, as I felt myself, for his fresh method of thought, and conscientious exercise of it. I wished that some others besides myself should be led by him to the true point of view which they were wandering in search of; and I therefore went as far as I dared in urging him to give the world a piece of his mind. At length he consented to my scheme of publishing a set of “Letters on Man’s Nature and Development.” Certainly I have reason to congratulate myself on my pertinacity in petitioning for this. I do not often trouble my friends with requests or advice as to their doings: and in this case, I was careful not to intrude on my friend’s independence. But I succeeded; and I have rejoiced in my success ever since, — seeing and hearing what that book has done for others, and feeling very sensibly what a blessing it has been to myself.

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Once embarked in the scheme, my friend was naturally anxious to get on; but he was wonderfully patient with the slowness to which the pressure of my other work condemned us. I have mentioned that I read two of his letters to my hostess in the autumn of 1849. The book did not appear till January 1851. My literary practice indicated that I ought to copy out the whole of Mr. Atkinson’s portion in proper order for press; and this was the more necessary because Mr. Atkinson’s hand-writing is only not so bad as Dr. Parr’s and Sydney Smith’s. When I began, I supposed I must alter and amend a little, to fit the expression to the habit and taste of the reading world; but, after the first letter, I did not alter a single sentence. The style seems to me, — as it does to many better judges than myself, — as beautiful as it is remarkable. Eminent writers and readers have said that they could not lay the book down till they had run it through, — led on through the night by the beauty of the style, no less than by the interest of the matter. Such opinions justify my decision not to touch a sentence. (I speak of the volume without scruple, because, as far as its merits are concerned, it is Mr. Atkinson’s. The responsibility was mine, and a fourth or fifth part of its contents; but my letters were a mere instigation to his utterance.)

It appears, by the dates above, that nearly the whole of 1850 elapsed during my copying. I was writing the Introductory Volume of the History, and was in the midst of a series of papers, (the title of which I cannot recal) for an American periodical, whereby I wanted to earn some money for the Abolition cause there. I sent off the last of them in April. By that time, my season guests began to arrive; and my evenings were not at my own disposal. I had engaged myself to “Household Words” for a series of tales on Sanitary subjects; and I wrote this spring the two first, — “Woodruffe the Gardener” and “The People of Bleaburn.”

I spent a fortnight at Armathwaite, a beautiful place between Penrith and Carlisle; (departing, I remember, on the day of Wordsworth’s funeral) and, though I carried my work, and my kind friends allowed me the disposal of my mornings, I could Edition: current; Page: [32] not do any work which would bear postponement. I looked forward hopefully to a ten weeks’ sojourn at a farm-house near Bolton Abbey, where I went to escape the tourist-season; and there I did get on. My house had been full of guests, from April till the end of July, with little intermission: and the greater the pleasure of receiving one’s friends, the worse goes one’s work. Among the guests of that spring were three who came together, and who together made an illustrious week, — Mr. Charles Knight, Mr. Douglas Jerrold, and Mr. Atkinson. Four days were spent in making that circuit of the district which forms the ground-plan of my “Complete Guide:” and memorable days they were. We were amused at the way in which some bystander at Strands recorded his sense of this in a Kendal paper. He told how the tourists were beginning to appear for the season, and how I had been seen touring with a party of the élite of the literary world, &c., &c. He declared that I, with these élite, had crossed the mountains “in a gig” to Strands, and that wit and repartee had genially flowed throughout the evening; — an evening, as it happened, when our conversation was rather grave. I was so amused at this that I cut out the paragraph, and sent it to Mr. Jerrold, who wrote back that, while the people were about it, they might as well have put us into a howdah on an elephant. It would have been as true as the gig, and far grander. — I owed the pleasure of Mr. Jerrold’s acquaintance to Mr. Knight; and I wish I had known him more. My first impression was one of surprise, — not at his remarkable appearance, of which I was aware; — the eyes and the mobile countenance, the stoop, and the small figure, reminding one of Coleridge, without being like him, — but at the gentle and thoughtful kindness which set its mark on all he said and did. Somehow, all his good things were so dropped as to fall into my trumpet, without any trouble or ostentation. This was the dreaded and unpopular man who must have been hated (for he was hated) as “Punch” and not as Jerrold, — through fear, and not through reason or feeling. His wit always appeared to me as gentle as it was honest, — as innocent as it was sound. I could say of him as of Sydney Smith, that I Edition: current; Page: [33] never heard him say, in the way of raillery, any thing of others that I should mind his saying of me. I never feared him in the least, nor saw reason why any but knaves or fools should fear him. — The other witty journalist of my time, Mr. Fonblanque, I knew but little, having met him only at Mr. Macready’s, I think. I once had the luck to have him all to myself, during a long dinner; and I found his conversation as agreeable for other qualities as for its wit. The pale face, the lank hair, the thin hands, and dimmed dark eye, speaking of ill health, made the humour of his conversation the more impressive, as recommended by patience and amiability.

But to return to my summer of 1850. At Bolton I was not by any means lonely; for tourists came there too; and relations and friends gave me many a pleasant day and evening. But, on the whole, the History got on very well in the mornings, and the transcribing of the Letters in the evening; and, but for the relaxing air of the place, which injured my health, that Bolton sojourn would have been a season of singular enjoyment. With the same dear, faithful old friend whom I have so often referred to, I saw Ilkley and Benrhydding, and some of the finest parts of the West of Yorkshire. I found time to write another long story for “Household Words,” (“The Marsh fog and the Sea breeze”) and engaged to make my subscription to the new weekly journal, “the Leader” (which has lagged terribly, instead of leading) in the form of twelve “Sketches from Life,” which I began before the Atkinson Letters were well off my hands. Another small piece of authorship which interposed itself was really no fault of mine. In 1848 (I think it was) I had begun an experiment of very small farming, which I never intended to become an affair of public interest. My field, let to a neighbour, was always in such bad condition as to be an eye-sore from my windows. I found myself badly and expensively served with cream and butter, and vegetables, and eggs. In summer, there was no depending on the one butcher of the place for meat, even though joints had been timely ordered and promised, — so great and increasing was the pressure of the tourist multitude. In winter, when I was alone, and did Edition: current; Page: [34] not care what came to table, I could have what I liked: but in summer, when my house was full, it was frequently an anxiety how to get up a dinner when the butcher was so set fast as to have to divide the promised joint between three houses. All the while, I had to pay an occasional gardener very high, to keep the place in any order at all, — over and above what my maids and I could do. A more serious consideration was the bad method of farming in the Lake District, which seemed to need an example of better management, on however humble a scale. My neighbours insisted on it that cows require three acres of land apiece; whereas I believed that, without emulating Cobbett, I could do better than that. I procured an active, trustworthy married labourer from Norfolk, and enlisted his ambition and sympathy in the experiment. We have since kept about a cow and a-half on my land, with the addition of half an acre which I rent from the adjoining field; and the purchase of a fourth part of the food is worth while, because I am thus kept constantly supplied with milk, while able to sell the surplus; besides that the stable may as well hold a second cow; and that two cows are little more trouble than one. My whole place is kept in the highest order: I have the comfort of a strong man on the premises (his cottage being at the foot of the knoll) for the protection of my household and property; and I have always had the satisfaction of feeling that, come who may, there are at all times hams, bacon and eggs in the house. The regular supply of fresh vegetables, eggs, cream and butter is a substantial comfort to a housekeeper. A much greater blessing than all these together is that a plentiful subsistence for two worthy people has been actually created out of my field; and that the spectacle has certainly not been lost on my neighbours. At first, we were abundantly ridiculed, and severely condemned for our methods; and my good servant’s spirits were sometimes sorely tried: but I told him that if we persevered good-humouredly, people would come round to our views. And so they did. First, I was declared deluded and extravagant: next, I was cruel to my live stock; then, I petted them so that they would die of luxury; and finally, one after another of our neighbours Edition: current; Page: [35] admitted the fine plight of my cows; and a few adopted our methods. At the end of a year’s experience, I wrote a letter, by request, to an Assistant Poor-law Commissioner, who was earnest in his endeavours to get workhouses supplied with milk and vegetables, by the labour of the inmates on the land. To my amazement, I found my letter in the “Times,” one day while I was at Bolton. How it got there, I know not. Other papers quoted portions of it which, separated from the rest, gave rise to wrong impressions; so that I found it necessary to write a second letter, giving the result of the second year’s tillage; and to issue the two as a small pamphlet. I need say nothing here about our method of farming, as the whole story is told in that pamphlet. I may simply add that we go on with it, very comfortably; and that my good farm-servant is a prosperous man. Strangers come every summer to see the place as a curiosity; and I am assured that the invariable remark is that not a foot of ground is lost, and not a sign of neglect appears in any corner. I have added a little boiling-house, a root-house, and a capital manure-pit, since those letters were written; and I have put up a higher order of fences, — to the improvement at once of the appearance and the economy of my little estate. All this, with the growth of the shrubs and little copses, and the spread of roses and evergreen climbers over the house, makes my Knoll dwelling, to say the truth, a charming spectacle to visitors; — though not half so much as to me. Some have called it “a perfect poem:” and it is truly that to me: and so, speaking frankly, is the life that I have passed within it.

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SECTION VI.

With all the writing that I have particularised on my hands, it is not to be wondered at that November arrived before Mr. Atkinson was wanted, to finish off our work for press: and by that time, my winter course of lectures was due. So much for the “leisure,” and the “dulness” which distant friends have attributed to my life at the Lakes. This winter’s course was the arduous one of twenty lectures on the History of England, — the first of which was delivered on the fifth of November, and the last on the first of April, 1851. Amidst the undeniable overwork of that winter, I had a feeling, which I remember expressing to one friend at least, that this might probably be the last season of work for me. It seemed to me probable that, after the plain-speaking of the Atkinson Letters, I might never be asked, or allowed, to utter myself again. I had, on four previous occasions of my life, supposed the same thing, and found myself mistaken; but the “audacity,” (as a scientific reader called my practice of plain avowal) was so much greater in appearance (though not in reality) in the present case than ever before, that I anticipated excommunication from the world of literature, if not from society. This seems amusing enough, now, when I have enjoyed more prosperity since the publication of that volume, realised more money, earned more fame of a substantial kind, seen more of my books go out of print, and made more friendships and acquaintance with really congenial people than in any preceding four years of my life. But the anticipation was very sincere at the time; and I took care that my comrade in the work knew what my anticipation was. — There was to me, I must observe, no choice about making known, in this form or some other, my views at this period. From the time when, in my youth, I uttered my notions and was listened to, Edition: current; Page: [37] I had no further choice. For a quarter of a century past I had been answerable to an unknown number of persons for a declaration of my opinions as my experience advanced; and I could not stop now. If I had desired it, any concealment would have been most imprudent. A life of hypocrisy was wholly impracticable to me, if it had been endurable in idea; and disclosure by bits, in mere conversation, could never have answered any other purpose than misleading my friends, and subjecting me to misconception. So much for the necessity and the prudence of a full avowal. A far more serious matter was the duty of it, in regard to integrity and humanity. My comrade and I were both pursuers of truth, and were bound to render our homage openly and devoutly. We both care for our kind; and we could not see them suffering as we had suffered without imparting to them our consolation and our joy. Having found, as my friend said, a spring in the desert, should we see the multitude wandering in desolation, and not show them our refreshment? We never had a moment’s doubt or misgiving; though we anticipated (or I did, for I ought only to speak for myself) all manner of consequences which never ensued.

Just as I am writing on this subject, an old letter of mine to Mr. Atkinson is put before my eyes. It was written before the publication of “Eastern Life;” and I will insert a part of it, both because it indicates the kind of difficulty I had to deal with, on these occasions, and because it is an honest comfort to see what I had gained in courage, strength and cheerfulness in the three years which intervened between the publication of the two books.

“I am not afraid of censure,” I wrote in February 1848, “from individuals or from the world. I don’t feel, at present, any fear of the most thorough pulling to pieces that I suppose can ever befal me. The book once out, I am in for it, and must and will bear every thing. ... ... ... The fact is, however, — this book is, I believe, the greatest effort of courage I ever made. I only hope I may not fail in the proof. Some people would think the Population number of my Political Economy, and the Women and Marriage and Property chapters Edition: current; Page: [38] in my American books, and the Mesmerism affair, bolder feats: but I know that they were not. I was younger and more ardent then; and now the forecast and love of ease belonging to age are coming upon me. Then, I believed in a Protector who ordered me to do that work, and would sustain me under it: and, however I may now despise that sort of support, I had it then, and have none of that sort now. I have all that I want, I believe, in the absolute necessity of saying what I really believe, if I speak at all on those Egyptian and Mosaic subjects; and I would not exchange my present views, imperfect and doubtful as they are, — I had better say, I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with the peace and quiet. Nor would I, for any exemption, give up the blessing of the power of appeal to thoughtful minds. There was — —, the other day, at the reading of the Sinai part of my book. I should have expected her to be purely shocked at so much of it as to carry away a bad impression of the whole: but she was beyond all measure interested, — beyond any thing ever seen in her. So I would not have any thing otherwise than as it is, as to my fate in consequence of my opinions, or absence of belief. What I dread is being silenced, and the mortification and loss of the manner of it: (from a refusal to publish the book.) Yet, if it happens, I dare say it will become clear to me what I ought to do; and that is the only really important thing. ... ... ... ... Well: I have had plenty of painful enterprises to go through, and found support from the two considerations that I could not help being so circumstanced, and that I believed myself right. ... ... ... ... I will tell you of a terrible pain I have had about this matter of religious opinion. When I was at — in September, I was told about a Town Missionary, Mr. —, who desired particularly to see me. He came to the house, when it appeared, (— no, we knew it before; but, however,) he had formed himself upon my books, — the more serious ones particularly, — and we found, had taken up that notion of me which we know to be idealism, — all but idolatry. In every Edition: current; Page: [39] thing else he seemed a rational, as he certainly was a very interesting young man. Such a face! so full of life and happiness, — all made up of benevolence. He was delicate; and so was his young wife. He was then thinking of undertaking the — City Mission. He did so: and soon sank; — had influenza, and fell into rapid consumption. A friend of his at Birmingham wrote me that he declared himself dying, in his letter to her received that day: and she immediately wrote to suggest to me that a letter from me would gratify him. There was scarcely any thing I would not rather have done: but it was impossible to refuse. I wrote at once; and every word was as true to my own state of mind as what I write to you now: but I feared it would be taken for a Christian letter. There was not a word about the future, or of God, or even Christ. It was a letter of sympathy in his benevolent and happy life, and also, of course, in his present weakness. It reached him on the last day of his life. It was read to him. When a little revived, he asked for it, and read it himself; and then desired his wife to tell all who loved him of ‘this last flush on his darkness.’ This is dreadful pain to me. I feel as if I had told him a lie for my last words to him. I cannot now see how I could have acted otherwise. It would have been hard and unkind not to write: and it was impossible to disturb his life at the last. Yet I feel that that letter did not carry my real mind to him, and does not to the many who are reading it. His poor delicate young widow is strong in heart; but she has two young infants to maintain, and not a shilling in the world. But missionaries’ widows are, I believe, always cared for, — as I am sure they ought to be.”

It is cheering to read this letter now, and feel how much clearer and stronger my mind had become before the time arrived for the far greater enterprise which caused me so much less apprehension, and which was to release me for ever from all danger of misleading missionaries, or any body else, by letters of sympathy under solemn circumstances, which they would interpret by their preconceptions. I can write such letters now to all kinds of sufferers, in full assurance that, whether they satisfy or not, they are not misapprehended.

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On the nineteenth of November, my friend and I revised his last letter, I wrote my preface, and we tied up our M.S. for press; and on the twentieth, he went away. As we were going to the coach he said, “I am glad we have done this work. We shall never repent it.” We next met in London, in the summer, when our book had run the gauntlet of all the reviews, and we found ourselves no worse for the venture we had made, and well satisfied that we had borne our testimony to the truth, — not in vain for many who had sorely needed the support and blessing which our philosophy had long afforded to ourselves.

When Mr. Atkinson was gone, the printing began; and I highly enjoyed the proof-correcting. That is always the time when I begin to relish any book that I have part in. The conception I enjoy, of course, or I should not write the book; but during the work I am doubtful, and the manuscript disgusts me. Then come the proofs, when one sees exactly, and in order, what one has really said; and the work appears to advantage. What my pressure of business was at that time is shown by a sad piece of weakness of mine, which I have sorely repented since; — trusting to the printing-office the proof-correcting of the Appendix. Almost three-fourths of the Appendix being sent in print to the office, and the rest in the remarkably good handwriting of a helpful neighbour, I did hope that errors might be avoided; and I inquired about it, and was assured that I might trust the printer. But never did I see such a shameful mess as those sheets; and never could I have conceived of such an ignorant sort of blunders being allowed to pass. I have never forgiven myself for my laziness in letting any part of the business out of my own hands.

The neighbour who helped me kindly in getting up the Appendix was a sickly retired clerk living close by my gate, — a man of good tastes and fond of reading. I, as I thought, hired him for a succession of evenings to write for me; and, by working together, we soon finished the business. He would not have supper, nor any refreshment whatever; and, to my consternation, (and admiration too) he declined all remuneration in such a way Edition: current; Page: [41] that I could only accept his gift of his time and labour. Since that time he has had the loan, daily, of my newspaper: — his wife buys milk of my dairy; and he sends me many a dish of trout; and I lend books to his good son. Thus we go on; and very pleasant it is.

It was while our evenings were thus filled up, that Mr. Quillinan, Wordsworth’s son-in-law, called one day, full of kindly pleasure, to tell me that I must dine with him next Thursday; and sadly blank he looked when I told him I was engaged every evening that week. Could I not put off my engagement? — No: Miss Brontë was coming on Monday; and I had business which must be finished first. His disappointment was great; for he had a benevolent scheme of bringing me into the favourable acquaintance of certain clergy of the neighbourhood, and of a physician whose further acquaintance I by no means desired. I have before mentioned that, from the first, I avoided visiting among all my neighbours, except a very few intimates; and of course, I had no intention of beginning now, when a book was in the press which would make them gnash their teeth at me in a month or two. Mr. Quillinan had ascertained from the whole party that they should be happy to meet me; and he enjoyed, as he told me, “bringing neighbours together, to like each other.” It had never occurred to him that I might not like to meet them; and sadly disconcerted he was. However, I promised to take Miss Brontë with me, one day, if he would dine early enough to enable my delicate guest to return before nightfall. That was a truly pleasant day, — no one being there, in addition to the family, but Mr. Arnold, from Fox How, and ourselves. And when “Currer” and I came home, there were proof-sheets lying; and I read her Mr. Atkinson’s three letters about the distribution of the brain. She was exceedingly impressed by what she called “the tone of calm power in all he wrote;” moreover, she insisted on having the whole book, when it came out; and no one, so little qualified by training to enter into its substance and method, did it more generous justice. She was very far indeed from sympathising in our doctrine; and she emphatically said so; but this did not prevent her doing justice to us, under our different Edition: current; Page: [42] view. In a preceding letter, she had said “I quite expect that the publication of this book will bring you troublous times. Many who are beginning to draw near to you will start away again affrighted. Your present position is high. Consequently there are many persons, very likely, precisely in the mood to be glad to see it lower. I anticipate a popular outcry which you will stand much as the Duke of Wellington would; — and in due time, it will die round you; but I think not soon.” A month afterwards she wrote, “Having read your book, I cannot now think it will create any outcry. You are tender of others: — you are serious, reverent and gentle. Who can be angry?” This appreciation, from one who declared (as she did to me) that our doctrine was to her “vinegar mingled with gall,” was honourable to her justice and candour. And so was the readiness with which she admitted and accepted my explanation that I was an atheist in the vulgar sense, — that of rejecting the popular theology, — but not in the philosophical sense, of denying a First Cause. She had no sympathy whatever with the shallow and foolish complaint that we were “taking away people’s faith.” She thought that nobody’s faith was worth much which was held, more or less, because I held it too; and of course she saw that truth and Man would never advance if they must wait for the weak, who have themselves no means of progression but by the explorations of the strong, or of those more disposed for speculation than themselves. As I have had occasion to say to some people who seem to have forgotten all they knew of the history of Opinion, and as Luther, and many others greater than I have had to say, “If your faith is worth any thing, it does not depend on me: and if it depends on me, it is not worth any thing.” This reminds me of an incident perhaps worth relating, in connexion with this absurd plea for standing still, which, under the laws of the mind, means retrogression.

When I was publishing “Eastern Life,” I rather dreaded its effects on two intimate friends of mine, widows, both far removed from orthodoxy, and zealous all their lives long for free thought, and an open declaration of it. If I might judge by their profession of principle, I should become more dear to them in Edition: current; Page: [43] proportion to my efforts or sacrifices in the discovery and avowal of truth: but I knew that they could not be so judged, because neither of them had encountered any serious trial of their principle. They bore “Eastern Life” better than I expected, — not fully perceiving, perhaps, the extent of the speculation about belief in a future life. In the “Atkinson Letters,” the full truth burst upon them; and it was too much for them. They had been accustomed to detail to me their visions of that future life, which were curiously particular, — their “heaven” being filled with the atmosphere of their respective homes, and framed to meet the sufferings and desires of their own individual minds. I never pretended to sympathise in all this, of course; but neither had I meddled with it, because I never meddle, except by invitation, with individual minds. After “Eastern Life,” they must have been thoroughly aware that they had not my sympathy; but, while they insisted (against my wish) in reading the “Atkinson Letters,” which was altogether out of their way, they blamed me excessively, — wholly forgetting their professions in favour of free-thought and speech. One partially recovered herself: the other had not power to do so. She went about every where, eloquently bemoaning my act, as a sort of fall, and doing me more mischief (as far as such talk can do damage) than any enemy could have done; and, by the time she began to see how she stood, she had done too much for entire reparation, — earnestly as I believe she desires it. As for the other, an anecdote will show how considerable her self-recovery was. The very woman who had taken on herself to inform me that God would forgive me was not long in reaching the point I will show. — She came to stay with me a year afterwards; and when she departed, I went down to the gate, to put her into the coach, when an old acquaintance greeted me, — an aged lady living some miles off. The two fellow-passengers talked me over, and the aged one related how fierce an opinionated old lady of the neighbourhood was against me, — without having read the book; — the narrator confessing that she herself thought I was “exceedingly wrong to take away people’s faith.” Did not my friend think so? She replied that if I was wrong on that ground, Edition: current; Page: [44] — in seeking truth, and avowing it in opposition to the popular belief, so was every religious reformer, in all times, — mounting up through Luther to St. Paul. “Why, that’s true!” cried the old lady. “I will remember that, and tell it again.” “And as to the moral obligation of the case,” continued my friend, “we must each judge by our own conscience: and perhaps Harriet is as able to judge as Mrs. —.” “Yes, indeed, and a great deal better,” was the reply.

I certainly had no idea how little faith Christians have in their own faith till I saw how ill their courage and temper can stand any attack upon it. And the metaphysical deists who call themselves free-thinkers are, if possible, more alarmed and angry still. There were some of all orders of believers who treated us perfectly well; and perhaps the settled-orthodox had more sympathy with us than any other class of Christians. They were not alarmed, — safely anchored as they are on the rock of authority; and they were therefore at leisure to do justice to our intentions, and even to our reasoning. Having once declared our whole basis to be wrong, — their own being divine, — they could appreciate our view and conduct in a way impossible to persons who had left the anchorage of authority, and not reached that of genuine philosophy. Certainly the heretical, — from reforming churchmen to metaphysical deists, — behaved the worst. The reviews of the time were a great instruction to us. They all, without one exception, as far as we know, shirked the subject-matter of the book, and fastened on the collateral, antitheological portions. In regard to these portions, the reviewers contradicted each other endlessly. We had half a mind to collect their articles, and put them in such juxtaposition as to make them destroy one another, so as to leave us where they found us. It is never worth while, however, to notice reviews in their bearing upon the books they discuss. When we revert to reviews, so-called, it is for their value as essays; for it is, I believe, a thing almost unknown for a review to give a reliable account of the book which forms its text, if the work be of any substance at all. This is not the place for an essay on reviewing. I will merely observe that the causes of this phenomenon are so clear Edition: current; Page: [45] to me, and I think them so nearly unavoidable, that I have declined reviewing, except in a very few instances, since the age of thirty; and, in those few instances, my articles have been avowedly essays, and not, in any strict sense, reviews.

As for the “outcry” which “Currer Bell” and many others anticipated, I really do not know what it amounted to, — outside of the reviewing world. If I knew, I would tell: but I know very little. To the best of my recollection, we were downright insulted only by two people; — by the opinionated old lady (above eighty) above referred to, and by one of my nearest relations; — the former in a letter to me (avowing that she had not seen the book) and the latter in print. Another old lady and her family, with whom I was barely acquainted, passed me in the road thenceforth without speaking, — a marriage into a bishop’s family taking place soon after. Others spoke coldly, for a time; and one family, from whom more wisdom might have been expected, ceased to visit me, while continuing on friendly terms. I think this is all, as regards my own neighbourhood. My genuine friends did not change; and the others, failing under so clear a test, were nothing to me. When, in the evenings of that spring, I went out (as I always do, when in health) to meet the midnight on my terrace, or, in bad weather, in the porch, and saw and felt what I always do see and feel there at that hour, what did it matter whether people who were nothing to me had smiled or frowned as I passed them in the village in the morning? When I experienced the still new joy of feeling myself to be a portion of the universe, resting on the security of its everlasting laws, certain that its Cause was wholly out of the sphere of human attributes, and that the special destination of my race is infinitely nobler than the highest proposed under a scheme of “divine moral government,” how could it matter to me that the adherents of a decaying mythology, — (the Christian following the heathen, as the heathen followed the barbaric-fetish) were fiercely clinging to their Man-God, their scheme of salvation, their reward and punishment, their arrogance, their selfishness, their essential pay-system, as ordered by their mythology? As the astronomer rejoices in new knowledge which Edition: current; Page: [46] compels him to give up the dignity of our globe as the centre, the pride, and even the final cause of the universe, so do those who have escaped from the Christian mythology enjoy their release from the superstition which fails to make happy, fails to make good, fails to make wise, and has become as great an obstacle in the way of progress as the prior mythologies which it took the place of nearly two thousand years ago. For three centuries it has been undermined, and its overthrow completely decided,* as all true interpreters of the Reformation very well know. To the emancipated, it is a small matter that those who remain imprisoned are shocked at the daring which goes forth into the sunshine and under the stars, to study and enjoy, without leave asked, or fear of penalty. As to my neighbours, they came round by degrees to their former methods of greeting. They could do no more, because I was wholly independent of all of them but the few intimates on whom I could rely. As one of these last observed to me, — people leave off gossip and impertinence when they see that one is independent of them. If one has one’s own business and pleasure and near connexions, so that the gossips are visibly of no consequence to one, they soon stop talking. Whether it was so in my case, I never inquired. I am very civilly treated, as far as I see; and that is enough.

As to more distant connexions, I can only say the same thing. I had many scolding letters; but they were chiefly from friends who were sure to think better of it, and who have done so. For a time there was a diminution of letters from mere acquaintances, and persons who wanted autographs, or patronage, or the like: but these have increased again since. I went to London the summer after the publication of the book, and have done so more than once since; and my friends are very kind. I think I may sum up my experience of this sort by saying that this book has been an inestimable blessing to me by dissolving all false relations, and confirming all true ones. No Edition: current; Page: [47] one who would leave me on account of it is qualified to be my friend; and all who, agreeing or disagreeing with my opinions, are faithful to me through a trial too severe for the weak are truly friends for life. I early felt this; and certainly, no ardent friendships of my youthful days have been half so precious to me as those which have borne unchanged the full revelation of my heresies. As to my fortunes, — I have already said that my latest years have been the most prosperous since the publication of my Political Economy series.

When my friends in Egypt and I came down from, and out of, the Great Pyramid, we agreed that no pleasure in the recollection of the adventure, and no forgetfulness of the fatigue and awfulness of it should ever make us represent the feat as easy and altogether agreeable. For the sake of those who might come after us, we were bound to remember the pains and penalties, as well as the gains. In the same way, I am endeavouring now to revive the faded impressions of any painful social consequences which followed the publication of the “Atkinson Letters,” that I may not appear to convey that there is no fine to pay for the privilege of free utterance. I do not remember much about a sort of pain which was over so long ago, and which there has been nothing to revive; but I am aware in a general way, that the nightly mood which yields me such lofty pleasure, under the stars, and within the circuit of the solemn mountains, was not always preserved; and that, if I had not been on my guard in advance, and afterwards supported by Mr. Atkinson’s fine temper, I might have declined into a state of suspicion, and practice of searching into people’s opinion of me. To renew the impressions of the time, I have now been glancing over Mr. Atkinson’s letters of that spring, which I preserved for some such purpose: and I am tempted to insert one or two, as faithful reflexions of his mood at the time, which was the guide and aid of mine. This reminds me that one of our amusements at the time was at the various attempts, — in print, in letters, and in conversation, — to set us at variance. One of our literary magnates, who admires the book, said that this was the first instance in history of an able man joining a woman in authorship; Edition: current; Page: [48] and the novelty was not likely to be acquiesced in without resistance. In print, Mr. Atkinson was reproached, — in the face of my own preface, — with drawing me into the business, and making me his “victim,” and so forth, by persons who knew perfectly well that, so far from wanting any aid in coming forward, he had lectured, and published his lecture, containing the same views, both physiological and anti-theological, before we had any acquaintance whatever: and, on the other hand, I was scolded for dragging forth a good man into persecution which I had shown I did not myself care for. On this sort of charge, which admitted of no public reply, (if he had replied to any thing) Mr. Atkinson wrote these few words, — after reading the one only review which stooped to insult, — insult being, in that instance, safe to the perpetrator by accident of position. “The thing that impressed me, in reading that review was, — how ingenious men are in seeking how to poison their neighbours, and how men themselves do just what they accuse others of doing. Honest scorn I don’t at all mind: but I don’t like a wrong or undue advantage being taken. I don’t like a cabman to charge a shilling extra when one is with ladies, thinking you won’t dispute it. All our principles of honour and justice and benevolence seem to me to be implicated in questions of truth; and in this, I certainly feel firm as a rock, and with the courage of the lion:—that the position is to be maintained, and the thing to be done, and there’s an end of it, — be the consequences what they may.” Then came a letter to him, “candidly advising” him to do himself justice, as speedily as might be, by publishing something alone, to repair the disadvantage of having let a woman speak under the same cover: and on the same day, came a letter to me, gently reproving my good-nature in lending my literary experience to any man’s objects. Sometimes the volume was all mine, and sometimes all his, — each taking the advantage of the other’s name. There was a good deal of talk to the same purpose; and Mr. Atkinson’s comment on this policy was, — “the aim is evident, — to stir up jealousy between us. But it won’t do. They don’t know the man, — nor the woman either.”

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The following morsel may serve to show our view of the large class of censors who, believing nothing themselves, of theology or any thing else, were scandalised at our “shaking the faith” of other people. A lawyer of this class, avowing that he had not read the book, launched “a thunderbolt” at me, — possibly forgetting how many “thunderbolts” I had seen him launch at superstitions, like that of a future life, and at those who teach them. Mr. Atkinson’s remark on this will not take up much space. “Bravo —! A pretty lawyer he, to give judgment before he has read his brief! What a Scribe it is! lawyer to the backbone! I wish he would tell us what truths we may be allowed to utter, and when. Certainly it seems a pity to hurt any one’s feelings: but Christianity was not so tender about that: nor does Nature seem very particular. It is all very fine, talking about people’s religious convictions; but what is to become of those who have no such convictions, — that increasing crowd filling up the spaces between the schisms of the churches? The Church is rotting away daily. Convictions are losing their stability. Men are being scattered in the wilderness. Shall we not hold up a light in the distance, and prepare them a shelter from the storm? The religious people, you will see, will respect us more than the infidels, who have no faith in truth, no light but law, no hope for Man but his fancies, (“convictions.”) — No, I don’t feel any thing at “thunderbolts” of this kind, I assure you. I think it more like the squash of a rotten apple. Let such thunderbolts come as thick as rain; and they will not stir a blade of grass.” On April eleventh, my friend wrote, in reply to some accounts of excursions with two nieces, who were staying with me.

“Here is a nice packet of letters from you. It is delightful to read your account of your doings. You have no time to be miserable and repent, — have you? no time to be thinking of your reputation or your soul. Your cheerful front to the storm and active exertions will make you respected; and remember, the Cause requires it. It would be hard for a Christian to be brave and cheerful in a Mahomedan country, with any amount of pitying and abusing; and so you have not a fair chance of Edition: current; Page: [50] the effect of your faith on your happiness in life, — as it will be for all when the community think as you do, and each supports each, and sympathy abounds. ... ... ... As for Dr. B. and the rest, — when men don’t like the end, of course they find fault with the means. How could it be logical and scientific if it leads to a different conclusion from them: — them — yes, all of them thinking differently! F. in “Fraser” does not think any thing of a future life from instinct, or a God from design: but these points are just what the others insist on. To my mind, F.’s article and the one in the “Westminster” are full of sheer assertion and error and bad taste. I think they want logic, science, or whatever they may term it. If I am wrong and unscientific, why do they not put me right? — taking the “Letters” as a mere sketch, of course, and presenting only a few points of the subject. It is but a slight sketch of the head, leaving the whole figure to be completed. The fact is, these reviewers skip over the science to the theology, and talk nonsense when they feel uncomfortably opposed, — perhaps insulted. I don’t mean in the least to argue that I am not wrong: only, those who think so ought to show how and why. Mr. F. reasons from analogy when my chief argument is in opposition to those analogical reasonings. The analogy with Christ is curious, as showing how minds are impressed with resemblances. Some see a man with the slightest curve of the nose, and say “how like the Duke of Wellington!” or with a club-foot, and say “how like Byron!” I am certainly well contented with F.’s praise; for one reason only: that people won’t think you so foolish in bringing me forward in the way you have. As for the book, it is left by the critics just where it was: nothing disproved, — neither the facts nor the method, nor Bacon: and after all, if mine is “a careless sketch,” (and I dare say it is) the question is the truth of what it contains. If these men are such good artists, they will read the fact out of a rough sketch. F. throws out that idea about Bacon again, and calls it a moral fault in me. I cannot see it, especially as I am supported by others well acquainted with Bacon. The sin was of a piece with the rest of his doings, — in a measure essential at the time for getting a Edition: current; Page: [51] hearing at all for his philosophy: and F. forgets that if Bacon was an atheist, there was no offence against sacred matters, seeing that he did not consider them sacred, but ‘the delirium of phrenetics;’ and thus it was rather a showing of respect and yielding. I do not see that this can spoil him as an authority, any more than Macaulay spoils him: and if it did, he had better be no authority at all than an authority against science. Lord Campbell says Bacon was accustomed in his youth to ridicule religion, thinks the Paradoxes were his, but that in riper years he probably changed his opinion; the only reason given for which is a sentence in the Advancement of Learning, — his earliest great work. The passage there is, ‘A little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism, &c;’ which is absurd, if it were insisted on by Campbell. (I suppose Pope’s ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing,’ is taken from this passage.) Of course, people will say I am wrong; but let them show it, with all their logic; and we shall see who has the best of it. — So you think the storm is at its height. It shows how little I know of it, — I thought it was all over. The organ now playing a wretched tune before my windows is more annoyance than all their articles put together. If they generally speak so of it, methinks there must be something in it, and they are not indifferent to it. Your American correspondent is quite a mystic. What curious turns and twists the human mind takes, before it gets into the clear road of true philosophy, walking through the midst of the facts of Nature, the view widening and clearing at every step! Men like — and — don’t like our book because it makes so little of theirs and all their study, by taking a more direct line to the results. I can’t think what — can have to say that has not been said. So he is reading Comte, is he? I hope it will do him good. — Make Dr. — understand that repetition of the general fact was not the thing required or intended. I had other things to say, and to press into a mere notice. It is this very fact of incompleteness, &c., &c., that I believe Bacon would have praised. There is nothing cut and dried. There are facts; and in a certain order; a form for thinking men to work upon, — not to satisfy superficial men Edition: current; Page: [52] with a show of completeness. There are ‘particulars not known before for the use of man,’ which is better than all their logic: the one is mere measure and music, — the other ‘for future ages,’ — the grain of mustard seed only, perhaps, but a germ full of life. The first letters are a sketch expository of my views on mental science and the means of discovery; and the following letters merely an example (like Bacon’s Natural History) of the kind of fact that will throw light on the nature of the mind’s action, out of which, when extended and arranged in order, inductions are to be made of the laws of action. The rest is little more than conversational replies to your questions.”

Another of these letters was written when I was ill under an attack of influenza, which disabled me from duly enjoying a visit I was paying in the north of the district, and from getting on with my next great scheme. After telling me how ill every body was at that time, he says:

“It is sad to be making your visit now. As to our concerns, — there is no saying how the next post may alter every thing. There really is no place for an ill feeling, or a disturbed one, if we could but keep it so in view. It seems to me that life is either too holy, or a matter too indifferent to be moved by every silly thought or angry feeling. With regard to what they say about us, it is only precisely what you anticipated they would say: and it seems to me that after all is said, our facts and position remain untouched. It seems that we ought to have something to bear. I value this more every day. If I can be safe from flatterers and inducements to indulgence, I will be thankful for all the rest, and smile at all their scandal, and their great discovery that I am not allwise. It all presents some new matter for contemplation; and if we cannot absolutely love our enemies, at least we may thank them for showing us our faults, which flattering friends hide from us. It seems all kinds of things must happen to us before we can become at all wise. First, we must become disenchanted of many delusions, that we may discover the pure gold through all the alloy which passes with it in the current coin of life. The Idols of the Market are inveterate; but down they must go, if we would be in the least wise: and Edition: current; Page: [53] the process must be healthful when one does not become soured, but feels one’s heart rather expanding and warming than cooling with years; and more thankful for every kindness, and not exacting as formerly. — I have been staying a few days in the country. We went over to a charming place, one day. Such a common! Perfectly beautiful! Acres of cherry-blossom, and splendid furze, like heaps of living gold; and the dark pine-trees rising from the midst! But one can’t describe such things. I walked about there alone while the others were shooting young rooks, — the parson at the head of them. I had a little volume which pleased me much. It was never published. ... ...

... ... There does not seem to be any chance of my having got at Comte’s ideas through any indirect channel; and I know nothing of him directly. Knight’s volume by Lewes is the whole of my acquaintance with him. What I do think is by labour in the fields or wild commons, and on the bench in the Regent’s Park. — That unqualified condemnation of us in regard to Bacon looks rather like the condemnation by prejudiced and ignorant divines which Bacon grieves over. The whole matter is not worth wasting good feelings upon: but it should rather bring them forth, not injured, but strengthened. If, from being ill, we cannot depend on our forces, we can only make the best of it. I will soon tell you what I think I can best do now, in furtherance of our subject. All before us seems clear and sure, and the prospect even full of gaiety, if only I knew that you were quite well again. We must have our sad moments that we may have our wise ones.”

Here is his Good Friday letter, written amidst the ringing of church bells. It begins with a comment on an unhappy aged person, — of whom we had been speaking.

“Age is a sad affair. If men went out of life in the very fulness of their powers, in a flash of lightning, one might imagine them transferred to heaven: but when the fruit fails, and then the flower and leaf, and branch after branch rots by our side while we yet live, we can hardly wish for a better thing than early death. Yes; it is true; — we do good to those to whom we have done good: we insult those we have insulted. Goodness Edition: current; Page: [54] is twice blessed: but hatred cankers the soul; and there is no relief, no unction, but in hating on. But of all the sad effects of age, the saddest is when as in this case a person reverses the noble principle of his life, — like the insane mother who detests the child she has so tenderly nurtured and loved. Every thing is flimsy, wrong, illogical, which does not confirm such an one in his own opinions: as a lady declared last evening who had been accusing me of not giving a fair consideration to the other side of the question, while I was recommending her to read so and so. ‘Well,’ said she, ‘it does not signify talking: in plain truth, I do not care to know about any body’s views or reasons which will not confirm me in my own faith.’ This was a sudden burst of honest pride, and eagerness, in the midst of the confusion, to hold tight where she had got footing. Notions are worth nothing which are uttered in irritation partly, and in ignorance greatly, and in the spirit of old age, — not of Christ or of Paul. If what I have said is wrong in logic or in fact, it is no use abusing us: the thing is to exhibit the error; and I am sure none will be more thankful for the correction than I. F— is the only one who has tried to do this; and I thank him for it, though I think him wholly wrong on matters of fact. — The book is objected to on religious grounds. Now, what is the use of all the millions spent, of all the learning of the colleges, and of all the parsons, — as thick as crows over the land, — if they cannot correct what is ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial?’ No; they feel otherwise than as they assert. They fear that however arrogant or superficial the book may be, there is substance in the midst of it; there is danger to the existing state of things; and they dare not honestly face the facts, and meet the argument which they declare to be too superficial to deceive any one. They dare not honestly and fairly do it. Shame upon the land! With that skulking phantom of a dressed-up faith that dares not face the light, in broad day: with God upon their lips, and preaching Christ crucified, they fear to encounter God’s truth by the way side! Why does Gavazzi waste his breath upon the Pope? Let him face the wide world, and denounce its false faith, and show them how God walks with them in Edition: current; Page: [55] Nature as he did by Adam in Eden, and they hide away in shame, worship the devil, and feed on the apple of sin every day of their lives. Men are subdued by fear. There is no faith in change, in progress, in truth, in virtue, in holiness. It is a terror-stricken age; and men fly to God to save them, and God gives them truth in his own way; and they receive it not. There is every kind of stupid terror got up about the Great Exhibition. F. is in terror about phreno-mesmerism: he would drown himself, — go out of the world if the thing were true. They like ‘Deerbrook’ — yes, as a picture: but the spirit of ‘Deerbrook’ is not in them, or they would love the spirit of the author of ‘Deerbrook.’ Well! it is not so bad as Basil Montagu used to say. ‘My dear Atkinson, they will tear you to pieces.’ It is something then to say what we have said, and remain in a whole skin. ... ... ... The world is ripe if there were but the towering genius that would speak to it. We are all dead asleep. We want rousing from a lethargy, that we may listen to the God of heaven and of earth who speaks to us in our hearts. The word of God is in every man, if he will listen. God is with us in all Nature, if we will but read the written law; written not on tables of stone, but on the wide expanse of nature. Yes, the savage is more right. God is in the clouds, and we hear him in the wind. Yes; and in the curse of ignorance, and the voice of reprobation, there too is God, — warning us of ignorance, — of unbelief of temper, — putting another law in our way, that we may read and interpret the book of fate. O! that some great teacher would arise, and make himself heard from the mountain top! The man whom they crucified on this day gave a Sermon on a mount. It is in every house, in every head; it is known, passage after passage: but in how few has it touched the heart, and opened the understanding! Men are but slowly led by pure virtue or by pure reason. They require eloquence and powerful persuasion; deep, solemn, unceasing persuasion. The bible is a dead letter. Men worship the air and call it God. God is truth, law, morals, noble deeds of heroism, conscience, self-sacrifice, love, freedom and cheerfulness. Men have no God. It is yet to be given them. They have but a log, and are croaking Edition: current; Page: [56] and unsatisfied; and tomorrow they try King Hudson or the devil.”

The looking over these letters has revived my recollection of the really critical time at which they were written, — the trials of which I had forgotten as completely as the fatigues of the outside, and the gloomy horror of the inside of the Pyramid. — I shall say nothing of the counterpart of the experience; of the vast discoveries of sympathy, the new connexions, the pleasant friendships, and the gratitude of disciples which have accrued to us, from that time to the present hour. The act was what I had to give an account of, and not its consequences. The same reasons which have deterred me from exhibiting the praises awarded to other works are operative here. — I will conclude the whole subject with observing that time shows us more and more the need there is of such testimony as any of us can give to the value of philosophy, and of science as its basis. Those who praised us and our book, in print or in conversation, seem to have no more notion than those who condemned us of the infinite importance of philosophy, — not only to intellectual wisdom, but to goodness and happiness; and, again, that, in my comrade’s words, “the only method of arriving at a true philosophy of Mind is by the contemplation of Man as a whole, — as a creature endowed with definite properties, capable of being observed and classified like other phenomena resulting from any other portion of Nature.” The day when we agreed upon bearing our testimony, (in however imperfect a form) to these great truths was a great day for me, in regard both to my social duty and my private relations. Humble as was my share in the book, it served to bring me into a wide new sphere of duty; and, as to my private connexions, it did what I have said before; — it dissolved all false relations, and confirmed all true ones. Its great importance to me may excuse, as well as account for, the length to which this chapter of my life has extended.

Edition: current; Page: [57]

SECTION VII.

It appears, from two or three notices above, that Comte’s philosophy was at this time a matter of interest to me. For many months after, his great work was indeed a means of singular enjoyment to me. After hearing Comte’s name for many years, and having a vague notion of the relation of his philosophy to the intellectual and social needs of the time, I obtained something like a clear preparatory view, at second-hand, from a friend, at whose house in Yorkshire I was staying, before going to Bolton, in 1850. What I learned then and there impelled me to study the great book for myself; and in the spring of 1851, when the “Atkinson Letters” were out, and the History was finished, and I intended to make holiday from the pen for awhile, I got the book, and set to work. I had meantime looked at Lewes’s chapter on Comte in Mr. Knight’s Weekly Volume, and at Littré’s epitome; and I could thus, in a manner, see the end from the beginning of the complete and extended work. This must be my excuse for the early date at which I conceived the scheme of translating the Philosophie Positive.

My course of lectures on English History finished on the first of April: and on the eighth, I sent off the last proof-sheet of my history. On the fourteenth, my nieces left me; and there was an interval before my spring visits which I employed in a close study of the first volume of Comte’s work. On the twenty-fourth, the book arrived from London; and I am amazed, and somewhat ashamed to see by my Diary, that on the twenty-sixth, I began to “dream” of translating it; and on the next night (Sunday the twenty-seventh) sat up late, — not dreaming, but planning it. On the second of May, I was in such enthusiasm that I wrote to one of the best-informed men on this matter in the kingdom, (an old friend) to ask his opinion on my scheme. Edition: current; Page: [58] He emphatically approved my design, — of introducing the work to the notice of a wide portion of the English public who could never read it in the original; but he proposed a different method of doing it. He said that no results could compensate to me for the toil of translating six volumes in a style like Comte’s, and in the form of lectures, whereby much recapitulation was inevitable. He proposed that I should give an abstract of Comte’s philosophy, with illustrations of my own devising, in one volume; or, at most, in two of a moderate size. I was fully disposed to do this; and I immediately began an analysis, which would, I thought, be useful in whatever form I might decide to put forth the substance. I know no greater luxury, after months of writing, than reading, and making an analysis as one goes. This work I pursued while making my spring visits. On the eighth of May, I went for a fortnight to stay with some friends, between whom and myself there was cordial affection, though they were Swedenborgians, of no ordinary degree of possession (for I will not call it fanaticism in people so gentle and kind.) Their curiosity about Comte rather distressed me; and certainly it is not in the power of the most elastic mind to entertain at once Swedenborg and Comte. They soon settled the matter, however. My host kept aloof, — going out to his fishing every morning, while I was at work, and having very different matters to talk about in the evenings. It was his lady who took up the matter; and I was amused to see how. She came to my writing-table, to beg the loan of the first volume, when I was going out for a walk. When her daughter and I returned from our walk, we met her in the wood; and the whole affair was settled. She knew “all about it,” and had decided that Comte knew nothing. I inquired in amazement the grounds of this decision. She had glanced over the first chapter, and could venture to say she now “knew all about it.” There was mere human science, (which, for that matter, Swedenborg had also;) and such science bears no relation to the realities which concern men most. This was all very well: and I was rejoiced that the thing had passed over so easily, though marvelling at the presumption of the judgment in one whom I consider nearly the humblest of women where Edition: current; Page: [59] her own qualities are concerned. A year later, however, she sent me a letter of rebuke about my work, which had less of the modesty, and more of the presumption, than I should have expected. I reminded her of what we had often agreed upon, with remarkable satisfaction, — the superiority of the Swedenborgians to all other religious sects in liberality. Not only does their doctrine in a manner necessitate this liberality, but the temper of its professors responds to the doctrine more faithfully than that of religious professors in general. I was sorry, as I told my friend, to see this liberality fail, on a mere change of the ground, — from that of religious controversy to that of the opposition between science and theology. I claimed my liberty to do the work which I thought best for the truth, for the same reason that I rejoiced in seeing her and her excellent family doing what they thought best for what they regarded as truth. I have had no more censure or remonstrance from any of the family, and much kindness, — the eldest daughter even desiring to come and nurse me, when she heard of my present illness: but I have no doubt that all the heresy I have ever spoken and written is tolerable in their eyes, in comparison with the furtherance given to science by the rendering of Comte’s work into a tongue which the multitude can read; and which they will read, while the young men should be seeing visions and the old men dreaming dreams.

During other visits, and a great press of business about cottage-building, and of writing for “Household Words” and elsewhere, I persevered in my study and analysis, — spending the evenings in collateral reading, — the lives and the history of the works of eminent mathematicians, and other scientific men. This went on till the twenty-sixth of June, when tourists began to fill the place and every body’s time, and I must be off to London and into Norfolk, and leave my house to my tenant for three months. My first visit was to some beloved American friends in London, by whom I was introduced to the Great Exhibition. I attended the last of Mr. Thackeray’s lectures of that season, and paid evening visits, and saw many old friends. But I was now convinced that I had lost my former keen relish for London pleasures. The Edition: current; Page: [60] quiet talks late at night with my hostesses were charming; and there was great pleasure in meeting old acquaintances: but the heat, and the glare, and the noise, and the superficial bustle, so unlike my quiet life of grave pursuit and prevailing solitude at home showed me that my Knoll had in truth spoiled me for every other abode.

The mention of Mr. Thackeray’s name here reminds me that it does not occur in my notes of literary London twenty years ago. At that time I saw him, if I remember right, only once. It was at Mr. Buller’s, at dinner; — at a dinner which was partly ludicrous and partly painful. Mrs. Buller did not excel in tact; and her party was singularly arranged at the dinner table. I was placed at the bottom of the table, at its square end, with an empty chair on the one hand, and Mr. Buller on the other, — he being so excessively deaf that no trumpet was of much use to him. There we sat with our trumpets, — an empty chair on the one hand, and on the other, Mr. J. S. Mill, whose singularly feeble voice cut us off from conversation in that direction. As if to make another pair, Mrs. Buller placed on either side of her a gentleman with a flattened nose, — Mr. Thackeray on her right, and her son Charles on the left. — It was on this day only that I met either Mr. Dickens or Mr. Thackeray during my London life. About Mr. Thackeray I had no clear notion in any way, except that he seemed cynical; and my first real interest in him arose from reading M. A. Titmarsh in Ireland, during my Tynemouth illness. I confess to being unable to read “Vanity Fair,” from the moral disgust it occasions; and this was my immediate association with the writer’s name when I next met him, during the visit to London in 1851. I could not follow his lead into the subject of the Bullers, (then all dead) so strong was my doubt of his real feeling. I was, I fear, rather rough and hard when we talked of “Vanity Fair;” but a sudden and most genuine change of tone, — of voice, face and feeling, — that occurred on my alluding to Dobbin’s admirable turning of the tables on Amelia, won my trust and regard more than any thing he had said yet. “Pendennis” much increased my respect and admiration; and “Esmond” appears to me the book of the century, in Edition: current; Page: [61] its department. I have read it three times; and each time with new wonder at its rich ripe wisdom, and at the singular charm of Esmond’s own character. The power that astonishes me the most in Thackeray is his fertility, shown in the way in which he opens glimpses into a multitudinous world as he proceeds. The chief moral charm is in the paternal vigilance and sympathy which constitute the spirit of his narration. The first drawback in his books, as in his manners, is the impression conveyed by both that he never can have known a good and sensible woman. I do not believe he has any idea whatever of such women as abound among the matronage of England, — women of excellent capacity and cultivation applied to the natural business of life. It is perhaps not changing the subject to say next what the other drawback is. Mr. Thackeray has said more, and more effectually, about snobs and snobbism than any other man; and yet his frittered life, and his obedience to the call of the great are the observed of all observers. As it is so, so it must be; but “O! the pity of it! the pity of it!” Great and unusual allowance is to be made in his case, I am aware; but this does not lessen the concern occasioned by the spectacle of one after another of the aristocracy of nature making the ko-tow to the aristocracy of accident. If society does not owe all it would be thankful to owe to Mr. Thackeray, yet it is under deep and large obligations to him; and if he should even yet be seen to be as wise and happy in his life and temper as he might be any day, he may do much that would far transcend all his great and rising achievements thus far; and I who shall not see it would fain persuade myself that I foresee it. He who stands before the world as a sage de jure must surely have impulses to be a sage de facto.

Of Mr. Dickens I have seen but little in face-to-face intercourse; but I am glad to have enjoyed that little. There may be, and I believe there are, many who go beyond me in admiration of his works, — high and strong as is my delight in some of them. Many can more keenly enjoy his peculiar humour, — delightful as it is to me; and few seem to miss as I do the pure plain daylight in the atmosphere of his scenery. So many fine painters have been mannerists as to atmosphere and colour that Edition: current; Page: [62] it may be unreasonable to object to one more: but the very excellence and diversity of Mr. Dickens’s powers makes one long that they should exercise their full force under the broad open sky of nature, instead of in the most brilliant palace of art. While he tells us a world of things that are natural and even true, his personages are generally, as I suppose is undeniable, profoundly unreal. It is a curious speculation what effect his universally read works will have on the foreign conception of English character. Washington Irving came here expecting to find the English life of Queen Anne’s days, as his “Sketch-book” shows: and very unlike his preconception was the England he found. And thus it must be with Germans, Americans and French who take Mr. Dickens’s books to be pictures of our real life. — Another vexation is his vigorous erroneousness about matters of science, as shown in “Oliver Twist” about the new poor-law (which he confounds with the abrogated old one) and in “Hard Times,” about the controversies of employers. Nobody wants to make Mr. Dickens a Political Economist; but there are many who wish that he would abstain from a set of difficult subjects, on which all true sentiment must be underlain by a sort of knowledge which he has not. The more fervent and inexhaustible his kindliness, (and it is fervent and inexhaustible,) the more important it is that it should be well-informed and well-directed, that no errors of his may mislead his readers on the one hand, nor lessen his own genial influence on the other.

The finest thing in Mr. Dickens’s case is that he, from time to time, proves himself capable of progress, — however vast his preceding achievements had been. In humour, he will hardly surpass “Pickwick,” simply because “Pickwick” is scarcely surpassable in humour: but in several crises, as it were, of his fame, when every body was disappointed, and his faults seemed running his graces down, there has appeared something so prodigiously fine as to make us all joyfully exclaim that Dickens can never permanently fail. It was so with “Copperfield:” and I hope it may be so again with the new work which my survivors will soon have in their hands. — Meantime, every Edition: current; Page: [63] indication seems to show that the man himself is rising. He is a virtuous and happy family man, in the first place. His glowing and generous heart is kept steady by the best domestic influences: and we may fairly hope now that he will fulfil the natural purpose of his life, and stand by literature to the last; and again, that he will be an honour to the high vocation by prudence as well as by power: so that the graces of genius and generosity may rest on the finest basis of probity and prudence; and that his old age may be honoured as heartily as his youth and manhood have been admired. — Nothing could exceed the frank kindness and consideration shown by him in the correspondence and personal intercourse we have had; and my cordial regard has grown with my knowledge of him.

When I left London, it was for the singular contrast of spending the next night in a workhouse. Two of my servants (brother and sister) had been sent to me from Norfolk, — the maid by my own family, and the man by the excellent master of the Union Workhouse near Harling. The girl (now married to the master of the Ragged School at Bristol) had a strong inclination to school-keeping, and had pursued it in this workhouse and elsewhere with such assiduity as to lose her health. During the five years that she lived with me (beloved like a daughter by me, and honoured by all who knew her) she in a great measure recovered her health; and when she married from my house, at Christmas 1852, she went to resume her vocation, in which she is now leading the most useful life conceivable. We went to Harling, she and I, in this July 1851, to see her old friends, and the old school, and her old parents, and the success of the agricultural part of the management of this Guiltcross Union. Thus it was that I went from London to sleep in a workhouse. Very comfortable and agreeable I found it.

The next weeks were spent in the neighbourhood of Norwich, and at Cromer, where I was joined by my younger sister and her children. It was at Cromer that a strange impulse on my part, — an impulse of yielding chiefly, — caused me to go into an enterprise which had no result. It put me, for a time, in the difficulty of having too many irons in the fire; but that was Edition: current; Page: [64] not my fault; for I could have no conception of the news which was awaiting me in London, on my return. While at Cromer, I was justified in feeling that I might take as much time as I pleased about Comte. It depended wholly on myself: but before I got home, the case was changed, as I shall presently have to tell. The intervening anecdote has been hitherto a profound secret, by my own desire; — perhaps the only secret of my own that I ever had: and this was part of the amusement. One reason why I tell it now is because it affords a confirmation out of my own experience of what many of my friends have wondered to hear me say; — that one cannot write fiction, after having written (con amore, at least) history and philosophy.

Ever since the “Deerbrook” days, my friends had urged me to write more novels. When “Currer Bell” was staying with me, the winter before the time I have arrived at, she had spoken earnestly to me about it, and, as it appeared to us both, wholly in vain. While at Cromer, however, I read “Pendennis” with such intense enjoyment, and it seemed so much the richer from its contrast with “the Ogilvies,” and some other metaphysical, sentimental novels that had fallen in my way, that the notion of trying my hand once more at a novel seized upon me; and I wrote to Charlotte Brontë, to consult her as to the possibility of doing it secretly, and getting it out anonymously, and quite unsuspected, — as a curious experiment. She wrote joyously about it, and at once engaged her publisher’s* interest in the scheme. She showed the most earnest friendliness throughout. She sent me a packet of envelopes directed by herself to her publisher; and she allowed his letters to me to come through her hands. When I reached home, on the first of October, I was somewhat scared at what I had undertaken, — the case of Comte having so changed, as I will tell; and the matter was not made easier by my inability to tell Mr. Chapman, who was to publish Comte, or Mr. Atkinson, who was in almost daily correspondence with me, what was delaying the progress of the philosophical half of my work. The difficulty was at an end before Christmas by the scheme of the novel being at an end. Edition: current; Page: [65] It was on an odd plan. It was no oddness in the plan, however, which discouraged me; but I doubted from the first whether I could ever again succeed in fiction, after having completely passed out of the state of mind in which I used to write it. In old days, I had caught myself quoting the sayings of my own personages, so strong was the impression of reality on myself; and I let my pen go as it would when the general plan of the story, and the principal scenes, were once laid down. Now I read and pondered, and arranged, and sifted, and satisfied myself, before I entered upon any chapter, or while doing it: — carrying, in fact, the methods and habits of historical composition into tale-telling. I had many misgivings about this; but, on the whole, I thought that the original principle of the work, and some particular scenes, would carry it through. At Christmas, I sent the first volume to Charlotte Brontë, who read it before forwarding it to the publisher. She wrote gloriously about it: and three days after came a pathetic letter from the publisher. He dared not publish it, on account of some favourable representations and auguries on behalf of the Catholics. That was a matter on which C. Brontë and I had perpetual controversy, — her opinion being one in which I could by no means agree; and thus expressed, after I had claimed credit for the Catholics, as for every body else, as far as their good works extended: — “Their good deeds I don’t dispute; but I regard them as the hectic bloom on the cheek of disease. I believe the Catholics, in short, to be always doing evil that good may come, or doing good that evil may come.” Yet did my representation of the Catholics in no way shake her faith in the success of my novel; and her opinion, reaching the publisher the day after he had written his apprehensions to me, aggravated, as he said, his embarrassment and distress. He implored me to lay aside this scheme, and send him a novel “like Deerbrook.” That was no more in my power now than to go back to thirty years of age. C. Brontë entreated me merely to lay aside my novel, if I would not finish it on speculation, saying that some things in it were equal to, or beyond, any thing I had ever written. I did intend at first to finish it: but other works pressed; the stimulus, and Edition: current; Page: [66] even the conception, passed away; and I burned the M.S. and memoranda, a few months since, not wishing to leave to my survivors the trouble of an unfinished M.S. which they could make no use of, and might scruple to burn. I told Mr. Atkinson and my Executor the facts when the scheme was at an end; and I hereby record the only failure of the sort I had experienced since the misleading I underwent about the Life of Howard, at the outset of my career. I may add that the publisher behaved as well as possible, under the circumstances. He showed me civility in various ways, was at all times ready to negotiate for another novel “like Deerbrook,” and purchased the copy-right of “Deerbrook” itself, in order to bring it out in a cheap series, with the novels of Mr. Thackeray and “Currer Bell.”

While I write, I recal, with some wonder, the fact that I had another literary engagement on my hands, at that very time. On recurring to my Diary, I find it was even so; and I wonder how I could justify it to myself. It was at Cromer, as I have said, that this scheme of the novel was framed, after I had consulted Mr. Chapman in London about publishing Comte’s “Positive Philosophy.” We had a clear understanding that it was to be done; but I was then wholly free in regard to time. On my return, I spent a week in London (then “empty,” according to the London use of the word) with a cousin, in a lodging, for the sole object of seeing the Exhibition in our own way, and in peace and quiet. On the last day, Mr. Chapman, who had been trying to track me, overtook me with a wonderful piece of news. Mr. Lombe, a Norfolk country gentleman, and late High Sheriff of the county, had for many years been a disciple of Comte, and had earnestly wished to translate the “Positive Philosophy,” but had been prevented by ill health. He was a perfect stranger to me, and residing in Florence; but, hearing from Mr. Chapman what I was doing, he sent me, by him, a draft on his bankers for £500. His obvious intention was to give me the money, in recompense for the work; but I preferred paying the expenses of paper, print and publication out of it, taking £200 for my own remuneration. To finish now about the money part of the affair, — I took advice how to act, in regard to so important a Edition: current; Page: [67] trust; and, in accordance with that advice, I immediately invested the whole amount in the Three per Cents., and, on the death of Mr. Lombe, in the next winter, I added a codicil to my will, appointing two trustees to the charge and application of the money, in case of my dying before the work was completed and published. Just when Mr. Lombe died, I was proposing to send him a portion of my M.S., to see whether my method and execution satisfied him. When the whole sum was distributed, and the work out, I submitted the accounts and vouchers to two intimate friends of Mr. Lombe, both men of business, and obtained their written assurance of their entire approbation of what I had done, — with the one exception that they thought I ought to have taken more of the money myself. As to the profits of the sale, — it seemed to me fair that M. Comte should have a portion; and also Mr. Chapman, through whom Mr. Lombe had become interested in the scheme. The profits have therefore been, up to this time, and will be henceforward, divided among the three, — M. Comte, Mr. Chapman and myself or my legatees. — My engagement to Mr. Chapman was to deliver the M.S. entire within two years of my return home; that is, in October, 1853; and this was precisely the date at which I delivered the last sheets. The printing had been proceeding during the summer; so that the work appeared at the beginning of November, 1853.

The additional work to which I have referred, as upon my hands at the same time, was this. I returned home, in the autumn of 1851, by Birmingham, where I spent a month at my brother Robert’s house, at Edgbaston. The proprietors of “Household Words” had all this time been urgent with me to write stories for them. I found myself really unable to do this with any satisfaction, — not only because of the absurdity of sending fiction to Mr. Dickens, but because I felt more and more that I had passed out of that stage of mind in which I could write stories well. It struck me that a full, but picturesque account of manufactures and other productive processes might be valuable, both for instruction and entertainment: and I proposed to try my hand on two or three of the Birmingham manufacture, Edition: current; Page: [68] under the advantage of my brother’s introduction, in the first place, and, in the next, of his correction, if I should fall into any technical mistakes. The proposal was eagerly accepted; and I then wrote the papers on Electro-plating, Papier-mâché and the Nail and Screw manufacture, — which stand in “Household Words” under the titles of “Magic Troughs at Birmingham,” “Flower-shows in a Birmingham Hot-house,” and “Wonders of Nails and Screws.” These succeeded so well that I went on at home with such materials as the neighbourhood afforded, — the next papers which appeared being “Kendal Weavers,” and “The Bobbin-mill at Ambleside.” Moreover, it was presently settled that I should spend a month at Birmingham after Christmas, to do another batch. Thereby hangs a pretty little tale: — at least, so it appears to me. My brother and sister having taken for granted that I should go to their house, I begged them not to take it amiss if I preferred going to a lodging, with my maid. My reasons were that I was going for business purposes, which would occupy all the daylight hours at that time of year; that I must therefore dine late; that I should be going about among the manufactories, with my maid to hear for me; and that I really thought my family and I should enjoy most of one another’s society by my lodging near enough to go to tea with them every evening, and spend the Sundays at their house. They appeared to acquiesce at once, — saying, however, that I ought to be very near, on account of the highway robberies, with violence, which were at that time taking place at Edgbaston almost every evening. My sister wrote me an account of the rooms she had secured. I was rather struck by her recommendations about leaving terms and arrangements to my landlady, and by an odd bit of deprecation about not expecting the charms of my beautiful home. The next letter from one of my nephews at first dispersed a nascent doubt whether they were not intending to take me in, — in both senses. He wrote, “your rooms are in one of those houses near Mrs. F—’s, in the Highfield Road; so that you will not have so far to go to our tea-table but that you will be very safe from thieves. Your landlady is a very trustworthy person. She lived with us when we lived in the Bristol road; Edition: current; Page: [69] and she left that place, not for any fault, but for a better situation.” On a second reading, it struck me that this was all true of his mother, and of their house; and I was not therefore wholly surprised when the nephew who met us at the station directed the car to my brother’s house. I was surprised, however, when I saw what preparation they had made for me and my work. They had taken down a bed in one of the prettiest rooms in the house, and had put in a writing-table, a sofa, a lamp, and all possible conveniences. As one of my nephews had to dine late, there was no difficulty about that; and my sister and nieces went every where with me, one at a time, to listen with and for me, make notes, and render all easy. It really was charming. I then wrote ten more papers, as follows:

“The Miller and his Men,” — The Birmingham Flour-mills.

“Account of some treatment of Gold and Gems,” Gold refining, Gold Chains and Jewellery.

“Rainbow-Making,” — Coventry Ribbons.

“Needles,” — the Redditch Manufacture.

“Time and the Hour,” — Coventry Watches.

“Guns and Pistols,” — Birmingham Gun-manufacture.

“Birmingham Glass-works,” — Messrs. Chances and Messrs. Oslers.

“What there is in a Button,” — Birmingham buttons.

“Tubal Cain,” — Brass-founding.

“New School for Wives,” — Evening School for Women.

Invitations were sent me, when the authorship of these papers got abroad, from various seats of manufacture; but the editors and I agreed that our chief textile manufactures were already familiar to every body’s knowledge; and I therefore omitted all of that kind except Kendal carpets, Coventry ribbons, and Paisley shawls. This last was done the next summer, when I was in Scotland, at the same time with Paper-hangings (“Household Scenery”) and “News of an old Place,” — the Lead works at “Leadhills.” From Scotland, my niece and I passed into Ireland, as I shall have to tell; and there I wrote, at the Giant’s Causeway, “the Life of a Salmon;” and afterwards “Peatal aggression,” — the Peat Works near Athy: the “English Passport Edition: current; Page: [70] system,” — Railway ticket manufacture; “Triumphant Carriages,” — Messrs. Hutton’s Coach factory at Dublin: “Hope with a Slate Anchor,” — the slate quarries in Valentia: “Butter,” “the Irish Union,” a workhouse picture; and “Famine-time,” a true picture of one of the worst districts, at the worst time of the visitation. I have done only two more of the same character, — of the productive processes; — Cheshire Cheese,” and “How to get Paper,” — both last year, (1854.) — It will be seen that I need have entertained no apprehension of enforced idleness in consequence of the publication of the “Atkinson Letters.” It appears that, at the close of the same year, I was over-burdened with work; and I will add, for truth’s sake, that I was uneasy, and dissatisfied with myself for having undertaken so much. The last entry in my Diary (a mere note-book) for 1851 is on the thirtieth of December. “As I shall be travelling to Birmingham tomorrow, I here close my journal of this remarkable year; — an improving and happy one, little as the large world would believe it. I have found it full of blessings.”

All this time, my study of Comte was going on; and I continued the analysis for some weeks; but at length I found that I had attained sufficient insight and familiarity to render that work unnecessary. The first day on which I actually embodied my study of it in writing, — the first day on which I wrote what was to stand, — was June 1st, 1852: and a month before that, the greatest literary engagement of my life had been entered upon, of which I shall have to speak presently. After my return from Birmingham, I had had to give my annual course of lectures to the Mechanics; and my subject, the History of the United States, from Columbus to Washington, required some study. Before I left home for the tourist season, I had got into the thick of the mathematical portion of Comte; and there I had to stop till my return in the middle of October. I had then to write an article on Ireland for the “Westminster Review,” and other matters; so that it was the first of December before I opened Comte again, and Christmas day when I finished the first of the six volumes. After that, the work went on swimmingly. All the rest was easy. I finished Astronomy in the Edition: current; Page: [71] middle of January, and Biology on the twenty-third of April; so that I had five months for the three last volumes, which were by far the easiest to do, though half as long again as the first three. I had a perpetual succession of guests, from April till the end of September; but I did not stop work for them; nor did I choose to leave home till I had fulfilled my engagement. It was on the eighth of October that I put the finishing stroke to the version: on the ninth I wrote the Preface; and on the tenth, I had the pleasure of carrying the last packet of M.S. to the post. Some cousins who were staying with me at the time went on an excursion for the day; and when they returned, they sympathised with me on the close of so long and so arduous a task. I was much exhausted, — after a summer of abundant authorship in other ways, as well as of social engagement from the number and variety of guests, and the absence of my usual autumn retirement to the sea, or some other quiet place: but the gain was well worth the toil. I find in my diary some very strong expressions of rapture about my task; and I often said, to myself and others, in the course of it, that I should never enjoy anything so much again. And I believe that if I were now to live and work for twenty years, I could never enjoy any thing more. The vast range of knowledge, through which one is carried so easily, is a prodigious treat; and yet more, the clear enunciation, and incessant application of principles. The weak part of the book, — the sacrifices made to system and order, — happens just to fall in with my weak tendency in that direction; so that it required some warning from others, and more from within, to prevent my being carried away altogether by my author. After all deductions made, on the score of his faults as a teacher, and my weakness as a learner, the relation was a blessed one. I became “strengthened, stablished, settled” on many a great point; I learned much that I should never otherwise have known, and revived a great deal of early knowledge which I might never otherwise have recalled: and the subdued enthusiasm of my author, his philosophical sensibility, and honest earnestness, and evident enjoyment of his own wide range of views and deep human sympathy, kept the mind of his pupil in Edition: current; Page: [72] a perpetual and delightful glow. Many a passage of my version did I write with tears falling into my lap; and many a time did I feel almost stifled for want of the presence of some genial disciple of my instructor, to whom I might speak of his achievement, with some chance of being understood.

As for my method of working at my version, about which I have often been questioned, — it was simple enough. — I studied as I went along, (in the evenings, for the most part) the subjects of my author, reviving all I had ever known about them, and learning much more. Being thus secure of what I was about, I simply set up the volume on a little desk before me, glanced over a page or a paragraph, and set down its meaning in the briefest and simplest way I could. Thus, my work was not mere translation: it involved quite a different kind of intellectual exercise; and, much as I enjoy translating, — pleasant as is the finding of equivalent terms, and arranging them harmoniously, — it is pleasanter still to combine with this the work of condensation. To me, in truth, nothing was ever pleasanter: and I had no sympathy with the friends who hoped, as I proceeded, that I should not again occupy myself with translation. I told them that it was like going to school again while doing the useful work of mature age; and that I should relish nothing better than to go on with it as long as I lived. As for the average amount of my daily work, (four or five days in the week) I was discontented if it was under twenty pages of my author, and satisfied if it was any where from twenty-five to thirty. The largest day’s work, in the whole course of the business, was forty-eight pages: but that was when I had breakfasted before seven, to dismiss a guest; and on a Saturday, when there was no post to London, and I had set my mind on finishing a volume. I worked nearly all day, and finished after midnight. I find fifty pages set down on another occasion; but in that case there was an omission of a recapitulatory portion. In saying what was the daily amount done, I ought to observe that it was really done. I finished as I went along; and I looked at my work no more till it came in the shape of proof-sheets. — I have stated in my Preface to the work that, on my expressing my intention to obtain Edition: current; Page: [73] a revision of the three first Books, (Mathematics, Astronomy and Physics) by a scientific man, Professor Nichol kindly offered his services. His revision of that portion (in which he found, he said, no mistakes) and the few notes and observations which he inserted, made me easy about the correctness of what I was putting forth; and I did not run the risk of spoiling the freshness of what I had done so enjoyably by any retouching. It came out precisely as I wrote it, day by day.

One part of my enjoyment was from the hope that the appearance of a readable English version would put a stop to the mischievous, though ludicrous mistakes about Comte’s doctrine and work put forth by men who assumed, and might be expected, to know better. The mistakes were repeated, it is true; but they were more harmless, after my version had appeared. When I was studying the work, I was really astonished to see a very able review article open with a false statement about Comte, not only altogether gratuitous, but so ignorant that it is a curious thing that it could have passed the press. It alleged that a man called Auguste Comte, who assumed in 1822 to be a social prophet, had declared the belief and interest in theology to be at an end; whereas, here was the whole kingdom, thirty years later, convulsed with theological passion, about Papal aggression and the Gorham controversy. Now, this was a treble blunder. In the first place, Comte has never said that theology and the popular interest in it are over. In the next, he has written largely on the social turmoil which this generation is in, and generations to come will be in, from the collision between the theological passion of one social period, and the metaphysical rage of another, with the advance of the positive philosophy which is to supersede them both. If there is one thing rather than another reiterated to weariness in Comte’s work, it is the state of turmoil, and its causes, of which the Gorham controversy was an admirable exemplification. In the third place, Comte’s doctrine is that theology can be extinguished only by a true Science of Human Nature; that this science is as yet barely initiated; and that therefore theology is very far from being yet popularly superseded.

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At a later time, in October, 1851, when an eminent philosopher from Scotland was my guest for a few days, I invited to meet him at dinner a friend of his, who was in the neighbourhood, and that friend’s lady, and another guest or two. I was before alightly acquainted with this couple, and knew that the gentleman was highly thought of, by himself and others (by the late Dr. Arnold, among the rest) as a scholar and writer. When he was taking me in to dinner, he asked me whether I had heard that M. Comte was insane. I replied that it was not true, — M. Comte being perfectly well the week before; and I told him that I was engaged on his work. My guest replied that he had heard the whole story, — about Mr. Lombe’s gift and all, — from another gentleman, then present. He asked me an insulting question or two about the work, and made objections to my handling it, which I answered shortly, (the servants being present) and put down my trumpet, to help the fish. While I was so engaged, he asked questions which I could not hear, across me, of my philosopher guest; and then, with triumph and glee, reported to me my friend’s replies, as if they were spontaneous remarks, and with gross exaggeration. During the whole of dinner, and in the presence of my servants, he continued his aspersions of Comte, and his insults to me as his translator; so that, as it came to my knowledge long afterwards, my other guest wondered that I put up with it, and did not request him to leave the house. I saw, however, that he knew nothing of what he was talking about; and I then merely asked him if he had read the portion of the work that he was abusing. Being pressed, he reluctantly answered — No; but he knew all about it. When the dessert was on the table, and the servants were gone, he still continuing his criticisms, I looked him full in the face, and again inquired if he had read that portion of the Philosophie Positive: — “N—n—o;” but he knew all about it. I said I doubted it; and asked if he had read the book at all. “N—n—o:” but he knew all about it. “Come,” said I: “tell me, — have you ever seen the book?” — “No; I can’t say I have;” he replied; “but I know all about it.” “Now,” said I, “look at the book-shelves behind you. You see those six volumes in green paper? Edition: current; Page: [75] Now you can say that you have seen the book.” I need not say that this was the last invitation that this gentleman would ever have from me.

Again, — a lady, younger than myself, who shrinks from the uncomfortable notion that there is any subject which she is not qualified to lay down the law upon, folded her hands on her knees, and began in an orderly way to reprehend me for translating a book which had such shocking things in it as Comte’s work. I made the usual inquiry, — whether she had read it. She could not say she had; but she too “knew all about it,” from a very clever man; a very clever man, who was a great admirer of Comte, and on my “side.” She was sorry I could introduce into England the work of a man who said in it that he could have made a better solar system than the real one; — who declared that he would have made it always moonshine at night. I laughed, and told her she was the victim of her clever friend’s moonshine. She ended, however, with a firm faith in her clever friend, in preference to reading the book for herself. She will go on to the end of her days, no doubt, regarding the “Positive Philosophy” as a recipe for making permanent moonshine, in opposition to the nineteenth Psalm.

Once more, (and only once, though I might fill many pages with anecdotes of the blunders about Comte made by critics who assume to understand their subject:) — a professor of Mental Philosophy has, even since the publication of my version, asserted, both in print, and repeatedly in his lectures in London, that Positive philosophers declare that “we can know nothing but phenomena:” and the lecturer fancies that he has confuted the doctrine by saying that the knowledge of phenomena would occupy Man’s observing faculties only, and leave the reasoning and other faculties without exercise. In this case, the lecturer has taken half Comte’s assertion, and dropped the other half, — “and their laws.” This restoration, of course, overthrows the lecturer’s argument, even if it were not otherwise assailable. It is true that Mr. Atkinson and I, and many others, have made the assertion as the lecturer gives it; — that “we can know nothing but phenomena,” — the laws being themselves phenomena: Edition: current; Page: [76] but in that view, as in the case of the restoration of Comte’s text, the lecturer’s argument about the partial use of the human faculties is stultified. Some of his pupils should have asked him what we can know but phenomena. The onus of showing that certainly rests with him. Such are, at present, the opponents of Comte among us, while his work is heartily and profitably studied by wiser men, who choose to read and think and understand before they scoff and upbraid.

A letter of Mr. Atkinson’s in my possession seems to me to give so distinct an account of what Man “can know,” and of the true way of obtaining the knowledge, that I am tempted to insert a part of it here as settling the question with our incompetent critics, as to what we declare that we can and cannot know.

“Man cannot know more than has been observed of the order of Nature, — he himself being a part of that nature, and, like all other bodies in nature, exhibiting clear individual effects according to particular laws. The infinite character and subtlety of Nature are beyond his power of comprehension; for the mind of Man is no more than (as it were) a conscious mirror, possessing a certain extent of interreflexion. In a rude state, as before it has become reduced to a proper focus, and cleansed and purified by knowledge, it is subject to all manner of spectral illusions, presumptuous and vain conceits, which may be well termed a kind of normal or infantine madness; a kind of disease like the small-pox or the measles; conditions to which all children are subject: and it is well if the child can be helped through these strange malignant conditions in early youth, and be then and there cleansed from them for ever.

“If we study the formation of the globe, and the history of nations or of individuals, or glance at the progress of knowledge in the human mind, we shall perceive that difficulties have been overcome, and advances achieved in the early stages through violent means; that that which we call evil has always in effect been working for the general good; and that, in the very nature of things, that good could not have come about by any other means: and thus, whatever is is good, in its place and season. Concluding thus, I think we may henceforth dispense with that Edition: current; Page: [77] very popular gentleman in black, the Devil. Indeed, once for all, we may sign ourselves Naturalists, as having no knowledge, or having no means of knowing any thing, beyond Nature. To advance by the acquiring of knowledge and by reason is the high privilege and prerogative of Man: for, as glorious as it is to possess a just, candid, and truth-loving nature, essential as it is that we know what is true, — yet must we be content that in the first instance, and for some short space, the progress should be slow and devious; for the errors and imperfections of the mind itself prevent men from attaining that knowledge which is almost essential to the cure of those very errors, imperfections, and impediments. Thus, mankind have had to rely upon a genius springing up here and there, — great men who have had the strength to overleap the difficulties, and the sense to see what was before them; and the honesty to declare what they have seen.

“The power of knowledge is in the knowledge of causes; that is, of the material conditions and circumstances under which any given effect takes place. These conditions we have termed Second Causes: but of the primitive matter which is sui generis we know nothing: for knowledge is limited by the senses. The knowledge of a thing includes a sense of its material cause or conditions, — its relative or distinguishing qualities, — the laws of form and quantity implicated in the case, and the laws of action in sequence and duration. — The higher laws are discovered in the analogy of knowledge: but of the primitive or fundamental cause or matter, — that “cause of causes itself without a cause,” — we know and can know absolutely nothing. We judge it to be something positive: to so much the nature of the mind compels assent: but we do not know what this positive something is in itself, in its absolute and real being and presence. We must rest content to take it as we find it, and suppose it inherently capable of performing or flowing into all those effects exhibited throughout nature. We only recognise a primitive matter as a required cause and necessary existence implied in the sensational phenomena which appear to include it in their embraces. But the existence of matter cannot be proved; nor can we form any conception of its real nature, because we can Edition: current; Page: [78] only divine by similitudes; and our similitudes cannot press beyond sensational phenomena and the simple inference. ‘So that all the specious meditations, speculations, and theories of mankind (in regard to the nature of nature) are but a kind of insanity.’ ‘But those who resolve not to conjecture and divine, but to discover and know; not to invent buffooneries and fables about worlds, but to inspect, and, as it were, dissect the nature of this real world, must derive all from things themselves: nor can any substitution or compensation of wit, meditation or argument (were the whole wit of all combined in one) supply the place of this labour, investigation, and personal examination of the world: our method then must necessarily be pursued, or the whole for ever abandoned.’

“The intellect, in a general sense, is simply an observing faculty. The highest efforts of reason and of imagination are but an extension of observation. A law is but the observed form of a fact; and in truth, the entire conscious mind may be termed a faculty of observation. To deny this is only to make a quibble about distinctions not really essential. The most important fact which the experienced mind observes is the fixed order in nature: and the trained philosopher instinctively concludes, and I may say perceives, the necessity of this order, just as he acknowledges the existence of objects in their objective or material appearance: (and this in spite of all that Bishop Berkeley and others have said.) The human mind by the constitution of its nature recognises the necessity of a determinate order in nature, — dependence in causes, and form or law in effects: and on this faith we build all our confidence that similar results will always flow, as a necessary consequence, from similar causes. In this fact we have the reason of reason, and the power of knowledge over nature, applying the principles of nature by art to the wants of Man. The instinct or sense of Man acknowledges a fundamental cause in the primitive matter, and the necessity of a particular form and order in objects and their effects: and that it is absolutely impossible that things should be different from what they are found to be. Now, until a man clears his mind, and abstracts it from all fanciful causes, to rest upon the true Edition: current; Page: [79] and fundamental cause in the primitive matter, perceiving at the same time that this cause must be positive, and capable of producing all the effects and variety of nature, and in a form and order absolutely fixed in ‘an adamantine chain of necessity;’ — until, I say, a man is fully and deeply impressed with this law of laws, this form of forms, evolved from the inherent nature of the ultimate fact and cause (this primitive matter and cause being fundamental, neither depending upon nor requiring any other cause) he is not a philosopher, but a dreamer of dreams, a poor wanderer on a false scent, seeking for a cause out of nature, and in a magnified shadow of himself. ‘If,’ says Bacon,* ‘any man shall think, by view and inquiry into these sensible and material things, to attain to any light for the revealing of the nature or will of God, he shall dangerously abuse himself.’ — ‘And this appeareth sufficiently in that there is no proceeding in invention of knowledge but by similitude; and God is only self-like, having nothing in common with any creature, otherwise than as in shadow and trope.’† These remarks of Bacon in regard to the ‘invention’ of a cause out of nature apply equally to the ‘invention’ of the nature of the cause in nature: for all the knowledge we can have of the primitive matter is by way of negatives and exclusions.

“I hold then with Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others that matter is eternal, possessing an active principle, and being the source of all objects and their effects: for you may as well suppose time and space to have a beginning, and to have been created, as that matter should have been brought out of nothing, and have had a beginning. The active principle and the properties of matter are essential to our very conception of matter: and the necessary form of the effects we term Laws: — laws, not to be considered in a political sense, as rules laid down by a ruler, and capable of alteration and change; but the rule of rules; — the essential and necessary form and life and mind, so to speak, of what is in fact not a ruling power at all, but simply the principle or Edition: current; Page: [80] form of the result, — just as grammar exhibits the form of language.

“The belief in the freedom of the will, or that any thing is free in any other way than as being unimpeded and at liberty to move according as it is impelled by that which determines its motion or choice, is absolutely nonsense: and the doctrine of chance is as absurd as would be the belief that Nature arose from a rude mob of lawless atoms, arranging themselves by chance; a notion which is clearly nonsense, — a weak and unmitigated atheism, to escape from which men impose upon themselves a despotism in the shape of a King Log or a King Stork, as the case may be. That which they suppose to be divine and most holy is but a presumptuous, shallow, and ridiculous assumption. It is a folly built upon a shifting sand-bank, which the tide will presently carry away, exhibiting the true stronghold of the understanding built upon the solid granite rock of Nature; — that Nature which is no despotism, but a pure and free republic, and a law unto itself, — an eternal, unalterable law unto itself: for two and two will never become five; nor will the three angles of a triangle ever be less than two right angles; nor will the great law of gravity be changed nor the Atomic rule in chemical effects; nor the material conditions essential to thought and feeling be reversed. The world may come to an end, — become worn out, and dissolve away, or explode; but the nature of the particles of matter cannot change: the principles of truth will hold the same, and a new world will rise out of the dust.

“With regard to the origin of the mind itself, — it is clearly a consequence or result of the body evolved under particular laws: — as much so as a flower is a consequence of the growth of a tree, — instinct of the lower animal body, — light of a tallow candle. The light and heat of a candle may set light to other candles, or react upon its own body, as mental conditions may, when they cause the heart to beat, and the face to flush, and tears to flow, and the whole frame to be convulsed by laughter. So may the bile, or any other secretion, react on the body: but not the less is the mind the effect and consequent of Edition: current; Page: [81] the body, dependent on the condition of the body, and the proper supply of air and food. To suppose otherwise is to give up all hope and all philosophy, and to desert common sense and universal experience. The mind proper is simply the conscious phenomenon which is not a power at all, but the representative or expression of an unconscious power and condition to which it is a concomitant. Strictly speaking, there are but two conditions in nature; matter the physique, and the conscious mind, or the metaphysique, — the positive and the negative. The conscious mind is purely phenomenal: it is not therefore the mind proper which acts upon the body, but that force which underlies the mind, of which the mind is simply the result, expression or exponent. The mind’s unconscious working power or sphere is evident in almost every act of the body, as well as in almost every fact of the mind. It may be studied in the higher phenomena of clairvoyance and prophecy, — higher, only as an extending of experience by another and a clearer sense. We spring up from the earth like a flower. We live, love, and look abroad on the wide expanse of heaven, wondering at the night which lies behind, and at the dim shadows and flickering lights which coming events cast before them: and then we expire, and give place, as others have given place to us. We have but a glance at existence; yet the laws we discover are eternal truths. Knowledge is not infinite. A few simple principles or elements are fundamental to the whole; as a few simple primitive sounds form into glorious music, and all the languages which exist: and therefore knowledge is not infinite, and progress has its limit. ... ... ... ... Still, ‘the mighty ocean of truth lies before us,’ and its advance is irresistible; and it will be well to remember King Canute, and take the hint in time; — to look abroad upon the expanse, and up to the multitude of stars; and to listen to the deep-speaking truths which are now making themselves heard in society; and not to seek to resist what is inevitable. That the new day will be bright and glorious when Man will know his own power and nature, and rise into his new dignity as a rational human being, is enough for us now to prophecy.”

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SECTION VIII.

I have referred, some pages back, to a great opening for work, of a delightful kind, which offered while I was busy about Comte. As I have explained, the whole version, except half of Comte’s first volume (that is, about a sixteenth part) was done between Christmas 1852 and the following October: and it remains to be told what else I had to do while engaged on that version. In April 1852, I received a letter from a literary friend in London, asking me, by desire of the Editor of “Daily News,” whether I would “send him a ‘leader’ occasionally.” I did not know who this editor was; had hardly seen a number of the paper, and had not the remotest idea whether I could write ‘leaders:’ and this was my reply. I saw that this might be an opening to greater usefulness than was likely to be equalled by anything else that I could undertake; so I was not sorry to be urgently invited to try. The editor, my now deeply-mourned friend, Mr. Frederick Knight Hunt, and I wrote frank and copious letters, to see how far our views and principles agreed; and his letters gave me the impression which all my subsequent knowledge of him confirmed; that he was one of the most upright and rational of men, and a thorough gentleman in mind and manners. I sent him two or three articles, the second of which (I think it was) made such a noise that I found that there would be no little amusement in my new work, if I found I could do it. It was attributed to almost every possible writer but the real one. This “hit” set me forward cheerily; and I immediately promised to do a ‘leader’ per week, while engaged on Comte. Mr. Hunt begged for two; and to this I agreed when I found that each required only two or three hours in an evening, and that topics abounded. I had sufficient misgiving and uncertainty to desire very earnestly to have some conversation Edition: current; Page: [83] with Mr. Hunt; and I offered to go to London (on my way to Scotland) for the purpose. He would not hear of this, but said he would come to me, if public affairs would allow of his leaving the office. Then parliament was dissolved; and the elections kept him at home; so that I looked for him in vain by every train for ten days before my niece and I started for Edinburgh. He came to us at Portobello; and for two half days he poured out so rich a stream of conversation that my niece could not stand the excitement. She went out upon the shore, to recover her mind’s breath, and came in to enjoy more. It was indeed an unequalled treat; and when we parted, I felt that a bright new career was indeed opened to me. He had before desired that I should write him letters from Ireland; and he now bespoke three per week during our travels there. This I accomplished; and the letters were afterwards, by his advice and the desire of Mr. Chapman, published in a volume. It was on occasion of that long journey, which extended from the Giant’s Causeway to Bantry Bay, and from the Mullet to Wexford, that I first felt the signs of failure in bodily strength which I now believe to have been a warning of my present fatal malady. My companion was an incomparable help. It was impossible to be more extensively and effectually aided than I was by her. She took upon herself all the fatigue that it was possible to avert from me; and I reposed upon her sense and spirit and watchfulness like a spoiled child. Yet I found, and said at the time, that this must be my last arduous journey. The writing those Letters was a pure pleasure, whether they were penned in a quiet chamber at a friend’s house, or amidst a host of tourists, and to the sound of the harp, in a salon at Killarney; but, in addition to the fatigue of travelling and of introductions to strangers, they were too much for me. I had some domestic griefs on my mind, it is true. During the spring, my neighbours had requested me to deliver two or three lectures on Australia; and one consequence of my doing so was that my dear servant Jane resolved to emigrate (for reasons which I thought sound) and she was to sail in November: and now at Cork, the news met me that the other servant, no less beloved, was going to marry the Master of Edition: current; Page: [84] the Ragged School at Bristol, who had been her coadjutor in the Norfolk Workhouse School before mentioned. I wrote to advise their marriage at Christmas; but it was with the sense of a heavy misfortune having befallen me. I did not believe that my little household could ever again be what it had been since I built my house: and I should have been thankful to have foreseen how well I should settle again, — to change no more. I did not fully recover my strength till our pretty wedding was over, and I was fairly settled down, in winter quiet, to Comte and my weekly work for “Daily News.” — The wedding was truly a charming one. My dear girl had the honour of having Miss Carpenter for her bridesmaid, and the Revd. Philip P. Carpenter to perform the ceremony, — the Bristol Ragged School being, as every body knows, the special care of Miss Carpenter. I told the bride, the week before the bridegroom and guests arrived, that, as I could not think of sending the former to the kitchen table, nor yet of separating them, it would be a convenience and pleasure to me if she would be my guest in the sitting-rooms for the few days before the marriage. She did it with the best possible grace. She had worked hard at her wedding clothes during my absence, that she might be free for my service after my return: and now, after instructing her young successor, she dressed herself well, and dined with us, conversing freely, and, best of all, making a good dinner, while watching that every body was well served. A more graceful lady I never saw. She presented me with a pretty cap of her own making for the wedding morning; and would let nobody else dress me. The evening before, when Mr. Carpenter delivered a Temperance lecture, Miss Carpenter and I sent the entire household to the lecture; and we set out the long table for the morning, dressed the flowers (which came in from neighbouring conservatories) and put on all the cold dishes; covered up the whole, and shut up the cat. The kitchen was the only room large enough for the party; and there, after the ceremony, we had a capital breakfast, with good speaking, and all manner of good feeling. When all were gone, and my new maids had dried their sympathetic tears, and removed the tables, and given away the good things which that Edition: current; Page: [85] year served my usual Christmas day guests for dinner at home instead of here; and when I had put off my finery, and sat down, with a bursting headache, to write the story to the bride’s family, and the Carpenters’ and my own, I felt more thoroughly down-hearted than for many a year. — All went well, however. The good couple are in their right place, honoured and useful; and “our darling,” as Miss Carpenter called my good girl, is beloved by others as by me. There have been no more changes in my household; and, as for me, I soon recovered entirely from my griefs in my delectable work.

When summer was coming on, and Comte was advancing well, I agreed to do three leaders per week for Mr. Hunt. All the early attempts at secrecy were over. Within the first month, I had been taxed with almost every article by somebody or other, who “knew me by my style,” or had heard it in omnibuses, or somehow; and, after some Galway priests had pointed me out by guess, in the Irish papers, as the writer of one of the Irish Letters, and this got copied into the English papers, Mr. Hunt wrote me that all concealment was wholly out of the question, and that I need not trouble myself further about it. In the summer he came to see me; and we settled that I should send him four articles per week when Comte was out of my hands. During that visit of his, we went by the lake, one day, to pay a visit a few miles off, — he rowing me in one of the lake skiffs. A windy rain overtook us on our return. I had no serious idea of danger, or I should not have talked as I did, about drowning being an easy death, and my affairs being always settled, even to the arrangement of my papers &c. We came home to dinner without his giving me (experienced boatman as he was) any idea of our having had a serious adventure. I found afterwards that he had told his friends in London that we had been in extreme danger from the swell on the lake; and that when I was talking of the ease of drowning, in comparison with other deaths, he was thinking of his wife and children. He requested me to write an article, at the opening of the next season, on the criminal carelessness of our boatkeepers in letting those little skiffs to strangers, on a lake subject to gusts and sudden storms: and this I did. Edition: current; Page: [86] How little did he imagine that before the beginning of yet another season, he would have been months in his grave, and I standing on the verge of mine!

Immediately on the publication of my “Positive Philosophy,” I went to London and Birmingham for nearly three months. I visited so many hosts, and saw so much society that I became fully and finally satisfied that my settling myself at Ambleside was, as Wordsworth had said, the wisest step of my life. It is true, I was at work the whole time. Besides the plentiful assistance which I desired to give the “Daily News,” while on the spot, and some papers for “Household Words,” a serious piece of business required my attention. The impending war rendered desirable an earnest and well-studied article on England’s Foreign Policy, for the “Westminster Review;” and I agreed to do it. I went to the Editor’s house, for the purpose, and enjoyed both my visit and my work. — On taking possession of my room there, and finding a capital desk on my table, with a singularly convenient slope, and of an admirable height for writing without fatigue, it struck me that, during my whole course of literary labour, — of nearly five-and-thirty years, it had never once occurred to me to provide myself with a proper, business-like desk. I had always written on blotting paper, on a flat table, except when, in a lazy mood in winter, I had written as short-sighted people do (as Mrs. Somerville and “Currer Bell” always did) on a board, or something stiff, held in the left hand. I wrote a good deal of the “Political Economy” in that way, and with steel pens; and the method had the effect, advantageous or not, of making the writing more upright, and thereby increasing the quantity in a page. But it was radically uncomfortable; and I have ever since written on a table, and with quill pens. Now, on occasion of this visit at my friend’s, Mr. Chapman’s, I was to begin on a new and most luxurious method, — just, as it happens, at the close of my life’s work. Mr. Chapman obtained for me a first-rate regular Chancery-lane desk, with all manner of conveniences, and of a proper sanitary form: and, moreover, some French paper of various sizes, which has spoiled me for all other paper: ink to correspond; and a pen-maker, of French workmanship, Edition: current; Page: [87] suitable to eyes which were now feeling the effects of years and over-work. I had before me the prospect of more moderate work than for a quarter of a century past, with sure and sufficient gain from it; work pleasant in itself, and recommended by all agreeable appliances. Never was I more homesick, even in the wilds of Arabia, than I now was, amidst the high civilisation of literary society in London. — I came home very happy; and well I might.

Mr. Hunt escorted me part of the way to my host’s, on our last meeting for that time, for the sake of some conversation which he, very properly, called serious. He told me that he had something to say which he begged me to consider well. He told me that he had been looking back through my connexion with “Daily News;” and he found that of nearly 300 articles that I had sent him, only eight had not been used; and that (I think) six of those eight had been sent during the first few weeks, before I had got into the ways of the paper. I had now written four or five per week for a considerable time, without one rejection. His advice was that I should henceforth do six per week, — under the liability, of course, of a few more being unused, from the enhanced chances of being intercepted by recent news, when my communications were daily. If I should agree to this, and continue my other literary connexion, he thought I ought to lay out money freely in books, and in frequent visits to London, to keep up with the times. This scheme suited me exactly; for my work, under his guidance, had become thoroughly delightful.

His recourse to me was avowedly on account of the “History of the Peace;” and now that war was beginning, my recent study of the politics of the last half-century was a fair qualification. We were precisely agreed as to the principle of the war, as to the character of the Aberdeen Ministry, as to the fallaciousness and mischievousness of the negotiations for the Austrian alliance, and as to the vicious absurdity of Prussia, and the mode and degree in which Louis Napoleon was to be regarded as the representative of the French nation. For some time past, the historical and geographical articles have been my charge; together with the descriptive and speculative ones, in relation to foreign Edition: current; Page: [88] personages and states. At home, the agricultural and educational articles were usually consigned to me; and I had the fullest liberty about the treatment of special topics, arising any where. With party contests, and the treatment of “hot and hot” news, I never had any concern, — being several hundred miles out of the way of the latest intelligence. Mr. Hunt thought my distance from London no disadvantage; and he was quite plain-spoken about the inferiority of the articles I wrote in London and Birmingham to those I sent him from home. — I followed his suggestions with great satisfaction, — his wife and family having already made a compact with me for an exchange of visits, when I wanted London news, and they needed country refreshment. So I bought books to the amount of above £100, under his guidance, and came home exceedingly happy, — little dreaming that in one year from that time, he would be in his grave, his wife a broken-spirited widow, and I myself under sentence of death, and compelled to tell her that we should never meet again.

That eventful year, 1854, began most cheerily to us all. Mr. Hunt had raised the paper to a condition of high honour and prosperity. He enjoyed his work and his position, and was at ease about his affairs and his beloved family, after years of heroic struggle, and the glorious self-denial of a man of sensitive conscience and thoroughly domestic heart. He had to bear the wear and tear which a man of his order of conscience has to endure in a post of such responsibility as his; and this, we all believe, was a predisposing cause of his inability to resist an attack of disease. But at the opening of the year, he was in his usual health, and had every reason to be very happy. As for me, — my life was now like nothing that I had ever experienced. I had all the benefits of work, and of complete success, without any of the responsibility, the sense of which has always been the great drawback on my literary satisfactions, and especially in historical writing, — in which I could have no comfort but by directing my readers to my authorities, in all matters of any importance. Now, while exercising the same anxious care as to correctness, and always referring Mr. Hunt to my sources of Edition: current; Page: [89] information, I was free from the responsibility of publication altogether. My continued contributions to the “Westminster Review” and elsewhere preserved me from being engrossed in political studies; and I had more leisure for philosophical and literary pursuits than at any time since my youth. Two or three hours, after the arrival of the post (at breakfast time now) usually served me for my work; and when my correspondence was done, there was time for exercise, and the discharge of neighbourly business before dinner. Then, — I have always had some piece of fancy-work on hand, — usually for the benefit of the Abolition fund in America; and I have a thoroughly womanish love of needle-work; — yes, even (“I own the soft impeachment”) of wool-work, many a square yard of which is all invisibly embossed with thoughts of mine wrought in, under the various moods and experiences of a long series of years. It is with singular alacrity that, in winter evenings, I light the lamp, and unroll my wool-work, and meditate or dream till the arrival of the newspaper tells me that the tea has stood long enough. Before Mr. Rowland Hill gave us a second post delivery at Ambleside, Mr. Hunt had made arrangements by which I received the paper of the day at tea time. After tea, if there was news from the seat of war, I called in my maids, who brought down the great atlas, and studied the chances of the campaign with me. Then there was an hour or two for Montaigne, or Bacon, or Shakspere, or Tennyson, or some dear old biography, or last new book from London, — historical, moral or political. Then, when the house and neighbourhood were asleep, there was the half-hour on the terrace, or, if the weather was too bad for that, in the porch, — whence I seldom or never came in without a clear purpose for my next morning’s work. I believe that, but for my country life, much of the benefit and enjoyment of my travels, and also of my studies, would have been lost to me. On my terrace, there were two worlds extended bright before me, even when the midnight darkness hid from my bodily eyes all but the outlines of the solemn mountains that surround our valley on three sides, and the clear opening to the lake on the south. In the one of those worlds, I saw now the magnificent Edition: current; Page: [90] coast of Massachusetts in autumn, or the flowery swamps of Louisiana, or the forests of Georgia in spring, or the Illinois prairie in summer; or the blue Nile, or the brown Sinai, or the gorgeous Petra, or the view of Damascus from the Salahiey; or the Grand Canal under a Venetian sunset, or the Black Forest in twilight, or Malta in the glare of noon, or the broad desert stretching away under the stars, or the Red Sea tossing its superb shells on shore, in the pale dawn. That is one world, all comprehended within my terrace wall, and coming up into the light at my call. — The other and finer scenery is of that world, only beginning to be explored, of Science. The long study of Comte had deeply impressed on me the imagery of the glorious hierarchy of the sciences which he has exhibited. The time was gone by when I could look at objects as mere surface, or separate existences; and since that late labour of love, I had more than ever seen the alliance and concert of the heavenly bodies, and the mutual action and interior composition of the substances which I used to regard as one in themselves, and unconnected in respect to each other. It is truly an exquisite pleasure to dream, after the toil of study, on the sublime abstractions of mathematics; the transcendent scenery unrolled by astronomy; the mysterious, invisible forces dimly hinted to us by Physics; the new conception of the constitution of Matter originated by Chemistry; and then, the inestimable glimpses opened to us, in regard to the nature and destiny of Man, by the researches into vegetable and animal organisation, which are at length perceived to be the right path of inquiry into the highest subjects of thought. All the grandeur and all the beauty of this series of spectacles is deepened by the ever-present sense of the smallness of the amount of discovery achieved. In the scenery of our travels, it is otherwise. The forest, the steppe, the lake, the city, each filled and sufficed the sense of the observer in the old days when, instead of the Western Continents, there were dreams of far Cathay; and we of this day are occupied for the moment with any single scene, without caring whether the whole globe is explored. But it is different in the sphere of science. Wondrous beyond the comprehension of any one mind is the mass of glorious facts, and Edition: current; Page: [91] the series of mighty conceptions laid open; but the shadow of the surrounding darkness rests upon it all. The unknown always engrosses the greater part of the field of vision; and the awe of infinity sanctifies both the study and the dream. Between these worlds, and other interests, literary and political, were my evenings passed, a short year ago. Perhaps no one has had a much more vivid enjoyment than myself of London society of a very high order; and few, I believe, are of a more radically social nature than myself: yet, I may say that there has never been, since I had a home of my own, an evening spent in the most charming intercourse that I would not have exchanged (as far as the mere pleasure was concerned) for one of my ordinary evenings under the lamp within, and the lights of heaven without.

I did not at once, however, sit down in comparative leisure on my return. I had before promised, most unwillingly, and merely for neighbourly reasons, to write a Guide to Windermere and the neighbourhood; and this, and an article on the Census (requiring much care) for the “Westminster Review” for April, were pressing to be done, as soon as I could sit down on my return home. Then there was a series of articles (on Personal Infirmities, — the treatment of Blindness, Deafness, Idiotcy, &c.) promised for “Household Words.”

I must pause a moment here to relate that these papers were the last I sent to “Household Words,” except two or three which filled up previous schemes. I have observed above that Magazine writing is quite out of my way; and that I accepted Mr. Dickens’s invitation to write for his, simply because its wide circulation went far to compensate for the ordinary objections to that mode of authorship. I did not hesitate on the ground on which some of my relations and friends disapproved the connexion; on the ground of its being infra dig: for, in the first place, I have never stopped to consider my own dignity in matters of business; and, in the next, Mr. Dickens himself being a contributor disposed of the objection abundantly. But, some time before the present date, I had become uneasy about the way in which “Household Words” was going on, and more Edition: current; Page: [92] and more doubtful about allowing my name to be in any way connected with it: and I have lately finally declined Mr. Wills’s invitation to send him more papers. As there is no quarrel concerned in the case, I think it is right to explain the grounds of my secession. My disapproval of the principles, or want of principles, on which the Magazine is carried on is a part of my own history; and it may be easily understood that feelings of personal friendliness may remain unaffected by opposition of views, even in a matter so serious as this. I think the proprietors of “Household Words” grievously inadequate to their function, philosophically and morally; and they, no doubt, regard me as extravagant, presumptuous and impertinent. I have offered my objections as a reply to a direct request for a contribution; and Mr. Wills has closed the subject. But, on all other ground, we are friends.

In the autumn of 1849, my misgivings first became serious. Mr. Wills proposed my doing some articles on the Employments of Women, (especially in connexion with the Schools of Design and branches of Fine-Art manufacture;) and was quite unable to see that every contribution of the kind was necessarily excluded by Mr. Dickens’s prior articles on behalf of his view of Woman’s position; articles in which he ignored the fact that nineteen-twentieths of the women of England earn their bread, and in which he prescribes the function of Women; viz., to dress well and look pretty, as an adornment to the homes of men. I was startled by this; and at the same time, and for many weeks after, by Mr. Dickens’s treatment in his Magazine of the Preston Strike, then existing, and of the Factory and Wages controversy, in his tale of “Hard Times.” A more serious incident still occurred in the same autumn. In consequence of a request from Mr. Dickens that I would send him a tale for his Christmas Number, I looked about for material in real life; for, as I had told him, and as I have told every body else, I have a profound contempt of myself as a writer of fiction, and the strongest disinclination to attempt that order of writing. I selected a historical fact, and wrote the story which appears under the title of “The Missionary” in my volume of “Sketches Edition: current; Page: [93] from Life.” I carried it with me to Mr. Wills’s house; and he spoke in the strongest terms of approbation of it to me, but requested to have also “a tale of more domestic interest,” which I wrote on his selection of the ground-work (also fact.) Some weeks afterwards, my friends told me, with renewed praises of the story, that they mourned the impossibility of publishing it, — Mrs. Wills said, because the public would say that Mr. Dickens was turning Catholic; and Mr. Wills and Mr. Dickens, because they never would publish any thing, fact or fiction, which gave a favourable view of any one under the influence of the Catholic faith. This appeared to me so incredible that Mr. Dickens gave me his “ground” three times over, with all possible distinctness, lest there should be any mistake: — he would print nothing which could possibly dispose any mind whatever in favour of Romanism, even by the example of real good men. In vain I asked him whether he really meant to ignore all the good men who had lived from the Christian era to three centuries ago: and in vain I pointed out that Père d’Estélan was a hero as a man, and not as a Jesuit, at a date and in a region where Romanism was the only Christianity. Mr. Dickens would ignore, in any publication of his, all good catholics; and insisted that Père d’Estélan was what he was as a Jesuit and not as a man; — which was, as I told him, the greatest eulogium I had ever heard passed upon Jesuitism. I told him that his way of going to work, — suppressing facts advantageous to the Catholics, — was the very way to rouse all fair minds in their defence; and that I had never before felt so disposed to make popularly known all historical facts in their favour. — I hope I need not add that the editors never for a moment supposed that my remonstrance had any connexion with the story in question being written by me. They knew me too well to suppose that such a trifle as my personal interest in the acceptance or rejection of the story had any thing to do with my final declaration that my confidence and comfort in regard to “Household Words” were gone, and that I could never again write fiction for them, nor any thing in which principle or feeling were concerned. Mr. Dickens hoped I should Edition: current; Page: [94] “think better of it;” and this proof of utter insensibility to the nature of the difficulty, and his and his partner’s hint that the real illiberality lay in not admitting that they were doing their duty in keeping Catholic good deeds out of the sight of the public, showed me that the case was hopeless. To a descendant of Huguenots, such total darkness of conscience on the morality of opinion is difficult to believe in when it is before one’s very eyes.

I need not add that my hopes from the influence of “Household Words” were pretty nearly annihilated from that time (the end of 1853) forwards: but there was worse to come. I had supposed that the editors would of course abstain from publishing any harm of catholic priests and professors, if they would admit no good; but in this I have recently found myself mistaken; and great is my concern. I had just been reading in an American advertisement a short account of the tale called “The Yellow Mask,” with its wicked priest, when I received from the Editor of “Household Words” another request for an article. I had not read “The Yellow Mask;” but a guest then with me related the story so fully as to put me in complete possession of it. I will cite the portion of my letter to Mr. Wills which contains my reply to his request. It is abundantly plain-spoken; but we were plain-spoken, throughout the controversy; and never did occasion more stringently require the utmost plainness of remonstrance on the side of the advocate of religious liberty and social justice, and any clearness of reply that might be possible on the opposite side. — Here is my letter, as far as relates to Mr. Wills’s petition.

“ ... ... ... ... Another paper from me? you ask. No — not if I were to live twenty years, — if the enclosed paragraph from an American paper be no mistake; and except, of course, in case of repentance and amendment.

“The ‘Yellow Mask,’ in Twelve Chapters: Philadelphia.

“This pamphlet is a re-print from Dickens’s ‘Household Words.’ The story is ingenious, and fraught with considerable interest. The despicable course of ‘Father Rocco’ pursued so stealthily for the pecuniary benefit of ‘holy mother church’ shows of what stuff priestcraft is made.”

Edition: current; Page: [95]

“The last thing I am likely to do is to write for an anti-catholic publication; and least of all when it is anti-catholic on the sly. I have had little hope of ‘Household Words’ since the proprietors refused to print a historical fact (otherwise approved of) on the ground that the hero was a Jesuit: and now that they follow up this suppression of an honourable truth by the insertion of a dishonouring fiction (or fact, — no matter which) they can expect no support from advocates of religious liberty or lovers of fair-play: and so fond are English people of fair-play, that if they knew this fact, you would soon find your course in this matter ruinous to your publication. — As for my writing for it, — I might as well write for the ‘Record’ newspaper; and, indeed, so far better, that the ‘Record’ avows its anticatholic course. No one wants ‘Household Words’ to enter into any theological implication whatever: — but you choose to do it, and must accept accordingly the opinions you thereby excite. I do not forget that you plead duty; and I give you credit for it, — precisely as I do to the Grand Inquisitor. He consecrates his treatment of heretics by the plea of the dangers of Protestantism: and you justify your treatment of Catholics by the plea of the dangers of Romanism. The one difference that there is, is in his favour; — that he does not profess Protestant principles while pursuing the practices of Jesuitry. — No, I have no more to say to ‘Household Words;’ and you will prefer my telling you plainly why, and giving you this much light on the views your course has occasioned in one who was a hearty well-wisher to ‘Household Words,’ as long as possible.

“H. MARTINEAU.”

Mr. Wills replied that he felt justified in what he had done; that we should never agree on the matter; and that, agreeing to differ, we would drop the subject. — Such are the grounds, and such was the process, of my secession from the corps of Mr. Dickens’s contributors.

When I fancied I was going to do what I pleased till I left home in July 1854, the proprietor of the Windermere Guide made an irresistible appeal to me to do the whole district, under the form of a “Complete Guide to the Lakes.” Still in hope that leisure would come at last, and feeling that I should enjoy it the more for having omitted no duty, I gave up my holiday evenings now. I made the tour of the district once more, with a delightful party of friends, — reviving impressions and noting Edition: current; Page: [96] facts, and then came home, resigned to work “double tides” for the remaining weeks before my summer absence, — dining early, after my morning’s work, and writing topography in the evenings. I received much aid in the collection of materials from the publisher, and from the accomplished artist, Mr. Lindsey Aspland, who illustrated the volume: and I finished my work, and went forth on a series of visits, which were to occupy the tourist season, — my house being let for that time. I little imagined, when I left my own gate, that the ease and light-hearted pleasure of my life, — I might almost say, my life itself, — were left behind me; — that I was going to meet sickness and sorrow, and should return to sorrow, sickness and death.

If I had been duly attentive to my health, I might have become aware already that there was something wrong. Long after, I remembered that, from about March, I had been kept awake for some little time at night by odd sensations at the heart, followed by hurried and difficult breathing: and once, I had been surprised, while reading, to find myself unable to see more than the upper half of the letters, or more of that than the word I was reading. I laid aside my book; and if I thought at all of the matter, it was to suppose it to be a passing fit of indigestion, — though I had no other sign of indigestion. While at Liverpool, I found myself far less strong than I had supposed; and again in Wales and at Shrewsbury; but I attributed this to the heat. Mr. Hunt met me and my maid at the Station in London, and took us over to his house at Sydenham, giving us bad news by the way of the spread of cholera. A poor carpenter had, the week before, died of cholera while at work in Mr. Hunt’s house, — the seizure being too sudden to admit of his removal to his own unhealthy home, — from whence, no doubt, he brought the disease. On our way from the Sydenham station to Mr. Hunt’s house, he pointed out to me an abominable pond, covered with slime and duckweed, which he had tried in vain to draw official attention to. During my short visit, and just after it, almost all of us were ill, — my host and hostess, some of the children, a servant, and myself: and after my removal to an airy lodging at Upper Norwood, opposite the Crystal Palace Edition: current; Page: [97] fence, I had repeated attacks of illness, and was, in fact, never well during the five weeks of my residence there. — It was a time of anxiety and sorrow. My good friend and publisher, Mr. Chapman, had just failed, — in consequence of misfortunes which came thick upon him, from the time of Mr. Lombe’s death, which was a serious blow to the “Westminster Review.” Mr. Chapman never, in all our intercourse, asked me to lend him money; yet the “Westminster Review” was by this time mortgaged to me. It was entirely my own doing; and I am anxious, for Mr. Chapman’s sake, that this should be understood. The truth of the case is that I had long felt, as many others had professed to do, that the cause of free-thought and free-speech was under great obligations to Mr. Chapman; and it naturally occurred to me that it was therefore a duty incumbent on the advocates of free-thought and speech to support and aid one by whom they had been enabled to address society. Thinking, in the preceding winter, that I saw that Mr. Chapman was hampered by certain liabilities that the review was under, I offered to assume the mortgage, — knowing the uncertain nature of that kind of investment, but regarding the danger of loss as my contribution to the cause. At first, after the failure, there was every probability, apparently, that Mr. Chapman’s affairs would be speedily settled, — so satisfied were all his creditors who were present with his conduct under examination, and the accounts he rendered. A few generous friends and creditors made all smooth, as it was hoped; but two absent discontented creditors pursued their debtor with, (as some men of business among the creditors said) “a cruelty unequalled in all their experience.” One of their endeavours was to get the review out of Mr. Chapman’s hands; and one feature of the enterprise was an attempt to upset the mortgage, and to drive Mr. Chapman to bankruptcy, in order to throw the review into the market, at the most disadvantageous season, when London was empty, and cholera prevalent, — that these personages might get it cheap. One of them made no secret of his having raised a subscription for the purpose. It was the will of the great body of the creditors, however, that Mr. Chapman should keep the review, which he had edited thus Edition: current; Page: [98] far with great and rising success; and his two foes were got rid of by the generosity of Mr. Chapman’s guaranteeing supporters. The attempt to upset the mortgage failed, of course. I had an intimation in twenty-four hours that I was “not to be swindled out of the Review:” but the whole anxiety, aggravated by indignation and pain at such conduct on the part of men who had professed a sense of obligation to Mr. Chapman, extended over many weeks. The whole body of the creditors were kept waiting, and the estate was deteriorating for those weeks, during which the two persecutors were canvassing for subscriptions for the review which one of them endeavoured to drive into a bad market, at my expense, and to the ruin of its proprietor. The business extended over my residence at Sydenham. I had long before promised an article, involving no small labour, for the next number of the review (“Rajah Brooke;”) and, when I was reckoning on my return home, two misfortunes occurred which determined me to stay another week, and work. A relative of Mr. Chapman’s, his most valued friend and contributor, was struck down by cholera in the very act of writing an article of first-rate consequence for the forthcoming number: and, while my poor friend was suffering under the first anguish of this loss, another contributor, wrought on by evil influences, disappointed the editor of a promised article at the time it ought to have been at press. I could not but stay and write another; and I did so, — being bound however to be at home on the nineteenth of September, to receive the first of a series of autumn guests. On the night of my arrival at home, after a too arduous journey for one day, I was again taken ill; and next morning, the post brought the news of the death of another of my dear aunts, — one having died during my absence from home. I had left Mr. Hunt in a very poor state of health, — as indeed every body seemed to be during those melancholy months; but we hoped that a shooting excursion would restore him to business in his usual vigour. It appeared to do so; but cholera was making such ravage among the corps of the paper that those who could work were compelled to over-work; and the editor slept at the office during the most critical time. Every circumstance was Edition: current; Page: [99] against him; and we began to be uneasy, without having any serious apprehension of what was about to befal.

There was great enjoyment in that Sydenham sojourn, through all its anxieties. During the first half of the time that I was in lodgings, a dear young niece was with me; and for the other half, a beloved cousin, — my faithful friend for forty years. Some whole days, and many half holidays, I spent with them in the Crystal Palace, with great joy and delight. I dwell upon those days now with as much pleasure as ever, — the fresh beauty of the summer morning, when we were almost the first to enter, and found the floors sprinkled, and the vegetation revived, and the tables covered with cool-looking viands, and the rustics coming in, and venting their first amazement in a very interesting way: — and again, our steady duties in the Courts in the middle of the day; and again, the walk on the terrace, or the lingering in the nave when the last train was gone, and the exhibitors were shutting up for the day. There were also merry parties, and merry plans at Mr. Hunt’s. We went, a carriage-full, to the prorogation of parliament, when I had a ticket to the Peeresses’ gallery, where, however, we were met by the news (which encountered us every where) of a mournful death from cholera, — Lord Jocelyn having died that afternoon. We had a plan for going, a party of fifteen, to Paris, in the next April: — to Paris, for the opening of the Exhibition on May-day. May-day has passed without the opening of the Exhibition: Mr. Hunt has been above five months in his grave; and I have been above three months in daily expectation of death. In November, when Mr. Hunt was ill, but we knew not how ill, I wrote to him that, on consideration, it seemed to me that the party to Paris would be better without me, (for political reasons:) and Mr. Hunt’s message (the last to me) was that it would be time enough to settle that when April came. I suspect that he foresaw his fate. — In November, my correspondence was with the sub-editor, because Mr. Hunt was ill. The cashier told me next of his “alarm” about his beloved friend: but the sub-editor wrote that he was not alarmed like the rest. Then the accounts were worse; there was one almost hopeless: and then, he was dead. I did not Edition: current; Page: [100] think that such capacity for sorrow was left in me. He was so happy in life; and the happiness of so many was bound up in him! He was only forty; and he had fairly entered on a career of unsurpassed usefulness and honour, and was beginning to reap the natural reward of many years of glorious effort! But he was gone; and I had not known such a personal sorrow since the loss of Dr. Follen, in 1840, by the burning of a steamer at sea. I certainly felt very ill; and I told my family so; but I thought I could go to London, and work at the office during the interval till his place could be filled. I offered to do so; but the proprietors assured me that I could help them best by working daily at home. The cousin who had been my companion at Sydenham wrote that she was glad I had not gone; for she believed, after what she had seen in September, that it would have killed me. I believe she was right, though it seemed rather extravagant at the time.

Edition: current; Page: [101]

SECTION IX.

By December, I felt somewhat better; but I was not able to write my usual New Year’s letters to my family. The odd obliteration of words and half letters when I read returned once or twice when there was certainly no indigestion to account for it; and a symptom which had perplexed me for months grew upon me, — an occasional uncertainty about the spelling of even common words. I had mentioned this, as an odd circumstance, to a Professor of Mental Philosophy, when he was my guest in October; and his reply was, “there is some little screw loose somewhere:” and so indeed it proved. Throughout December and the early part of January, the disturbance on lying down increased, night by night. There was a creaking sensation at the heart (the beating of which was no longer to be felt externally;) and, after the creak, there was an intermission, and then a throb. When this had gone on a few minutes, breathing became perturbed and difficult; and I lay till two, three, or four o’clock, struggling for breath. When this process began to spread back into the evening, and then forward into the morning, I was convinced that there was something seriously wrong; and with the approbation of my family, I wrote to consult Dr. Latham; and soon after, went to London to be examined by him. That honest and excellent physician knew beforehand that I desired, for reasons which concerned others more than myself, to know the exact truth; and he fulfilled my wish. — I felt it so probable that I might die in the night, and any night, that I would not go to the house of any of my nearest friends, or of any aged or delicate hostess; and I therefore declined all invitations, and took rooms at Mr. Chapman’s, where all possible care would be taken of me, without risk to any one. There Dr. Latham visited and examined me, the day after my arrival, and frankly told me Edition: current; Page: [102] his “impression,” — observing that it could not yet be called an opinion. The impression soon became an opinion, as I knew it would, because he would not have told me of such an impression without the strongest ground for it. He requested me to see another physician; and Dr. Watson’s opinion, formed on examination, without prior information from Dr. Latham or me, was the same as Dr. Latham’s. Indeed the case appears to be as plain as can well be. It appears that the substance of the heart is deteriorated, so that “it is too feeble for its work;” there is more or less dilatation; and the organ is very much enlarged. Before I left London, the sinking-fits which are characteristic of the disease began to occur; and it has since been perfectly understood by us all that the alternative lies between death at any hour in one of these sinking-fits, or by dropsy, if I live for the disease to run its course.

Though I expected some such account of the case, I was rather surprised that it caused so little emotion in me. I went out, in a friend’s carriage, to tell her the result of Dr. Latham’s visit; and I also told a cousin who had been my friend since our school-days. When I returned to my lodgings, and was preparing for dinner, a momentary thrill of something like painful emotion passed through me, — not at all because I was going to die, but at the thought that I should never feel health again. It was merely momentary; and I joined the family and Mr. Atkinson, who dined with us, without any indisposition to the merriment which went on during dinner, — no one but my hostess being aware of what had passed since breakfast. In the course of the evening, I told them; and I saw at once what support I might depend on from my friend. I did not sleep at all that night; and many were the things I had to think over; but I never passed a more tranquil and easy night. As soon as my family heard the news, a beloved niece, who had repeatedly requested to be allowed to come to me, joined me in London, and gave me to understand, with her parents’ free consent, that she would not leave me again. I sent for my Executor, made a new will, and put him in possession of my affairs, my designs and wishes, as fully as possible, and accepted his escort home to Ambleside. Edition: current; Page: [a]Edition: current; Page: [b]Edition: current; Page: [103] As there was but one possible mode of treatment, and as that could be pursued in one place as well as another, I was eager to get home to the repose and freshness of my own sweet place. It was not only for the pleasure of it; but for the sake of my servants; and because, while prepared, in regard to my affairs, to go at any time, there were things to be done, if I could do them, to which the quiet of home was almost indispensable. The weather was at that time the worst of a very bad winter; and it was a very doubtful matter whether I could perform the journey. By the kindness of a friend, however, the invalid carriage of the North Western Railway was placed at my disposal; and we four, — my niece, my Executor, my maid and myself, travelled in all possible comfort. The first thing I saw in my own house, — the pale, shrunk countenance of the servant I had left at home, — made me rejoice that I had returned without further delay. I found afterwards that she had cried more than she had slept from the time that she had heard how ill I was, and what was to happen. — That was three months ago: and during those three months, I have been visited by my family, one by one, and by some dear friends, while my niece has been so constantly with me as to have, in my opinion, prolonged my life by her incomparable nursing. The interval has been employed in writing this Memoir, and in closing all my engagements, so that no interest of any kind may suffer by my departure at any moment. The winter, after long lingering, is gone, and I am still here, — sitting in the sun on my terrace, and at night going out, according to old custom, to look abroad in the moon or star-light. We are surrounded by bouquets and flowering plants. Never was a dying person more nobly “friended,” as the Scotch have it. My days are filled with pleasures, and I have no cares; so that the only thing I have to fear is that, after all the discipline of my life, I should be spoiled at the end of it.

When I learned what my state is, it was my wish (as far as I wish any thing, which is indeed very slightly and superficially) that my death might take place before long, and by the quicker process: and such is, in an easy sort of way, my wish still. The Edition: current; Page: [104] last is for the sake of my nurse, and of all about me; and the first is mainly because I do not want to deteriorate and get spoiled in the final stage of my life, by ceasing to hear the truth, and the whole truth: and nobody ventures to utter any unpleasant truth to a person with “a heart-complaint.” I must take my chance for this; and I have a better chance than most, because my nurse and constant companion knows that I do not desire that any body should “make things pleasant” because I am ill. I should wish, as she knows, to live under complete and healthy moral conditions to the last, if these can be accommodated, by courage and mutual trust, with the physical conditions. — As to the spoiling process, — I have been doubting, for some years past, whether I was not undergoing it. I have lived too long to think of making myself anxious about my state and prospects in any way; but it has occurred to me occasionally, of late years, whether I could endure as I formerly did. I had become so accustomed to ease of body and mind, that it seemed to me doubtful how I might bear pain, or any change; for it seemed as if any change must be for the worse, as to enjoyment. I remember being struck with a saying of Mrs. Wordsworth’s, uttered ten years ago, when she was seventy-six, — that the beauty of our valley made us too fond of life, — too little ready to leave it. Her domestic bereavements since that time have doubtless altered this feeling entirely; but, in many an hour of intense enjoyment on the hills, I have recalled that saying; and, in wonder at my freedom from care, have speculated on whether I should think it an evil to die, then and there. I have now had three months’ experience of the fact of constant expectation of death; and the result is, as much regret as a rational person can admit at the absurd waste of time, thought and energy that I have been guilty of in the course of my life in dwelling on the subject of death. It is really melancholy that young people, (and, for that matter, middle-aged and old people) are exhorted and encouraged as they are to such waste of all manner of power. I romanced internally about early death till it was too late to die early; and, even in the midst of work and the busiest engagements of my life, I used to be always thinking about Edition: current; Page: [105] death, — partly from taste, and partly as a duty. And now that I am awaiting it at any hour, the whole thing seems so easy, simple and natural that I cannot but wonder how I could keep my thoughts fixed upon it when it was far off. I cannot do it now. Night after night since I have known that I am mortally ill, I have tried to conceive, with the help of the sensations of my sinking-fits, the act of dying, and its attendant feelings; and, thus far, I have always gone to sleep in the middle of it. And this is after really knowing something about it; for I have been frequently in extreme danger of immediate death within the last five months, and have felt as if I were dying, and should never draw another breath. Under this close experience, I find death in prospect the simplest thing in the world, — a thing not to be feared or regretted, or to get excited about in any way. — I attribute this very much, however, to the nature of my views of death. The case must be much otherwise with Christians, — even independently of the selfish and perturbing emotions connected with an expectation of rewards and punishments in the next world. They can never be quite secure from the danger that their air-built castle shall dissolve at the last moment, and that they may vividly perceive on what imperfect evidence and delusive grounds their expectation of immortality or resurrection reposes. The mere perception of the incompatibility of immortality and resurrection may be, and often is, deferred till that time; and that is no time for such questions. But, if the intellect be ever so accommodating, there is the heart, — steady to its domestic affections. I, for one, should be heavy-hearted if I were now about to go to the antipodes, — to leave all whom I love, and who are bound up with my daily life, — however certain might be the prospect of meeting them again twenty or thirty years hence; and it is no credit to any Christian to be “joyful,” “triumphant” and so forth, in going to “glory,” while leaving any loved ones behind, — whether or not there may be loved ones “gone before.” An unselfish and magnanimous person cannot be solaced, in parting with mortal companions and human sufferers, by personal rewards, glory, bliss, or any thing of the sort. I used to think and feel all this before I became emancipated Edition: current; Page: [106] from the superstition; and I could only submit, and suppose it all right because it was ordained. But now, the release is an inexpressible comfort; and the simplifying of the whole matter has a most tranquillizing effect. I see that the dying (others than the aged) naturally and regularly, unless disturbed, desire and sink into death as into sleep. Where no artificial state is induced, they feel no care about dying, or about living again. The state of their organisation disposes them to rest; and rest is all they think about. We know, by all testimony, that persons who are brought face to face with death by an accident which seems to leave no chance of escape, have no religious ideas or emotions whatever. Where the issue is doubtful, the feeble and helpless cry out to God for mercy, and are in perturbation or calmness according to organisation, training, and other circumstances: but, where escape appears wholly impossible, the most religious men think and feel nothing religious at all, — as those of them who have escaped tell their intimate friends. And again, soldiers rush upon death in battle with utter carelessness, — engrossed in other emotions, in the presence of which death appears as easy and simple a matter as it does to me now. — Conscious as I am of what my anxiety would be if I were exiled to the antipodes, — or to the garden of Eden, if you will, — for twenty or thirty years, I feel no sort of solicitude about a parting which will bring no pain. Sympathy with those who will miss me, I do feel, of course: yet not very painfully, because their sorrow cannot, in the nature of things, long interfere with their daily peace; but to me there is no sacrifice, no sense of loss, nothing to fear, nothing to regret. Under the eternal laws of the universe, I came into being, and, under them, I have lived a life so full that its fulness is equivalent to length. The age in which I have lived is an infant one in the history of our globe and of Man; and the consequence is, a great waste in the years and the powers of the wisest of us; and, in the case of one so limited in powers, and so circumscribed by early unfavorable influences as myself, the waste is something deplorable. But we have only to accept the conditions in which we find ourselves, and to make the best of them; and my last days are Edition: current; Page: [107] cheered by the sense of how much better my later years have been than the earlier; or than, in the earlier, I ever could have anticipated. Some of the terrible faults of my character which religion failed to ameliorate, and others which superstition bred in me, have given way, more or less, since I attained a truer point of view: and the relief from old burdens, the uprising of new satisfactions, and the opening of new clearness, — the fresh air of Nature, in short, after imprisonment in the ghost-peopled cavern of superstition, — has been as favourable to my moral nature as to intellectual progress and general enjoyment. Thus, there has been much in life that I am glad to have enjoyed; and much that generates a mood of contentment at the close. Besides that I never dream of wishing that any thing were otherwise than as it is, I am frankly satisfied to have done with life. I have had a noble share of it, and I desire no more. I neither wish to live longer here, nor to find life again elsewhere. It seems to me simply absurd to expect it, and a mere act of restricted human imagination and morality to conceive of it. It seems to me that there is, not only a total absence of evidence of a renewed life for human beings, but so clear a way of accounting for the conception, in the immaturity of the human mind, that I myself utterly disbelieve in a future life. If I should find myself mistaken, it will certainly not be in discovering any existing faith in that doctrine to be true. If I am mistaken in supposing that I am now vacating my place in the universe, which is to be filled by another, — if I find myself conscious after the lapse of life, — it will be all right, of course; but, as I said, the supposition appears to me absurd. Nor can I understand why any body should expect me to desire any thing else than this yielding up my place. If we may venture to speak, limited as we are, of any thing whatever being important, we may say that the important thing is that the universe should be full of life, as we suppose it to be, under the eternal laws of the universe: and, if the universe be full of life, I cannot see how it can signify whether the one human faculty of consciousness of identity be preserved and carried forward, when all the rest of the organisation is gone to dust, or so changed as to be in no respect properly Edition: current; Page: [108] the same. In brief, I cannot see how it matters whether my successor be called H. M. or A. B. or Y. Z. I am satisfied that there will always be as much conscious life in the universe as its laws provide for; and that certainty is enough, even for my narrow human conception, which, however, can discern that caring about it at all is a mere human view and emotion. The real and justifiable and honourable subject of interest to human beings, living and dying, is the welfare of their fellows, surrounding them, or surviving them. About this, I do care, and supremely; in what way I will tell presently.

Meantime, as to my own position at this moment, I have a word or two more to say. — I had no previous conception of the singular interest of watching human affairs, and one’s own among the rest, and acting in them, when on the verge of leaving them. It is an interest which is full even of amusement. It has been my chief amusement, this spring, to set my house and field in complete order for my beloved successor; — to put up a handsome new garden fence, and paint the farming man’s cottage, and restore the ceilings of the house, and plan the crops which I do not expect to see gathered. The mournful perplexity of my good farm-servant has something in it amusing as well as touching; — the necessity he is under of consulting me about his sowings, and his plans for the cows, — relating to distant autumn months, and even to another spring, — the embarrassing necessity that this is to him, while his mind is full of the expectation that I shall then be in my grave. In the midst of every consultation about this or that crop, he interposes a hope that I may live to see his hay, and to eat his celery and artichokes and vegetable marrow, and to admire the autumn calf; and his zeal for my service, checked by the thought that his services are in fact for others, has something in it as curious as touching. — And so it is, more or less, with all my intercourses, — that a curious new interest is involved in them. Mere acquaintances are shocked that the newspapers should tell that I am “in a hopeless state,” that “recovery is impossible” &c., while my own family and household have no sort of scruple in talking about it as freely as I do. A good many people start at hearing what a cheerful, — Edition: current; Page: [109] even merry — little party we are at home here, and that we sometimes play a rubber in the evenings, and sometimes laugh till I, for one, can laugh no more. To such wonder, we answer — why not? If we feel as usual, why not do as usual? Others, again, cannot conceive how, with my “opinions,” I am not miserable about dying; and declare that they should be so; and this makes me wonder, in my turn, that it does not strike them that perhaps they do not comprehend my views and feelings, and that there may be something in the matter more than they see or understand. There is something very interesting to me in the evidences of different states of mind among friends and strangers in regard to my “good” or “bad spirits,” — a matter which appears to me hardly worth a thought. As it happens, my spirits are good; and I find good spirits a great blessing; but the solicitude about them, and the evident readiness to make much of bad spirits, if I had them, are curious features in my intercourse with acquaintance or strangers who are kind enough to interest themselves in my affairs. One sends me a New Testament (as if I had never seen one before) with the usual hopes of grace &c., though aware that the bible is no authority with me; and, having been assured that I am “happy,” this correspondent has the modesty to intimate that I ought not to be happy, and that people sometimes are so “without grounds.” It is useless to reply that, as I have not pursued happiness as an aim, all this kind of speculation is nothing to me. There is the fact; and that is enough. — Others, again, who ought, by their professions, to know better, are very glad about this “happiness,” and settle it in their own minds that christian consolations are administered to me by God without my knowing it. If so, I can only say it is a bounty not only gratuitous, but undesired. Christian consolations would certainly make me any thing but happy, after my experience of them in contrast with the higher state of freedom, and the wider sympathies opened by my later views.

The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and insolence. Even such as these cannot conceive of my being happy in any way but theirs, or Edition: current; Page: [110] that there may be views whose operation they do not understand. In a letter just received, a dear friend says “I have seen no one since I left you who is ‘sorry’ about you (about my ‘opinions.’) Still I see that the next row, and the next, still more so, are ‘very sorry’ and ‘very very sorry.’ ” The unconscious insolence revealed in this “sorrow” is rebuked by the more rational view of others who are no nearer agreeing with me than the second and third “row.” “Not agreeing,” says my friend, “they still see no more reason for lamentation over you than for you to lament over them. ‘Il y a aussi loin de chez toi chez moi que de chez moi chez toi,’ is the perfectly applicable French proverb.” Another, who professes to venerate martyrs and reformers (if only they are dead) is “sorry” again because this, that, or the other Cause suffers by my loss of influence. The mingled weakness and unconscious insolence of this affords a curious insight. First, there is the dereliction of principle shown in supposing that any “Cause” can be of so much importance as fidelity to truth, or can be important at all otherwise than in its relation to truth which wants vindicating. It reminds me of an incident which happened when I was in America, at the time of the severest trials of the Abolitionists. A pastor from the southern States lamented to a brother clergyman in the North the introduction of the Anti-slavery question, because the views of their sect were “getting on so well before!” “Getting on!” cried the northern minister. “What is the use of getting your vessel on when you have thrown both captain and cargo overboard?” Thus, what signifies the pursuit of any one reform, like those specified, — Anti-slavery and the Woman question, — when the freedom which is the very soul of the controversy, the very principle of the movement, — is mourned over in any other of its many manifestations? The only effectual advocates of such reforms as those are people who follow truth wherever it leads. The assumption that I have lost influence on the whole exposes itself. Nobody can know that I have lost influence on the whole, either in regard to ordinary social intercourse or to subjects of social controversy; and I have reason to believe that I have (without at all intending it) gained influence in proportion Edition: current; Page: [111] to the majority that the free-thinkers of our country constitute to the minority existing in the form of the sect in which I was reared, or any other.

As to the curious assortment of religious books and tracts sent me by post, they are much what I have been accustomed to receive on the publication of each of my books which involved religious or philosophical subjects. They are too bad in matter and spirit to be safe reading for my servants; so, instead of the waste-basket, they go into the fire. I have not so many anonymous letters now as on occasions of publication; but some which are not anonymous are scarcely wiser or purer. After the publication of “Eastern Life,” I had one which was too curious to be forgotten with the rest. It was dated “Cheltenham,” and signed “Charlotte;” and it was so inviting to a reply that, if it had borne any address, I should have been tempted to break through my custom of silence in such cases. “Charlotte” wrote to make the modest demand that I would call in and destroy all my writings, “because they give pain to the pious.” It would have been amusing to see what she would think of a proposal that “the pious” should withdraw all their writings, because they give pain to the philosophical. It might have been of service to suggest the simple expedient, in relief of the pious, that they should not read books which offend them. After the publication of the “Atkinson Letters,” anonymous notes came in elegant clerical hand-writing, informing me that prayers would be offered up throughout the kingdom, for my rescue from my awful condition, “denying the Lord that bought me,” &c. Now, the concern seems to be of a gentler sort, and to relate more to my state of spirits at present than to my destiny hereafter. — But enough of this. I have referred to these things, not because they relate to myself, but because the condition of opinion in English society at present affords material for profitable study; and my own position at this moment supplies a favourable opportunity. In the midst of the meddlesomeness, I do not overlook the humanity thus evidenced. My only feeling of concern arises from seeing how much moral injury and suffering is created by the superstitions of the Christian mythology; and again, from the Edition: current; Page: [112] chaotic state of opinion among Christians themselves, and among those who would fain retain the name, while giving up all the essentials, and unfurnished with a basis of conviction, while striving to make the fabrics of the imagination serve the purpose. — As for me, who unexpectedly find myself on the side of the majority of thoughtful persons on these questions, I am of course abundantly solaced with sympathy which I can accept; and I am more and more sensible, as I recede from the active scenes of life, of the surpassing value of a philosophy which is the natural growth of the experience and study, — perhaps I may be allowed to say, — the progression of a life. While conscious, as I have ever been, of being encompassed by ignorance on every side, I cannot but acknowledge that philosophy has opened my way before me, and given a staff into my hand, and thrown a light upon my path, so as to have long delivered me from doubt and fear. It has moreover been the joy of my life, harmonising and animating all its details, and making existence itself a festival. Day by day do I feel that it is indeed

“Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose;

But musical as is Apollo’s lute.”

A state like mine of late has its peculiar privileges, — the first felt of which is its freedom from cares and responsibilities. I have hitherto loved solitude perhaps unduly; partly, no doubt, on account of my deafness, which, from its attendant fatigues, has rendered solitude necessary, to husband my strength, — (always, I now suspect, below the average,) for my work; but partly also from the unusual amount of intellectual labour which it has been my duty to undertake. Now, when my work is done, I am enjoying genuine holiday, for the first time for a quarter of a century. I relish, very keenly, the tending of affection, and the lawful transference of my responsibilities to the young and strong, and those who have a tract of life before them, and who are pausing on their way to give me the help I need. I am now free for intellectual luxury, — to read what charms me most, without the feeling that I am playing truant from the school of technical knowledge, for which I shall have no further occasion. Edition: current; Page: [113] Again, I enjoy the free expenditure of my resources. It is something pleasant not to have to consider money, — the money which I have earned, and laid up to meet such an occasion. But it is more and better not to grudge my time. My hours are now best spent in affectionate intercourses, and in giving a free flow to every passing day. I need not spare my eyes, nor husband my remaining hearing. I may, in short, make a free and lavish holiday before I go.

Such is the selfish aspect of the case; and I am bound, having begun, to tell the whole case. — Far greater are the privileges I enjoy in regard to the world outside my home. I need not say that one’s interests in regard to one’s race, and to human life in the abstract, deepen in proportion to the withdrawal of one’s own personal implication with them. Judging by my own experience, one’s hopes rise, and one’s fears decline as one recedes from the action and personal solicitude which are necessary in the midst of life, but which have a more or less blinding and perturbing influence on one’s perception and judgment. When at the zenith, clouds are apt to come between one’s particular star and the wide world; whereas, on the clear horizon, at the moment of the star’s sinking, nothing intervenes to shroud or distort the glorious scene. I was always hopeful for the world; but never so much so as now, when I am at full leisure to see things as they are, and placed apart where the relation of the past and the future become clear, and the meeting-point of the present is seen in something like its due proportion. It appears to me now that, while I see much more of human difficulty from ignorance, and from the slow working (as we weak and transitory beings consider it) of the law of Progress, I discern the working of that great law with far more clearness, and therefore with a far stronger confidence, than I ever did before.

When I look at my own country, and observe the nature of the changes which have taken place even within my own time, I have far more hope than I once had that the inevitable political reconstitution of our state may take place in a peaceable and prosperous manner. There have been times in my life when, having a far obscurer view than I now entertain of the Edition: current; Page: [114] necessity of a total change in the form of government, I yet apprehended a revolution in the fearful sense in which the word was understood in my childhood, when the great French Revolution was the only pattern of that sort of enterprise. I now strongly hope that, whenever our far-famed British Constitution gives place to a new form of government, it may be through the ripened will of the people, and therefore in all good will and prudence. That the change must be made, sooner or later, was certain from the time when the preponderance of the aristocratic over the regal element in our state became a fact. From the natural alliance between king and people, and the natural antagonism of aristocracy and people, the occurrence of a revolution is always, in such a case, a question merely of time. In our case, the question of time is less obscure than it was in my childhood. The opponents of the Reform Bill were right enough, as every body now sees, in saying that the Constitution was destroyed by that act; though wrong, of course, in supposing that they could have preserved the balance by preventing the act of reform. A constitution of checks and balances, made out of old materials, can never be more than a provisional expedient; and, when the balance is destroyed, — when the power of the Crown is a mere lingering sentiment, and the Commons hold the Lords in the hollow of their hand, while no recent House of Commons has been in any degree worthy of such a trust, the alternative is simply between a speedy revolution with an unworthy House of Commons, or a remoter one, with a better legislature in the mean time. The circumstances of the hour in which I write seem to show that so much social change is near as may be caused by the exposure of administrative incompetence under the stress of the war. It may be this, or it may be something else which will rouse the people to improve the House of Commons: and under an improved House of Commons, the establishment of a new method of government may be long delayed. From the general state of prosperity and contentment at home, the retrieval of Ireland, the rapid advance of many good popular objects, and the raising of the general tone of the popular mind, we may hope that what Edition: current; Page: [115] has to be done will be done well. — Meantime, the thing that causes me most anxiety, in regard to our political condition, is the universal ignorance or carelessness about the true sphere of legislation. Before the people can be in any degree fit for the improved institutions, it is highly necessary that they should understand, and be agreed upon, the true function of legislation and government; and this is precisely what even our best men, in and out of parliament, seem to know nothing about. I regard this as a most painful and perilous symptom of our condition, — though it has been brought to light by beneficent action which is, in another view, altogether encouraging. Our benevolence towards the helpless, and our interest in personal morality, have grown into a sort of public pursuit; and they have taken such a hold on us that we may fairly hope that the wretched and the wronged will never more be thrust out of sight. But, in the pursuit of our new objects, we have fallen back, — far further than 1688, — in the principle of our legislative proposals, — undertaking to provide by law against personal vices, and certain special social contracts, while refusing that legitimate legislative boon, — a system of national education, — which would supersede the vices and abuses complained of by intelligence more effectually than acts of parliament can ever obviate them by penalty. If I were to form one hope rather than another in relation to the political condition of England, it would be that my countrymen should rise to the level of their time, and of their intelligence in other respects, in regard to the true aims of government and legitimate function of legislation.

As to the wider political prospects outside our own empire, I am of much the same opinion now as when I wrote a certain letter to an Anti-slavery friend in America in 1849, which I will subjoin. That letter was published in the newspapers at the time by my correspondent, and it has been republished in England since the outbreak of the war with Russia.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

October 1st, 1849

October 1st, 1849

.

“My Dear —;

We can think of little else at present than of that which should draw you and us into closer sympathy than Edition: current; Page: [116] even that which has so long existed between us. We, on our side the water, have watched with keen interest the progress of your War of Opinion, — the spread of the great controversy which cannot but revolutionize your social principles and renovate your social morals. For fifteen years past, we have seen that you are ‘in for it,’ and that you must stand firm amidst the subversion of Ideas, Customs and Institutions, till you find yourselves encompassed by ‘the new heavens and the new earth’ of which you have the sure promise and foresight.

We, — the whole population of Europe, — are now evidently entering upon a stage of conflict no less important in its issues, and probably more painful in its course. You remember how soon after the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars our great Peace Minister, Canning, intimated the advent, sooner or later, of a War of Opinion in Europe; a war of deeper significance than Napoleon could conceive of, and of a wider spread than the most mischievous of his quarrels. The war of Opinion which Canning foresaw was in fact a war between the further and nearer centuries, — between Asia and Europe, — between despotism and self-government. The preparations were begun long ago. The Barons at Runnymede beat up for recruits when they hailed the signature of Magna Charta; and the princes of York and Lancaster did their best to clear the field for us and those who are to come after us. The Italian Republics wrought well for us, and so did the French Revolutions, one after the other as hints and warnings; and so did the voyage of your Mayflower, — and the Swiss League, and German Zollverein, and in short, every thing that has happened for several hundreds of years. Every thing has tended to bring our continent and its resident nations to the knowledge that the first principles of social liberty have now to be asserted and contended for, and to prepare the assertors for the greatest conflict that the human race has yet witnessed. It is my belief that the war has actually begun, and that, though there may be occasional lulls, no man now living will see the end of it.

Russia is more Asiatic than European. It is obscure to us who live nearest to her where her power resides. We know only that it is not with the Emperor, nor yet with the people. The Emperor is evidently a mere show, — being nothing except while he fulfils the policy or pleasure of the unnamed power which we cannot discern. But, though the ruling power is obscure, the policy is clear enough. The aim is to maintain and extend despotism; and the means chosen are the repression of mind, the corruption of conscience, and the reduction of the whole composite population of Russia to a brute Edition: current; Page: [117] machine. For a great lapse of time, no quarter of a century has passed without some country and nation having fallen in, and become a compartment of the great machine; and, the fact being so, the most peace-loving of us can hardly be sorry that the time has come for deciding whether this is to go on, — whether the Asiatic principle and method of social life are to dominate or succumb. The struggle will be no contemptible one. The great tarantula has its spider-claws out and fixed at inconceivable distances. The people of Russia, wretched at home, are better qualified for foreign aggression than for any thing else. And if, within her own empire, Russia knows all to be loose and precarious, poor and unsound, and with none but a military organisation, she knows that she has for allies, avowed or concealed, all the despotic tempers that exist among men. Not only such Governments as those of Spain, Portugal, Rome and Austria are in reality the allies of Eastern barbarism; but all aristocracies, — all self-seekers, — be they who and where they may. It is a significant sign of the times that territorial alliances are giving way before political affinities, — the mechanical before the essential union: and, if Russia has not for allies the nations that live near her frontier, she has those men of every nation who prefer self-will to freedom.

This corrupted “patriarchal” system of society, (but little superior to that which exists in your slave States) occupies one-half of the great battle-field where the hosts are gathering for the fight. On the other, the forces are ill-assorted, ill-organised, too little prepared; but still, as having the better cause, sure, I trust, of final victory. The conflict must be long, because our constitutions are, like yours, compromises, our governments as yet a mere patch-work, our popular liberties scanty and adulterated, and great masses of our brethren hungry and discontented. We have not a little to struggle for among ourselves, when our whole force is needed against the enemy. In no country of Europe is the representative system of government more than a mere beginning. In no country of Europe is human brotherhood practically asserted. Nowhere are the principles of civilisation of Western Europe determined and declared, and made the ground-work of organised action, as happily your principles are as against those of your slave-holding opponents. But, raw and ill-organised as are our forces, they will be strong, sooner or later, against the serried armies of the Asiatic policy. If, on the one side, the soul comes up to battle with an imperfect and ill-defended body, on the other, the body is wholly without a soul, and must, in the end, fall to pieces. The best part of the mind of Western Europe Edition: current; Page: [118] will make itself a body by dint of action, and the pressure which must bring out its forces; and it may be doubted whether it could become duly embodied in any other way. What forms of society may arise as features of this new growth, neither you nor I can say. We can only ask each other whether, witnessing as we do the spread of Communist ideas in every free nation of Europe, and the admission by some of the most cautious and old-fashioned observers of social movements that we in England cannot now stop short of “a modified communism,” the result is not likely to be a wholly new social state, if not a yet undreamed-of social idea.

“However this may be, — while your slave question is dominant in Congress, and the Dissolution of your Union is becoming a familiar idea, and an avowed aspiration, our crisis is no less evidently approaching. Russia has Austria under her foot, and she is casting a corner of her wide pall over Turkey. England and France are awake and watchful; and so many men of every country are astir, that we may rely upon it that not only are territorial alliances giving way before political affinities, but national ties will give way almost as readily, if the principles of social liberty should demand the disintegration of nations. Let us not say, even to ourselves, whether we regard such an issue with hope or fear. It is a possibility too vast to be regarded but with simple faith and patience. In this spirit let us contemplate what is proceeding, and what is coming, doing the little we can by a constant assertion of the principles of social liberty, and a perpetual watch for opportunities to stimulate human progress.

“Whether your conflict will be merely a moral one, you can form a better idea than I. Ours will consist in a long and bloody warfare — possibly the last, but inevitable now. The empire of brute force can conduct its final struggle only by brute force; and there are but few yet on the other side who have any other notion or desire. While I sympathise wholly with you as to your means as well as your end, you will not withhold your sympathy from us because our heroes still assert their views and wills by exposing themselves to wounds and death in the field, and assenting once more to the old non sequitur about Might and Right. Let them this time obtain the lower sort of Might by the inspiration of their Right, and in another age, they will aim higher. But I need not thus petition you; for I well know that where there is most of Right, there will your sympathies surely rest.

“Believe me your friend,

“HARRIET MARTINEAU.”

Edition: current; Page: [119]

I have no doubt whatever of the power of France and England to chastise Russia, without the aid of any other power. I should have no doubt of the power of England alone (if that power were well administered) to humble Russia, provided the case remained a simple one. But that is precisely what appears impossible, under the existing European dynasties. I now expect, as I have anticipated for many years, a war in Europe which may even outlast the century, — with occasional lulls; and I suppose the result must be, after a dreary chaotic interval, a discarding of the existing worn-out methods of government, and probably the establishment of society under a wholly new idea. Of course, none but a prophet could be expected to declare what that new idea will be. It would be rational, but it is not necessary here, to foretell what it would not be or include. But all that I feel called on to say now, when I am not writing a political essay, is that the leading feature of any such radical change must be a deep modification of the institution of Property; — certainly in regard to land, and probably in regard to much else. Before any effectual social renovation can take place, men must efface the abuse which has grown up out of the transition from the feudal to the more modern state; the abuse of land being held as absolute property; whereas in feudal times land was in a manner held in trust, inasmuch as every land-holder was charged with the subsistence of all who lived within his bounds. The old practice of Man holding Man as property is nearly exploded among civilised nations; and the analogous barbarism of Man holding the surface of the globe as property cannot long survive. The idea of this being a barbarism is now fairly formed, admitted, and established among some of the best minds of the time; and the result is, as in all such cases, ultimately secure.

These considerations lead my thoughts to America; and I must say that I regard the prospects of the republic of the United States with more pain and apprehension than those of any other people in the civilised world. It is the only instance, I believe, of a nation being inferior to its institutions; and the result will be, I fear, a mournful spectacle to the world. I am Edition: current; Page: [120] not thinking chiefly, at this moment, of American slavery. I have shown elsewhere what I think and expect about that. Negro slavery in the United States, as regards the existing Union, is near its end, I have no doubt. I regard with a deeper concern the manifest retrogression of the American people, in their political and social character. They seem to be lapsing from national manliness into childhood, — retrograding from the aims and interests of the nineteenth century into those of the fifteenth and sixteenth. Their passion for territorial aggrandisement, for gold, for buccaneering adventure, and for vulgar praise, are seen miserably united with the pious pretensions and fraudulent ingenuity which were, in Europe, old-fashioned three centuries ago, and which are now kept alive only in a few petty or despised States, where dynasty is on its last legs. I know that there are better men, and plenty of them, in America than those who represent the nation in the view of Europe; but those better men are silent and inactive; and the national retrogression is not visibly retarded by them. I fear it cannot be. I fear that when the bulk of a nation is below its institutions, — whether by merely wanting the requisite knowledge, or by being in an immature moral condition, — it is not the intelligence and virtue of a small, despairing, inactive minority that can save it from lapse into barbarism. I fear that the American nation is composed almost entirely of the vast majority who coarsely boast, and the small minority who timidly despair, of the Republic. It appears but too probable that the law of Progression may hold good with regard to the world at large without preventing the retrogression of particular portions of the race. But the American case is not exactly of this kind. I rather take it to be that a few wise men, under solemn and inspiring influences, laid down a loftier political programme than their successors were able to fulfil. If so, there is, whatever disappointment, no retrogression, properly speaking. We supposed the American character and policy to be represented by the chiefs of the revolution, and their Declaration of Independence and republican constitution; and now we find ourselves mistaken in our supposition. It is a disappointment; but we Edition: current; Page: [121] had rather admit a disappointment than have to witness an actual retrogression.

Effacing these national distinctions, in regarding the peoples as the human race, the condition of humanity appears to one who is taking leave of it very hopeful, though as yet exceedingly infantine. It is my deliberate opinion that the one essential requisite of human welfare in all ways is scientific knowledge of human nature. It is my belief that we can in no way but by sound knowledge of Man learn, fully and truly, any thing else; and that it is only when glimpses of that knowledge were opened, — however scantily and obscurely, — that men have effectually learned any thing else. I believe that this science is fairly initiated; and it follows of course that I anticipate for the race amelioration and progression at a perpetually accelerated rate. Attention is fully fixed now on the nature and mode of development of the human being; and the key to his mental and moral organisation is found. The old scoff of divines against philosophers must now soon be dropped, — the reproach that they have made no advance for a thousand years; — that there were philosophers preaching two thousand years ago, who have hardly a disciple at this day. In a little while this can never more be said; nor could it be said now by any one who understood the minds of the people among whom he lives. The glorious aims and spirit of philosophy have wrought for good in every age since those ancient sages lived; and the name and image of each is the morning star of the day in which each lived. In this way were the old philosophers truly our masters; and they may yet claim, in a future age, the discipleship of the whole human race. But to them scientific fact was wanting: by them it was unattainable. Their aim and their spirit have led recent generations to the discovery of the element wanting, — the scientific fact; and, now that is done, the progression of philosophy is secure. The philosophy of human nature is placed on a scientific basis; and it, and all other departments of philosophy, (for all depend mainly on this one) are already springing forward so as to be wholly incomparable with those of a thousand years ago. There is no need to retort the scoff of Edition: current; Page: [122] divines, as facts are against them. There is no need to inquire of them what is the state of Christianity at the end of 1800 years, nor what it has done in regenerating human nature, and establishing peace on earth and goodwill among men, according to its promise. Leaving divines on one side, as professionally disqualified for judging of the function and prospects of philosophy, and looking at the matter in a speculative, and not an antagonistic way, I should say that the time cannot be far off when, throughout the civilised world, theology must go out before the light of philosophy. As to the fact, the civilised world is now nearly divided between gross Latin or Greek catholicism and disbelief of Christianity in any form. Protestantism seems to be going out as fast as possible. In Germany the Christian faith is confessedly extinct; and in France it is not far otherwise. The Lutheranism of Sweden is, in its effects, precisely like the catholicism of Spain or Italy, and will issue in “infidelity” in the one country as surely as in the others. In England, the lamentations of the religious world, and the disclosures of the recent Census, show how even outward adhesion to Christianity is on the decline: and if they did not, the chaotic state of religious opinion would indicate the fact no less reliably. In America we see Protestantism run wild, — each man being his own creed-maker; and the result, — a seeking erelong for something true and stable, — is secure. — Not only is such the state of the civilised world, but it must be so. Precisely in proportion to Man’s ignorance of his own nature, as well as of other things, is the tendency of his imagination to inform the outward world with his own consciousness. The fetish worshipper attributes a consciousness like his own to every thing about him; the imputation becomes more select and rare through every rising grade of theology, till the Christian makes his reflex of himself invisible and intangible, or, as he says, “spiritual.” His God is an invisible idol, fading away into a faint abstraction, exactly according to the enlightenment of the worshipper, till he who does justice to his own faculties gives up the human attributes, and the personality of that First Cause which the form of his intellect requires him to suppose, Edition: current; Page: [123] and is called an atheist by the idolaters he has left behind him. By the verification and spread of the science of human nature, the conflict which has hitherto attended such attainment as this will be spared to our successors. When scientific facts are established, and self-evident truths are brought out of them, there is an end of conflict; — or it passes on to administer discipline to adventurers in fresh fields of knowledge. About this matter, of the extinction of theology by a true science of human nature, I cannot but say that my expectation amounts to absolute assurance; and that I believe that the worst of the conflict is over. I am confident that a bright day is coming for future generations. Our race has been as Adam created at nightfall. The solid earth has been but dark, or dimly visible, while the eye was inevitably drawn to the mysterious heavens above. There, the successive mythologies have arisen in the east, each a constellation of truths, each glorious and fervently worshipped in its course; but the last and noblest, the Christian, is now not only sinking to the horizon, but paling in the dawn of a brighter time. The dawn is unmistakable; and the sun will not be long in coming up. The last of the mythologies is about to vanish before the flood of a brighter light.

With the last of the mythologies will pass away, after some lingering, the immoralities which have attended all mythologies. Now, while the state of our race is such as to need all our mutual devotedness, all our aspiration, all our resources of courage, hope, faith and good cheer, the disciples of the Christian creed and morality are called upon, day by day, to “work out their own salvation with fear and trembling,” and so forth. Such exhortations are too low for even the wavering mood and quacked morality of a time of theological suspense and uncertainty. In the extinction of that suspense, and the discrediting of that selfish quackery, I see the prospect, for future generations, of a purer and loftier virtue, and a truer and sweeter heroism than divines who preach such self-seeking can conceive of. When our race is trained in the morality which belongs to ascertained truth, all “fear and trembling” will be left to children; and men will have risen to a capacity for higher work Edition: current; Page: [124] than saving themselves, — to that of “working out” the welfare of their race, not in “fear and trembling,” but with serene hope and joyful assurance.

The world as it is is growing somewhat dim before my eyes; but the world as it is to be looks brighter every day.

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INDEX.

Abolitionists, the, I. 337, 338; meeting of, I. 347-352.

Accession, the Queen’s, I. 417.

Advice, I. 501.

“Ages, The Three,” I. 192.

Aid and kindness, I. 464.

Aikin, Dr., I. 78, 79.

Aikin, Miss, I. 229, 230, 323, 324.

Ailsie, I. 435, 436.

Alarm, an, I. 393, 394.

Alcott, I. 387

Alderson, Dr., I. 226.

Althorp, Lord, I. 196-199.

Ambleside, arrival at, I. 494.

Amende, vicious, I. 359.

“America, Society in,” I. 465.

Anxieties, I. 188.

Appearance in print, first, I. 91.

Arnold, Mr., II. 41.

Arnold, Mrs., I. 499.

Aspland, Lindsey, II. 96.

Athenæum, the, I. 475, 476.

Atkinson Letters, the, II. 36-56.

Atkinson, Mr., friend of Basil Montagu, I. 489, first sight of, I. 489; recovery owing to, I. 489; philosophical method of, I. 491; reviewers overlook it, I. 492; letters on man’s nature and development, I. 492; central truth apprehended by, I. 493; letter of H. M. to, I. 539; reply to H. M’s. letter, I. 542; London lecturer’s mistake of, II. 75; account of what man can know, II. 76-81; receives the result of Dr. Latham’s visit, II. 102.

Attention, request to the reader’s, I. 2.

Austen, Miss, I. 77, 323.

Austin, Colonel, I. 366, 367.

Austin, Mrs., I. 265.

Authoress, an, I. 280, 281.

Authorship, courage in, I. 151.

Autobiography, I. 7.

Babbage, Mr., I. 201, 209, 265, 267.

Back, I. 209.

Bacon, I. 263, 516; II. 28, 53, 79, 89.

Baille, Joanna, I. 266, 270, 271.

Baldwin and Cradock, I. 123, 124.

Barbauld, Mrs., I. 26, 78, 228, 243, 270.

Barnes, Mr., I. 168, 169.

Beachy Head, trip to, I. 183.

Beaufort, Admiral, I. 268.

Beckwith, Mr., I. 41, 42.

Bell, Currer, II. 21-25, 45, 64.

Bell, Sir C., I. 272.

Belles, ancient, I. 279.

Belsham, Mr., I. 29.

Bentley, I. 380, 399, 400.

Berry, Miss, I. 277-279, 330, 399, 400; Appendix A., I. 553.

“Billow and the Rock, The,” I. 531.

Birth of the youngest, I. 39.

Bishop, I. 256.

Bishops, the, I. 255.

Bolton Abbey, II. 33.

Book, scheme of, I. 538, 539.

Boston, reaction in, I. 356.

Bowring, I. 311.

Bremer, Miss, II. 322.

Bright, Mr., I. 521.

Brontë, Miss, I. 324; II. 23, 41, 64, 66.

Brooks, Rev C., I. 361, 362.

Brougham, I. 164, 169, 203, 233-237, 254, 255, 266, 329, 425, 460, 462.

Brown, Dr. Samuel, I. 435.

Browning, Mrs., I. 412.

Brownings, the, I. 266, 314, 315.

Buckland, I. 209.

Boller, C. and A., I. 425, 426.

Buller, Charles, I. 257, 258, 462; II. 60.

Bulwer, I. 180, 264, 266, 267.

Bunsen, Chevalier, I. 537.

Burney, Fanny, I. 4.

Byron, II. 50.

Byron, Lady, I. 463, 464.

Calhoun, I. 343, 372, 378.

Callcott, Sir A., I. 273.

Campbell, I. 265, 267, 400, 467.

Campbell, Lord, I. 255; II. 51.

Canning, I. 61; II. 18, 116.

Edition: current; Page: [126]

Carlisle, Lord, I. 374.

Carlyle, I. 287-289, 326, 407, 468.

Carlyles, the, I. 284.

Carpenter, Dr., I. 26, 73, 79, 80, 466.

Carpenter, Miss, II. 84.

Castlereagh, I. 61.

Chadwick, I. 308.

Chalmers, Dr., I. 308, 327.

Chambers, Lord Advocate’s, I. 242.

Chambers, R., I. 433; II. 20.

Chances, Messrs., II. 69.

Chandos, Lord, I. 425.

Changes, domestic, II. 83.

Channing, Dr., I. 80, 256, 327, 353, 357, 359, 363, 365, 368, 506.

Channing’s, Dr., advice, I. 365.

Chantrey, I. 273, 274.

Chapman, Mr., II. 64, 66, 67, 97, 98, 101.

Chapman, Mrs., I. 390.

Chaucer, I. 218.

Child, Mr. D. L., I. 368.

Chorley, I. 317, 318.

“Cinnamon and Pearls,” I. 185.

Citizens, apathy of, I. 369.

Clarke, Sir Charles, I. 472.

Clay, Mr., I. 343, 344, 372, 378, 379.

Cobbett, I. 61, 93; II. 34.

Cobden, I. 523-526.

Coke, Mr., I. 467.

Colburn, I. 400, 402, 403.

Coleridge, I. 298-300; II. 32.

College, Haileybury, I. 248.

Collins, Mr., I. 172, 173.

Colonization scheme, I. 338.

Coltman, I. 255.

Columbus, II. 10, 70.

Combes, the, I. 313.

Companion, travelling, I. 331.

“Complete Guide,” II. 32.

Composition, methods of, I. 93, 94, 327, 328.

Comte, II. 57-59, 64-67, 70-76, 82, 84.

Comte, rendering, II. 59.

Congleton, Lord, I. 467.

Conroy, Sir John, I. 417.

Conversation, ominous, I. 339.

Conviction, grasp of a, I. 83.

Cooper, Mrs. Lewis, I. 16.

Coronation, the, I. 419-424.

Country, last view of, II. 113-115.

Cousins, clever, I. 70.

Cranworth, I. 255.

Cresson, Elliott, I. 149-151, 338.

Crisis, reform, I. 163.

Critics, Comte’s, II. 73-76.

Croker, Mr., I. 151, 155, 157, 158.

Crompton, I. 255.

Cropper, Mr., I. 149-151.

Crowe, Mrs., I. 435.

Cruger, Mrs. Douglas, I. 356.

Cunningham, Allan, I. 274.

“Daily News,” the, II. 87.

Dalton, Dr., I. 269, 467.

D’Arblay, Madame, I. 4.

Darwin, Charles, I. 268.

Davy, I. 298.

Davy, Lady, I. 265.

Deafness, I. 55-58.

Death, first, I. 43.

Death of betrothed, I. 100.

Death of brother and his child, I. 96, 97.

Death of father, I. 99.

Decline, brother’s, I. 96.

“Deerbrook,” I. 413, 414.

Devices, politic, I. 400.

Deville, Mr., I. 297.

Dickens, I. 170, 180, 514; II. 25, 60, 62, 67, 91, 93, 94.

Disappointment, I. 113, 125.

Discipline, I. 35.

Discouragement, I. 127-130.

Dissection Bill, Mr. Warburton’s, I. 295.

Doddridge, I. 4.

Dream, infant, I. 11.

Dreaming, mesmeric, I. 515, 516.

Dreams, vain-glorious, I. 34.

Dresser, Amos, I. 363.

Drummond, Mr., I. 15, 34, 60, 165, 196, 198.

Drummond, Thomas, I. 467.

Dryden, I. 215.

Durham, Lord, I. 193, 236, 237, 257, 258, 260, 425-428, 461, 467.

“Eastern Life,” I. 551.

Eastlake, Sir C., I. 276, 277.

Edgeworth, Miss, I. 93, 94, 319, 320, 324.

Education, careful, I. 20, 21.

Effort, literary, I. 104-107, 112.

Efforts, fruitless, I. 126.

Embarkation, I. 332.

Emerson, Charles, I. 375.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, I. 375, 382, 549.

Empson, Mr., I. 160, 162, 245, 250.

Encouragement, first, I. 131.

Enfield, Dr., I. 226.

Engagements, spring, II. 91.

Essays, prize, I. 119-121.

Esterhazy, Prince, I. 421.

Evans, Mr., I. 293.

Everett, Mr. Edward, I. 352, 375, 380.

Ewart, Mr., I. 532.

Exercises, Sunday, I. 25.

Experience and progress, I. 466-471.

Fanaticism, I. 73.

Faraday, I. 209, 298.

Farming, small, II. 34, 35.

Father, I. 97.

Fiction, plot in, I. 181.

Field, buying a, I. 499.

Fillmore, I. 380.

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Fisher, Mr. and Mrs., I. 283.

Flattery, I. 387.

Foliage, thirst for, I. 487.

Follen, Dr., II. 100.

Follen, Dr. and Mrs., I. 344, 345, 347, 352, 363, 366, 369, 390, 466.

Fonblanque, II. 33.

Forbes, Dr., I. 519.

“Forest and Game-Law Tales,” I. 521.

Fox, Mr., I. 106, 110-112, 115, 124, 126, 127, 129, 152, 190, 194, 230, 329.

Franklin, Dr., I. 27.

Friends, American, I. 391.

Fry, Mrs., I. 173.

Fuller, Margaret, I. 380-384, 517.

Garrison, I. 338, 346, 365, 369, 372, 373.

Gift, a fairy, I. 503.

Gillies, Miss, I. 293, 294.

Gilman, Mr. and Mrs., I. 298.

Gilman, Mrs., I. 344.

Glasscock, Captain, I. 535.

Godwin, I. 301-305.

Gregory, Professor, I. 515, 517.

Grey, Lord, I. 460, 461, 467.

Grote, Mr., I. 260.

“Guide to Service,” I. 416.

Guizot, M., I. 177.

Gurney, Joseph John, I. 228.

Gurney, Priscilla, I. 228.

Gurneys, the, I. 134.

Hale, Mr., I. 353, 354.

Hall, Mr. Spencer, I. 473, 475.

Hall, Mrs. S. C., I. 412.

Hallam, Mr., I. 230, 231, 239, 245, 250-252, 325, 486, 497.

Hallams, the, I. 250.

Halliday, Mrs., I. 444.

Harness, I. 253.

Harper, Mr., I. 398, 400.

Hartley on Man, I. 80, 81.

Hayne, Governor, I. 343.

Henley, Lord, I. 203, 331, 467.

Herschel, Sir John, I. 209, 431.

Hill, Rowland, I. 309, 310; II. 89.

History, Introductory, II. 19.

Hoax, the Fraser, I. 320.

Holidays, I. 283.

Holland, Dr., I. 250.

Holland, Lady, I. 245.

Holley, Mrs., I. 366.

Holm, Mr., I. 298.

Holman, I. 186.

Home, life at, II. 89.

Home, London, I. 189.

Home, return, II. 103.

Horne, I. 287.

Horner, I. 241.

Host, Philadelphia, I. 360.

Houlstons, the, I. 102-105.

“Hour and the Man, The,” I. 446.

“Household Education,” II. 4.

“Household Words,” II. 31.

“Household Words,” secession from, II. 93, 94.

House-hunting, I. 497.

Howitt, Mr. and Mrs., I. 313.

“How to observe,” I. 416.

Hume, Mr., I. 135, 149.

Hunt, F. K., II. 82, 85, 87-89, 96, 98.

Hunt, Leigh, I. 287.

Hunt, Mr., death of, II. 99.

Hutton, I. 283.

Hutton, Messrs., II. 70.

Illness, I. 193, 443.

Illness, false sentiment about, I. 441.

Illness, last, II. 101.

Impressions, early, I. 9.

Interdicts, foreign, I. 179.

Interference, I. 453-455.

Introduction, I. 1-6.

Invitations, political, II. 11-14.

“Ireland, Letters from,” II. 85.

Jackson, Francis, I. 347, 349, 352.

Jackson, President, I. 378.

Jameson, Mrs., I. 265.

Jane, servant, I. 518-521.

Jeffrey, I. 237-239, 241, 246, 297, 506.

Jeffrey, Mrs., I. 337.

Jerrold, Douglas, I. 180; II. 32.

J., Miss, I. 331, 332.

Jocelyn, Lord, II. 99.

Johnson, Dr., I. 3, 221.

Johnstone, Sir Alexander, I. 185-187.

Journey, a, I. 531.

Journey, autumn, I. 428-430.

Journey, first long, I. 23.

Joux, trip to, I. 437.

Julius, Dr., I. 335, 336, 340, 341, 360.

Keats, I. 508.

Kelty, Miss, I. 321.

Kemble, Fanny, I. 180.

Kembles, the, I. 275, 276.

Kenrick, Mr., I. 79.

Ker, Mrs., I. 283.

Kneeland, Abner, I. 359.

Knight, Mr. Charles, I. 332, 408, 416, 428, 429, 449; II. 2, 4, 18.

Laing, Mr., I. 164, 455.

Lambton, George, I. 428.

Landon, Miss, I. 318.

Landseer, Sir E., I. 265.

Lansdowne, Lord and Lady, I. 251, 296.

Lardner, Dr., I. 430.

Latham, Dr., II. 101, 102.

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Lawyers, the, I. 254.

Lectures, II. 4-10.

Lee, James Martineau, I. 107.

Legacies, anatomical, I. 295.

Leicester, Lord, I. 467.

Lessons, our, I. 41.

Letters, publication of, I. 2-6.

“Letters on Man’s Nature and Development,” II. 30.

Life, leaving, II. 105-112.

Life, single, I. 100-102.

Lindsay, Lady C., I. 425.

Lionism, literary, I. 141, 205-225.

Littré, II. 57.

Lockhart, Mr., I. 151, 154-158, 414, 434.

Lodgings, Birmingham, II. 69.

Lofft, Capel, Jr., I. 313, 314.

Lombe, Mr., II. 66, 67, 74, 97.

Loring, E. G., I. 344, 345, 348-350, 355, 363, 364.

Lovejoy, I. 363.

Luxuries, new, II. 86.

Lyells, the, I. 268, 269, 326.

Lytton, E. L. Bulwer, I. 472.

Macaulay, I. 245, 261-264.

Macgregor, I. 311.

Machinations, I. 480.

Macready, I. 274, 293, 314, 317; II. 33.

Madge, Mr., I. 26, 28, 47.

Madison, I. 380.

Malthus, Mr., I. 54, 151-153, 158-160, 191, 247, 248.

Marcet, Mrs., I. 105, 106, 176, 178, 237.

Marsh, Mrs., I. 111, 283, 284.

Marshall, Chief Justice, I. 380, 395, 396.

Martineau, Philip Meadows, I. 6, 76.

May, Rev. S. J., I. 349, 352.

Mazzini, I. 285, 286.

McIan, I. 488.

Meeting, British Association, I. 430.

Melbourne, Lord, I. 417, 418, 422, 425, 462, 463.

Memorial, Boston (Appendix B.), I. 557, 558.

Mental training, differences of, I. 493.

Men, vain, I. 264, 265.

Mesmerism, trial of, I. 474.

Metternich, Prince, I. 176.

Mill, James, I. 329.

Mill, Mr. J. S., I. 313, 408.

Milman, I. 239, 240.

Milnes, R. M., I. 258-260, 279.

Milton, I. 26, 32, 83, 325.

Minot, I. 359.

Miscellanies, II. 31.

Mitford, Miss, I. 315-317.

Money, love of, I. 19.

Montagu, Basil, I. 305, 306, 473, 489.

Montaigne, II. 89.

Monteagle, Lord, I. 310.

Moore, I. 232, 233.

Morgan, Lady, I. 265, 316.

Morpeth, Lord, I. 374.

Mortification, vicious, I. 357.

Mother, death of, II. 15.

Moxon, I. 414, 458, 476, 552.

Murray, Lord, I. 241, 242, 429, 432-434.

Murray, Mr., I. 414, 415, 467, 551; II. 1.

Mystery, a, I. 392-395.

Mystification, I. 24.

Nantes, Edict of, I. 6, 28.

Necessity, doctrine of, I. 84-86.

Needs, religious, I. 31.

New Orleans, night at, I. 392-395.

Newspapers, Boston, I. 355.

Nightingale, Miss, I. 464.

Normanby, Lord, I. 427.

Novel subject for, I. 411.

O’Connell, II. 12, 14.

O’Conner, II. 1, 3, 4.

Opie, Mrs., I. 226, 280, 324.

Osler, Messrs., II. 69.

Otley, I. 399.

Otter, Bishop, I. 257.

Outbreak, I. 66.

Overwork, question of, I. 142.

Owen, Robert, I. 174-176.

Panic, publisher’s, I. 551.

Parable, I. 389, 390.

Parke, Sir James, I. 333.

Parr, Dr., II. 31.

Peabody, Miss, I. 353, 354.

“Peace, History of,” II. 17.

Pedantry, provincial, I. 225.

Peel, Sir R., I. 461.

Penn, William, I. 263.

Pension, Correspondence about a (Appendix B.), I. 587-594.

Pension, offer of, I. 460-463.

Perplexities, theological, I. 31.

Perry, Rev. Isaac, I. 47, 54, 59, 60, 65, 67, 72.

Phillips, I. 274.

“Philosophie Positive,” II. 57, 58, 71.

Philosophy, desideratum in, II. 29.

Philosophy, rest in, II. 28.

Philosophy, restlessness in, II. 27.

Phrenology, hap-hazard, I. 297, 298.

Pierce, I. 380.

“Playfellow, The,” I. 448.

Plot, political, I. 523-526.

Plunket, Lord, II. 13.

Politics, first, I. 18, 61.

Politics, Mediterranean, I. 535.

Poor-Law, new, I. 167.

Porro, Count, II. 14, 15.

Porter, Mr., I. 310-312.

Portraits, I. 293, 294.

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Position, new social, I. 141.

Potter, Mr. G. R., I. 283.

Practice, mesmeric, I. 513.

Prayer, view of, I. 87.

Prejudice, professional, I. 486, 487.

Preparation, method of, I. 147.

Preston, Colonel, I. 343.

Priestley, Dr., I. 81-83, 191, 388.

Print, rushing into, I. 475.

Prisoners, the Canadian, I. 306, 307.

Productions, papers on British, II. 67.

Project, a, II. 25.

Project, new, I. 115.

Proposal, literary, I. 410.

Prosecution for opinion (Appendix B.), I. 557, 558.

Public, the Secularist, I. 550.

Publishers, competition of, I. 399-403.

Publisher, trouble with, I. 191.

Question, the Texas, I. 367, 368.

Question, the vital, I. 371-373.

Question, the Woman, I. 301-303.

Quillinan, Mr., II. 41.

Quincy De, I. 448.

Rammohun Roy, I. 184, 298.

Rankin, Elizabeth, I. 6.

Reading, capacity of, I. 323.

Reid, Mrs., I. 283.

Relations, domestic, I. 77.

Repository, the Monthly, I. 110, 111.

Resolutions, I. 122.

Revelation, problem of, I. 89.

Review, Westminster, the, II. 97.

Richmond, Mr., I. 293, 294.

Rigby, Dr., I. 149.

Robertson, Mr., I. 318.

Roebuck, I. 260, 261, 306.

Rogers, I. 232, 233, 239, 240, 249, 252, 324, 326, 414.

Rogers, Miss, I. 434.

Romer, Mrs., I. 535.

Romillys, I. 249, 255, 305.

Ross, Sir John, I. 246.

Ruin, pecuniary, I. 108, 109.

Rumours, I. 165.

Russell, Lord John, I. 523.

Saunders, I. 400-402, 404.

Saunders and Otley, I. 284, 399, 403.

Savans, the, I. 272.

Sayers, Dr., I. 226.

Scheme, abortive, II. 65.

School, I. 49.

School, close of, I. 53.

Scott, I. 144, 180, 188, 192, 356, 434.

Scrape, a, I. 51.

Sea, A Month at (Appendix C.), I. 559-586.

Sea-side, I. 45.

Season, tourist, I. 529.

Sedgwick, I. 209.

Sedgwick, Miss, I. 376-378, 408, 411.

Sedgwicks, the, I. 359, 376-378.

Senior, Mr., I. 313.

Sensitiveness, Boston, I. 353.

Shakspere, I. 53-55, 67, 180, 218, 219, 224, 270, 293, 325, 429; II. 89.

Shakspere, topographical notes to, I. 429.

Shallowness, Unitarian, I. 29.

Shelley, I. 508.

Shepherd, Lady Mary, I. 279, 280.

“Shirley,” II. 21, 22, 24.

Shyness, I. 42.

“Sick-room, Life in,” I. 456-460.

Sidmouth, I. 61.

Slave-holders, understanding with, I. 343.

Smith, Sir James, I. 226.

Smith, Sydney, I. 145, 186, 237, 244-246, 297, 325, 407, 464.

Snare, a, I. 153.

“Society in America,” I. 405.

Society, old Norwich, I. 225.

Society, the Diffusion, I. 124, 133-135.

Somerville, Mrs., I. 266, 269, 270, 279, 280, 324, 326.

Southey, I. 4, 144, 227, 327, 467.

Stael, Madame de, I. 205.

Stanley, Bishop, I. 256.

Statesmen, baffled, I. 378-380.

Stepney, Lady, I. 280, 281.

Sterling, John, I. 171, 232, 286.

Story, Judge, I. 184.

Story, the old, I. 478.

Stowe, Mrs., I. 358.

Stratheden, Lady, I. 255.

Studies, I. 53.

Studies, biblical, I. 79.

Studies, classical, I. 78.

Studies, topical, I. 512, 513.

Success, I. 135.

Success, results of, I. 201.

Sullivans, the, I. 356, 357.

Sundial again, a, I. 527.

Sunrise, a, I. 13.

Suspension, last, I. 132.

Sydenham, II. 99.

Sydenham, Lord, I. 426, 467.

Tales, early, I. 103.

Tales, materials of, I. 149.

Tales, scenery of, I. 172.

Talfourd, I. 54, 90, 261, 317.

Tappan, Messrs., I. 336.

Taxes, proceedings on, I. 197-199.

Taylor, Mrs. John, I. 226.

Taylor, Mrs. Meadows, I. 19.

Taylor, William, I. 56, 62, 225-227.

Temper, I. 65.

Temper, jealous, I. 15.

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Tennyson, I. 508; II. 89.

Terrors, childish, I. 8, 9.

Testimonial, I. 464, 465.

Testing time, a, I. 375.

Thackeray, I. 180; II. 60, 61.

Thompson, Colonel, I. 523.

Thompson, Mr. George, I. 335, 337, 351, 362.

Thompson, Mr. Vincent, I. 413.

Time, value of, I. 195.

“Times, The,” and the Poor-Law, I. 168-171.

Toynbee, Mr., I. 295, 296.

Travel, conditions of, I. 537.

Travel, invitation to, I. 531.

Travel, need of, I. 330.

Travel, results of, I. 391, 392.

Travel, Scotch, I. 432, 433.

Travellers, British, I. 374.

Tremenheere, Mr. S., I. 503, 510.

Trollope, Mrs., I. 240, 241.

Troubles, personal, I. 69.

Troubles, school, I. 51.

Tuckerman, Miss, I. 353.

Tufnell, Mr., I. 510.

Turner, Ann, I. 14, 22, 33.

Turner, Mr., I. 83.

Twins, Dutch, I. 182.

Tynemouth, going to, I. 443.

Tynemouth, leaving, I. 481.

Tynemouth, window at, I. 445.

Unhappiness, I. 33.

Unitarian Christianity, I. 28-33.

Unitarians, leaving the, I. 119-121.

Urquhart, I. 311, 312.

Visit, country, I. 37.

Visiting, declining local, I. 495.

Visitors, morning, I. 313.

Voyage, critical, I. 533.

Walker, Dr., I. 352-354.

Ware, Henry, I. 346-348, 352, 467.

Warnings, I. 341.

Washington, II. 10, 70.

Wayland, I. 346.

Ways, Belgravian, II. 3.

Ways, village, II. 6.

Webster, I. 372, 378-380.

Wedgwood, I. 283.

“Western Travel, Retrospect of,” I. 407.

Westmacott, I. 274.

Whately, Archbishop, I. 255.

What man can know, II. 76-81.

Whewell, I. 209, 245, 265.

Whishaw, Mr., I. 249-251.

Whisperings on board, I. 336.

Whittaker, I. 126, 127.

Willis, N. P., I. 384, 386.

Wills, Mr., II. 92-95.

Wills, Mr. and Mrs., I. 433.

Windermere, Guide to, II. 91.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, I. 301, 303.

Wordsworth, I. 292, 499, 500, 503-511, 522.

Wordsworth, Mrs., II. 104.

Work, more, I. 170, 409.

Workhouse, night in a, II. 63.

Working, times of, I. 145.

Work of the year, I. 117.

World, last view of, II. 115-124.

Worship, public, I. 17.

Writing, method of, I. 148, 149.

Yates, Mr. and Mrs. R. V., I. 531-533, 552.

Yates, Misses, I. 531.

END OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Edition: current; Page: [131]

MEMORIALS.

Edition: current; Page: [132] Edition: current; Page: [133]

MEMORIALS OF HARRIET MARTINEAU.

BY MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN.

“But do thou, O Muse, and thou, Truth, daughter of Zeus, put forth your hands and keep from me the reproach of having wronged a friend by breaking my pledged word. For from afar hath overtaken me the time that was then yet to come, and hath shamed my deep debt.”

— Pindar.

“The sea-sand none hath numbered; and the joys that Theron hath given to others — who shall declare the tale thereof?”

— Pindar.

BOSTON:

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co

1877.

Edition: current; Page: [134]

Copyright, 1877.

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.

University Press Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge.

Edition: current; Page: [135]

CONTENTS.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . Page 137

Infancy . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Womanhood . . . . . . . . . . 153

Fame . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Foreign Life, — Western . . . . . . . 225

Consequences of Foreign Life, — Without . . . . 285

Consequences of Foreign Life, — Within . . . . 303

Consequences, — to Life Passive . . . . . . 343

Foreign Life, — Eastern . . . . . . . 369

Home . . . . . . . . . . . . 377

Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . 409

The Life Sorrow . . . . . . . . . 427

Work . . . . . . . . . . . 443

Fresh Foreign Intercourse . . . . . . . 475

Conversations . . . . . . . . . . 499

Waiting for Death . . . . . . . . . 527

Self Estimate, and other . . . . . . . 561

Survivorship . . . . . . . . . . 575

Edition: current; Page: [136] Edition: current; Page: [137]

INTRODUCTION.

It was about the New Year’s time of 1855, being then resident in Paris, that I wrote to my most valued friend, Harriet Martineau, expressing the natural feelings of the season, and the hope that she would soon visit me. Knowing that she had been even more than commonly occupied, and not in her usual health, I entreated her to spare herself the fatigue of writing to me, unless she had more leisure at command than I supposed. A few days brought me the following letter: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

January 24th

London

London,

January 24th

.

My dear Friend, —

You are generous in desiring me not to write to you if too busy. I need not say that keeping up my friendship with you is more important than any business, and dearer than most pleasures. I must tell you now why I have not written before; and I wish I could spare you, by the way of telling, any of the pain which I must give you. The last half-year has been the gravest, perhaps, that I have ever known. I think I told you of the sad cholera season when I was at Sydenham, and some of the best people at work among us died, and others were sick, and I had their work to do while ill myself, and sore at heart for the world’s loss in them. Two months later died my very dear friend, the editor of the “Daily News,”* — cut off by a fever at the age of forty, — a man whose place cannot possibly be filled. Since Dr. Follen’s death, I have not had such a personal sorrow; but in sight of his devoted wife and his four children, and the gap made in our public action by his loss, I could not dwell on my own sorrow. And now it turns out that I Edition: current; Page: [138] need not; for I am going to follow him. My dear friend, you are a brave woman, and you have shown that you can serenely part with comrades and friends, and work on for the cause; and you must do the same again. I will try to work with you for such time as I remain; but I am mortally ill, and there is no saying for how long this may be. For many months past I have had symptoms of what now turns out to be organic disease of the heart; — symptoms occasioning so little trouble (no pain), that I did not attend sufficiently to them. Nothing could have been done if I had. The anxiety and fatigue of the autumn increased the ailment, and for a month past, and from week to week, it has become so much worse that I put myself under the charge of Dr. Latham, the first man for heart-complaints. After a little correspondence, we met yesterday. He made a long examination by auscultation, and did not attempt to conceal the nature and extent of the mischief. He made me observe that he gave me his impression, — reserving a positive opinion till he should have watched the case; but the impression was one which he would not have communicated if he had not been very sure of his ground. From his being unable to feel the pulsation of the heart in any direction, while it is audible over a large surface, he believes that the organ is extremely feeble in structure, — “too weak for its work,” — and very greatly enlarged. The treatment prescribed only shows the desperation of the case. We do not yet know when I may return home, — I wish to be there for the latter period, — which may be a long one for aught I know, but I think not, from the great progress the case has made within a month. If I should be living when you are in England, I am sure you will come and see me: you will meet me if I am alive, and we can manage it. If not, my beloved friend, take my blessing on yourself and your labors, and my assurance that my knowledge of you has been one of the greatest privileges and pleasures of my life.

This is not the answer you are looking for to your charming invitation; but such is life, and such a marplot is death! I think you can hardly want much information as to my state of feeling. My life has been a full and vivid one, — so that I consider myself a very old woman indeed, and am abundantly satisfied with my share in the universe (even if that were of any real consequence). I have not the slightest anxiety about dying, — not the slightest reluctance to it. I enjoy looking on, and seeing our world under the operation of a law of progress; and I really do not feel that my dropping out of it, now or a few years hence, is a matter worth drawing attention to at Edition: current; Page: [139] all, — my own or another’s. Your friend’s book arrived safe, — you must have it again, dear friend. Your name is on it, and it shall return to you. I have, as yet, only looked at it. When I go home, I will see whether or not I can read it, and serve it by notice. I hope to work to the last in the “Daily News,” which is easy work, and the most important possible; and now the more so because the present editor is more up to American subjects than any Englishman I have met with. It is really a substantial comfort to find how sound and enlightened and heartily conscientious he is about the vices of Yankeedom and the merits of your true patriots.

And now, dear friend, farewell, at least for the present. If you wish to write, do so. But I do not ask it, because I desire that you should do what is most congenial to your own feelings. If you do write, address to Ambleside, for I cannot at all tell how long I must remain here, and your letters will be constantly forwarded.

My love to your daughters and your sisters, and best wishes to your son-in-law.

I am, while I live,
Your loving friend,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

After the reception of this letter our correspondence became very frequent; for we felt that her hold on life was so precarious, that every interchange of thought or feeling became doubly precious. Her letters to me were all charming in their tone of elevated good sense, deep and tender feeling, and natural cheerfulness.

On the 26th of March I received one which did not fail to produce all the effect that from her long knowledge of me she was so well able to foresee.

“I take courage this fine morning to write to you on the subject nearest my heart. It will come very near to yours too; and that is why I feel a sort of shrinking from exciting so much emotion as my proposition will awaken in you. Also I shall rather dread the quenching of a new hope by your reply. The matter is this. You know I am writing my Autobiography. While it was an infant matter, and there seemed reason to suppose I should not live to do much of it, I yearned to ask you to undertake to finish it. But there seemed too much English literary work. Now, the case is altered. Edition: current; Page: [140] I have done so much, and seem so likely to do more, if not even the whole of the interior life, that I may fairly indulge my first wish, and look to you . . . . to render the last services to me.”

She went on to speak of my peculiar qualifications to treat of the whole remarkable American period of her life, which had so largely modified all that remained; and she mentioned three misgivings she felt in making her request.

First, that I should not have time to fulfil it, in the midst of the antislavery labours in which I was always fully engaged; second, that I might decide it to be injurious to the cause for me to issue the biography of “such an infidel as herself:” and third, that I might praise her too much. — “You greatly overrate me.”

In case of my acceptance, she placed at my discretion the whole immense mass of journals, memoranda, letters, papers, and manuscript studies of her whole life.

There is no need to say what I felt of sorrow and of inadequacy for the service demanded. But I could not hesitate; and I replied, while combating her choice with all the arguments I possessed, that, in case it remained unchanged, there was nothing she could ask that I could refuse: I was wholly at her disposition, living or dying. Her mind remained unchanged, even after the part undertaken by herself was completed: and thus it was that it became my duty to take up the parallel thread of her exterior life, — to gather up and co-ordinate from the materials placed in my hands the illustrative facts and fragments by her omitted or forgotten; and to show, as far as I may, what no mind can see for itself, — the effect of its own personality on the world.

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INFANCY.

“The poor Duckling was hunted about by every one. . . . . And the Cat said to it, ‘Can you bend your back and purr and give out sparks?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then please to have no opinion of your own while sensible folks are speaking.’ And the Duckling sat in a corner, and was melancholy, and the fresh air and the sunshine streamed in, and it was seized with such a longing to swim on the water that it could not help telling the Hen of it. ‘It is so charming to swim, and so refreshing to dive down to the bottom.’ ‘A mighty pleasure,’ said the Hen. ‘I fancy you must have gone crazy. Ask the Cat; ask our mistress the old woman, the cleverest animal I know, and who so clever as she? Do you think they have any desire to swim, and let the water close over their heads?’ ‘You don’t understand me,’ said the Duckling.”

Hans Christian Andersen.

For a thorough comprehension of the eminent personage of whose interior life we have been thus made sharers, it is necessary to cast a single retrospective glance over the land into which she was born.

It was the isolated, Tory-governed England of more than seventy years ago, — the England of agricultural, commercial, colonial, and manufacturing monopoly; the England of religious disabilities, feminine disqualifications, and sharp class distinctions; the England of unquestioned universal taxation; the England of poor-laws, game-laws, corn-laws, tithes, and slavery.

Who could have foreseen, in this delicate, suffering infant the influential opposer of all these great national evils? And yet one cannot help observing, in the current of her early feelings and thoughts as exhibited in the Autobiography, the very character which should mark the great reformer and legislator. What she was as a child she continued essentially to be as a woman. Never was a human being more of one piece through life. The few authentic anecdotes of her childhood that are to be found Edition: current; Page: [142] beyond the limits of the preceding Autobiography show the same groundwork of character as her most recent experience. There is development, improvement, progress, — but not change.

In order to appreciate justly the powers of a human being, we must note the obstacles to be overcome; and the circumstances of Harriet Martineau’s infancy were sadly obstructive. Anxious, nervous, and timid from ill health, plain in feature and awkward for lack of self-esteem, her great powers found neither recognition nor sympathy. Had they been as tenderly hailed and cherished as they were systematically humbled and denied, what a waste of energy had been avoided, and what unnecessary suffering spared! Had she been the eldest child, to have been praised by a vain mother, or the youngest, to have been petted by a fond one, she would not have been so painfully deprived of the natural current of hope and joy that lifts human nature so happily over the entrance of life. But at the period of her birth children had ceased to be a novelty in the household. The sixth of a family of eight, she was neither petted nor praised. It was her lot to be disciplined, and that not wisely. The feeble, humble, grandly endowed child was alternately neglected and tormented, and all her welfare and happiness sacrificed by the high-spirited, clever, conscientious mother, whose sense of duty far outstripped her power of sympathy.

Thus hardly dealt with by her mother, and subjected to the arrogant quizzing of the elder children, the first words of encouragement she ever received came to her in the guise of severity. She was suffering from a fly having got into her eye. “Harriet!” said the mother, firmly grasping her for the operation, “I know that you have resolution, and you must stand still till I get it out.” Thus conjured, the startled, nervous little creature never stirred till the obstruction was removed. — And was she, the trembling little one, “with cheeks pale as clay,” “flat white forehead over which the hair grew low,” “eyes hollow, — eyes light, large, and full, generally red with crying, — a thoroughly scared face,” — was she, then, resolute? She ran to the great gateway near the street, and beckoned to a playmate, to tell her what her mother had said. “Is that all you Edition: current; Page: [143] have made me come to hear?” It was the first encouraging word she had ever heard, and she could find no one with whom to share the new joy. Till now she had never thought herself worth any thing whatever. Her whole infancy confirmed the profound intuition of Madame de Staël, that suffering carries trouble even into the conscience. She had naturally thought, because she was miserable, that she was stupid, wicked, and disagreeable. Henceforward, scoldings always cheered her when they implied a recognition of any value in her character or acquirements. An accusation of carelessness was in this way converted into a sort of moral support. Her tippet slipped awry one Sunday morning before chapel; and, while pinning it straight, her mother sternly bade her remember that superior book-knowledge will never make up for being troublesome. All service-time and long after did she ponder whether she had book-knowledge. To such a child “the taking-down system,” as she has called it, might have been fatal. And it seems to have been England’s fatal mistake, — the mistake of a race as well as that of a family; — in education, in criticism, in legislation. New England, though more lax in educational discipline, has been thought by strangers no less cold and dry of heart than Old England. The distinguished French statesman and author, Gustave de Beaumont, observing upon the extreme rarity of any demonstrations of tenderness in American households, declares that the few families in which he noticed them were called in derision “the kissing families.”

The probability seems to be that an examination of French and English domestic life would prove the happy childhood of Marmontel and the wretched one of Lady Jane Grey to be tolerable representative cases for each nation. The “little hearts palpitating with joy” to the bubbling of the boiling chestnuts, “the best of grandmothers and the most temperate of women making us all gluttons by dividing among us the quince she had so much enjoyed roasting for us beneath the ashes,” — is the French pendant to the English picture of Lady Jane Grey, rigorously held, “with pinches, nips, and bobs,” to do every thing “even so perfectly as God made the world;” — till, for very wretchedness, Edition: current; Page: [144] she wished herself well out of it. In such national pictures, rank makes no difference. The whole is a matter of race; and the advantage is so manifestly with the gentler one, as to demand a reform in the other. The sterner one claims that its hardness and coldness are merely exterior. Be it so. But there are some overt acts that warm and tender hearts should debar themselves: — flogging, fagging, and “taking down.” Harriet Martineau’s opposite nature rose up in after times against it, in all these departments of human life. The sweet, protesting Huguenot blood seems to have been concentrated in so large a measure in Harriet Martineau, and so combined with her other great endowments, as to make her a mystery to her family. This a child could not, of course, suspect or comprehend; and she went on blaming herself at every instance of incompatibility. Well might her affectionate, sympathetic nature cry aloud from that time forward for gentler methods of discipline and a freer effusion of heart; since only twice in all her childhood could she remember to have received any demonstrations of tenderness.

One among many anecdotes which come to me perfectly authenticated shows how impossible it was for Harriet Martineau to conceive of those class distinctions which are so generally uppermost in the thoughts of her countrymen, as to have drawn satirical rebuke from minds utterly unlike her own, in being by no means too grandly made to be instantly classified.

A distant cousin, of a branch of the family which had fallen through poverty into a social position inferior to the rest, became the subject of conversation in Harriet’s hearing. “After all,” observed the mother, “she is the handsomest of the clan.” When her mother and Mrs. Opie were talking over the annoyance of the begging relation, Harriet repeated the remark about the solitary beauty of the family. “Why should she not repeat it?” was her reply to subsequent reproofs. “Indeed, Harriet, if you do not see why, it is of no use to try to explain to you.” Of no use, in truth. Her choice and treatment of subjects in her whole literary career show that she never attained the power of attaching ideas of disgrace or honour to mere social conditions: Edition: current; Page: [145] and she transcended them in every direction, from childhood onward.

Whether all be for the best or no, one thing is certain, — that the best may always be made of it. Heart-breaking as it is to see the noblest germs of human character treated as weeds to be eradicated, and the broad, deep sympathies that knew no limitations of egotism mistakenly repressed, and their necessary reaction strangely stigmatized as arrogance and obstinacy, there is a consolation in the thought that all this weight of suffering inflicted on a being so conscientious and sensitive, however hurtful as personal discipline, wrought a preparation for incalculable public service. The affections so outraged and repressed did but flow the stronger and deeper. Injustice could not pervert a natural rectitude so true, nor oppression harden into selfishness a sympathy so tender. They did but render “metal-strong” the poet heart that gave itself to life’s great organ-music in the after years, so early, so gladly, and with so full a consciousness.

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YOUTH.

“Looks commercing with the skies.”

— Milton.

“The intellectual power, through words and things

Went sounding on.”

Wordsworth.

“In to-day already walks to-morrow.”

— Schiller, Wallenstein.

I am indebted to friends of her youth older than herself for a picture of Harriet Martineau as she was in her school-days. “She was,” says one of them, “what is called among us in England an old-fashioned child, — sententious and thick of utterance.” “A little prim thing, with a very grave countenance, — the companion and care-taker of her younger brother, who was an irritable child.” The same sketch gives an outline of her mother. “It was the first time I had ever seen her, and she frightened me. She appeared to me to order every thing and every body right and left, and though by no means an indulgent mother, she was yet a proud one, and had confidence in the results of her own management and system of education. I was so much impressed by her cleverness, and felt that she had such a contempt for myself and the way in which I was brought up, that never, to the day of her death, did I fail to be taken by surprise by any expression on her part of confidence in my judgment, pleasure in my company, or approbation of my household. The apprehension of this formidable visitor on the first occasion made me ill. It was the setting-down way she had, which was so terrible to sensitive young people, and which her own children felt, though I do not know that the two eldest ever experienced it to the same degree. Perhaps her young Edition: current; Page: [148] mother pride and instinct suppressed it. When she was at the age of thirteen I saw much of Harriet. I remember no tenderness towards her, but the same severity and sharpness of manner, cleverness of management, and sarcastic observation of other people’s management. I thought Harriet at that time a clever child, but an odd and wise one. She used then, I remember, to be left much by herself, — put aside, as it were. . . . . At that time she was occasionally a little deaf. After this time I do not remember hearing of her except at school at Bristol, — of her being happy there, and a great favourite. What a good thing, I thought, for Harriet, that she has found friends of her own, and encouragement: for I had a vague and private idea that she was not developed at home. Next I was gratified and surprised to receive a most affectionate letter from her, on an occasion of severe affliction, and I was pleased to think I might find a second friend in that family, — her elder sister and myself having been intimate for years. Then Harriet visited me, and I began to like and understand her.” This same friend saw Harriet Martineau in various circumstances of trial and sorrow, and says thereupon, “I frequently saw her own cheerful simplicity and fortitude construed by others into coldness and indifference. I did not generalize at the time as I have since done, but I then learned that the heart runs the risk of being thought cold which does not overrule and outstep every other faculty and power. Folly, with a display of selfish feeling, is excused; but the tenderest heart obeying a higher command is not appreciated, except by those who know it intimately.”

Amid all the obstructions of this period of her early youth she was in one thing most fortunate. Her strong intellectual powers were committed to the training of a schoolmaster who was a scholar, and in companionship with his boy pupils. Both these circumstances insured her the inestimable advantage of a thorough classical and mathematical groundwork of education, freed from the mistake that there is a female road to knowledge. Her delight in reading found its satisfaction in the best English poetry, history, critical literature, and a political newspaper. Edition: current; Page: [149] Thus deeply and soundly were laid the foundations of her literary life.

Neither does her boarding-school life at Bristol seem to have been weakened down to a supposed inferiority in the needs of woman. One of her schoolmates thus gives me her impressions of that time.

“Harriet was considered among us as especially the good girl, always working diligently and conscientiously, and never seeming to think pleasure possible till duty was performed. Her companions thought her very clever, but I think she then showed no signs of brilliant abilities. She was perhaps more respected by them than loved; but liked by all; for from her they never felt any inconveniences of ill-temper and selfishness. She was not ambitious of shining or pleasing; was sometimes thought conceited because she was not content with a low aim in any thing, nor ever seemed to doubt her power to learn or to do what she proposed to herself. She had much reverence in her character, and I always thought a true humility. Her manner was quiet and reserved, rather than melancholy or timid. She appeared self-possessed, but was very silent and uncommunicative, except in quiet conversation with a friend, when her thoughtful and affectionate nature came out freely. She seldom or never talked of herself on such occasions; rather of her family and her friends, of whom she always spoke in such a way that it became a proverb among us that ‘all the Norwich geese were swans.’ Wordsworth’s line would have more correctly described her, —

‘True to the kindred points of Heaven and home’

“She was graver and laughed more rarely than any young person I ever knew. Her face was plain, and (you will scarcely believe it) she had no light in the countenance, no expression to redeem the features. The low brow and rather large under lip increased the effect of her natural seriousness of look, and did her much injustice. I used to be asked occasionally, ‘What has offended Harriet, that she looks so glum?’ I, who understood her, used to answer, ‘Nothing; she is not offended; it is only her look.’

“She was fond of poetry, Milton and Wordsworth especially. She first made me acquainted with Lycidas. I can now recall her tone and manner in many passages of that poem, as well as in certain parts of the New Testament, which we used to read at night together in our bedroom.

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“I do not suppose that she showed promise at that time of any thing remarkable. Some were greatly surprised when she published, some years afterwards, a volume of meditations and prayers. The late Dr. Carpenter, who knew little of her except as a student in his Sunday class, expressed so much surprise at that time as to astonish me, who saw nothing in it that I did not know to be in her.”

Harriet Martineau speaks in her Autobiography of her infant concealments occasioned by fear; but the declaration of all her early friends whom I have known is uniform as to the beautiful sincerity of her character and the habitual truthfulness of her intercourse in youth. The expression of one of them is, “She seemed, above all, to desire truth in the inward part.”

All her family and friends were, at this time, disagreeably impressed with the first evidences of that integrity of mind and impartiality of judgment which made her in after life the chosen umpire and advocate of all classes and conditions of men who desire to have wrong righted. When, piercing through appearances to the very heart of things, she stood by the royal family against the Martineau family,* she was met by a shout of derision and a reprimand for immorality. Unlike the French statesman who “passed his life in coming to the rescue of the strongest,” her true and heroic instincts always drew her to the side of the most defenceless, wherever that post might chance to be. One of the latest acts of her life was an endeavour to procure the correction, by the editor of the “Nation” (an American newspaper she very highly esteemed), of a misrepresentation that had crept into it about the Prince of Wales and Dean Stanley’s sermon on his departure for India.

Thus passed the thoughtful, dutiful youth of Harriet Martineau, in serious studies, as well as others that were in that day called accomplishments. Her delight in music and in modern languages, so soon to receive a check from her increasing deafness, was still unalloyed. Her resolute spirit bore down by method and industry, even at that early age, all weakness of the flesh. To her classical and belles-lettres studies she joined biblical and metaphysical ones. But the influence of Unitarianism Edition: current; Page: [151] proper seems in her case to have been, in a sense, an obstructive one. It releases from authority without committing to reason, and is therefore obliged to rely upon routine, which fetters the imagination. Its chief excellency in England (cited by Dr. Channing as its great defect) had by this time, too, become obscure: it was no longer the synonyme of political protest; though the reflected light of Priestley’s life still illuminated it to the eye of Harriet Martineau.

All the above-mentioned studies, not customarily permitted to women at that period in England any more than in the United States, were planned for and encouraged by Mrs. Martineau. Her own superior mind bore to her unmistakable inward witness that the education which was good for her sons must be no less beneficial to her daughters; and Harriet profited by that conviction to the utmost, while cultivating to the highest degree every household accomplishment, and fulfilling every domestic duty. All this while she never suspected her own superiority, and continued to suppose herself in the wrong, or at least to be painfully puzzled, as often as she felt the sharp pain of a sphere too contracted for her faculties, and unrelieved by sympathetic appreciation. Still, she was not entirely without support of this kind. Her gentle and loving aunt and her other Bristol friends fathomed somewhat of her nature, and one of her early and elder friends in another quarter, afterwards the wife of her beloved brother Robert, reports to me the impression she made at that time, — the period of her leaving school. “I was an only and indulged child,” says this friend, “and my mother took pleasure in seeing me surround myself with my young friends; so I filled the house with them as often and as much as I liked. She used frequently to say to me on occasion of their visits, ‘Ah, my dear, Harriet Martineau is the one of your friends whose society is really a benefit to you.’ ”

To the world of readers of her Autobiography, which enables them to comprehend her whole compass of character, there remains no such mystery as shrouded it in those early days from her own household, when she seems to have been like the “ugly duckling” of Hans Christian Andersen, and made her very Edition: current; Page: [152] transparency the most incomprehensible mystery of all. They already see how her life at this period, and ever after, must perforce turn on two main points, the causes of all its joys, its sorrows, its conflicts, and its vast and happy influences: her love of truth, — the desire to come into real relations with the world of things; and her power of sympathy, — the need to come into real relations with the world of persons.

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WOMANHOOD.

“Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth

Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green,

And with those few art eminently seen

That labour up the hill of heavenly Truth,

The better part with Mary and with Ruth

Chosen thou hast.”

Milton.

“Her open eyes desire the Truth.

The Wisdom of a thousand years

Is in them.”

Tennyson.

At the age of nearly seventeen Harriet Martineau’s school life closed. It had been very favorable to the development of her powers. It had strongly ministered to her affections, hitherto so painfully repressed, awakened the faculty of admiration, and stimulated her imagination by glimpses of a beauty in nature and a power in art till then but imperfectly felt.

It is impossible, indeed, to look down on Bristol from Brandon Hill, and watch the creeping gold that catches spire and tower as the mist gives way beneath the morning sun, till St. Stephen’s, St. Mary Redcliffe, and many another precious remnant of antiquity shine out from the belt of trees and bristling masts, without feeling how it was that here the deeper spell of poetry should have been fully opened to a mind already awakened to its marvels and its charm. No wonder that here, about Leigh Woods, King’s-Weston, and the Downs, she should have been transported, as she has told us, “to a rapture that knew no bounds:” for these are the very “beaked promontories” where Milton made Lycidas the genius of the shore; and when she Edition: current; Page: [154] read the promise “of his large recompense,” it was with a passion so deep that her early friend was haunted by the tone after the lapse of wellnigh forty years.

The circumscriptions of the English Unitarianism of that period were thus met by so strong a counteracting force as to make them an unmingled benefit. She was not, indeed, one that could be imprisoned in the ordinary Sunday-school routine of its Scripture commentaries, Gospel harmonies, sacred geographies, or Biblical lessons; but all these were fused by her active mind to a sort of basis on which her devotional feelings and her poetical conceptions alternately wrought; and where by means of scientific investigation and philosophical study she was continually adding, rejecting, and rectifying as years went on. She was always as diligent and persevering as if she had not possessed quick and brilliant faculties; always accepting at all risks whatever she found to be true.

There was little in the old cathedral city of Norwich, with its narrow, ill-paved, winding streets and uninteresting antiquity, to distract her mind or give variety to her life. It had nothing of the bustling character of the business cities of the North of England. Its very manufacturing celebrity dates from times before the Norman Conquest. These woollen manufactures have since received improvements from age to age, as religious persecution drove hither from France and Flanders the men of thought, skill, and energy, who were the leaders of the spirit of their times. Among them came the French Huguenot ancestor of the English Martineau family; and that name is among those which appear most frequently on the records of the little Protestant church founded at Norwich in 1564, at the instance of the Duke of Norfolk. The crest pertaining to the name is a water-marten.

An engraving of Harriet Martineau’s birthplace is given in this volume. The house was in a court in Magdalen Street, and she was born in the upper bay-room. But it was never her dwelling-place after the time of her removal from it at three months old. It was to her home in Magdalen Street itself that she returned from Bristol, — to the household and family duties, the manly studies, the literary pursuits, and lady-like accomplishments, Edition: current; Page: [155] which she so much enjoyed, as one does the things in which one greatly excels.

The prevailing tone of mind in England at the beginning of the present century was far more opposed than in the United States to the education of women. Public opinion on that subject had, in fact, gone backward since the times when the daughters of families assumed to be “the best” studied with their brothers the learned languages in which knowledge was then locked up; while it has been true of New England, as it still continues to be, that, among its inhabitants generally, the women possessed more literary culture than the men. Hence the idea of a professional career for women who desire it meets with so little comparative opposition here. In Miss Martineau’s youth, to say of a lady in England that she was a learned woman, was to convey a disparaging meaning; while to say in New England, in its old-fashioned phrase, “She has good learning,” was to express something greatly to her credit. I well remember the London tone of 1825 on this subject. It was the echo of twenty years before, when Matt Lewis took his mother to task for writing a novel, enjoining on her “whatever might be its merits, even if she had already made a bargain with the publisher, to break it; for he held that a woman had no business to be a public character, and that in proportion as she acquires notoriety she loses delicacy;” he “always considering a female author as a sort of half-man.” It was this feeling in the moral atmosphere that made Mrs. Martineau, naturally ambitious of social success and distinction for her daughter, direct that her serious studies should be carried on out of sight and with reserve, putting the music, fancy-work, and French, German, and Italian literature in the foreground, till the time when the pecuniary misfortunes of the family absolved its daughters from this obligation and left them free to fulfil a better work for society than obedience to its injurious whimseys. Much power now begins to be saved among women on both sides of the Atlantic that seventy years ago was wasted (and worse than wasted) by concealment and the disadvantage of indirect exercise. To no one of the intervening period is this so greatly Edition: current; Page: [156] owing as to Harriet Martineau. Her life tells upon her own and after times with a power quite unexampled, because it was a life not only true and noble, but irreproachable.

Meanwhile, obedience and humility (too much of both, had they not been prompted by filial affection and occasionally abated by good sense) continued to mark her character as in her earliest years. Her tendencies continued as strongly religious, and the intellectual preponderance to be more strikingly marked than ever. She was more favourably situated in her own family than young ladies in general, for the cultivation of her mental powers; for her mother’s fine sense, and strong consciousness of the hidden man in her own heart, were on the right side. So was the feeling of the brothers who encouraged her first literary efforts. “Go on and prosper, dear!” says the beloved eldest brother, Thomas, writing from Madeira, after receiving her first work, “Devotional Exercises;” “you are engaged in pursuits that bring with them true pleasure, and confer real advantage; may you be abundantly rewarded.” This was great encouragement to one so sensitive and self-distrusting, and encouragement was what her nature especially needed. He had already determined her career by the manner in which he received her first article in the “Monthly Repository.” “My dear, leave it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings, and do you give yourself to this.” I do not believe she ever forgot a single one of the rare words of family appreciation she received; and I have heard her relate with much feeling the effect produced on her mind by an encouraging word from her mother, when, at ten years old, she sat trying to learn to sew, under the heart-sinking apprehension that she should never succeed. She stood with her face to the window to hide her tears, as the needle squeaked through the dingy gusset she was stitching, her sister Rachel at play with a visitor, and Harriet longing to join. Her mother entered the room with her eldest sister, both dressed for making visits, and approaching the suffering, stitching, striving child, said cheerfully, as she examined the work, “Why, Harriet! if you go on in this way, you will soon be the best needlewoman of us all.” She always described the revulsion of feeling consequent on this expression Edition: current; Page: [157] of maternal satisfaction as a ray of light and life; and she dated from it her success in all those little feminine handicrafts which then went by the name of “fancy-work,” in which she so greatly delighted and excelled.

I should have related this recollection at an earlier period, but it matters the less, that her childhood was womanly and thoughtful. She herself says, “I had no spring.” I never, indeed, met one like her for wholeness of character through life. She always seemed to me to have been, so to say, of one piece. It was in part the secret of her great educational power. She not only remembered the feelings of her own childhood, but felt them over again, through life. “Why did they dress us so ill?” she once said, in talking over the griefs of childhood. “It has a dreadfully depressing influence, when it is a thing that can as well as not be helped.”

I have never been able to find the essay, “On Female Writers on Practical Divinity,” in which Dr. Thomas Martineau saw the promise of her future greatness, and which her mature judgment treats with so much contempt. The title indicates the turn of her thoughts at that time. With her fervent religious feelings, there was a moment, at this period, such as sends a grifted young Catholic devotee to the cloister to be a lady abbess, and bids a young man of similar genius become a bishop. One of her early and most beloved friends recollects the great regret she expressed at the marriage of a young lady, the friend of both, “because it would deprive her of larger opportunities of usefulness to the world.” This idea seems to have had but a momentary existence. It was one of the visions of eighteen.

In searching for her earlier writings I have no difficulty in finding the little book of Addresses which she valued on account of the pleasure it gave her father,* and for that alone in after years. Very recently friends of hers have expressed to me their astonishment that she should since have entirely forgotten the book of which edition after edition passed the press, not only in England, but in America. The wonder, however, would have been had she remembered it; for the form is wholly traditional, Edition: current; Page: [158] and the devotional sentiment, true and beautiful as it is, would necessarily be lost in the first influx of original thought and deeper feeling that accompany the real life. But many go no further in experience than this book; and to all that thus stop living at the threshold it will supply a want.

The book which preceded this — “Devotional Exercises” — is admirably compiled, in conformity, as she says in the Preface, with “the prayers I have been accustomed to form under the guidance of able teachers for my own use;” and it differs from the customary tone of Unitarian teachings only in a more poetical way of presenting them, and in a certain perfume of orthodoxy inseparable from her greater use of Scripture phraseology. The book is, in fact, a digest of favourite passages from the Bible poets, prophets, and apostles, cemented together by expressions which show that her fervent spirit had found prayer “under guidance” too dry a task. It is the effort of a superior mind to lift its religion out of the region of commonplace. “Being yet young,” she says (the date is 1823), “I have a vivid remembrance of the ideas and feelings which in early youth I found to be most impressive, and to excite the most powerful emotions, and which are by no means the same ideas and feelings which produce these effects at a more advanced age. Possessing these remembrances, I must believe that the young are best fitted to write for the young in most cases where the feelings and affections are concerned; and therefore I have written down the thoughts which used to present themselves in a natural train of reflection.” To the young, forty is old age; and she thought the absence of warmth which Evangelical Christians always complain of in Unitarianism, the consequence of the advanced years of its advocates. She determined, by pouring in her own glow of heart, to make the dry bones live; and not without success, as the call for the book attests. Its feeling is genuine, and the occasional escape from the traditional form is very touching; as, for example, when, after condemning those who are wholly engrossed in the care of their own happiness, she says: “O, surely the spirit of love is the noblest and best that can dwell in the human heart! it is a portion of God’s own spirit! it is Edition: current; Page: [159] the mind which was in Christ Jesus! O noble example of this glorious virtue! let that mind be in me also! May thy labours, thy sufferings, thy strivings to promote the good of all, not be lost upon me! May they animate me to follow in thy steps, to press forward to the goal which thou hast reached, like thee seeking no reward.” There is also a very beautiful and eloquent passage respecting “those lofty and sublime affections which can find no fit object on earth; that adoration of perfection, that aspiring after something nobler and better than is to be found among men.” Thus her heart and mind wrought together on the threshold of life. She was soon to seize the true purpose of these affections and aspirations; and once having clearly perceived it, the strenuous constancy of her endeavours to create among men the goodness and the nobleness she found wanting was something astonishing in its efficacy.

Her remarkable self-control had nothing of that divine hardness the ancients tell of, that makes invulnerable by pain. She was quiet and silent about her own distresses, for the sake of others, not that she might have the credit of appearing happy or unmoved, but that she might avoid giving them annoyance. This exposed her to the misconstructions of superficial observers. They called her unloving and unfeeling at the very moment when greater warmth and depth on their own part would have enabled them to fathom the reality; just as they pronounced her hard whenever her yielding and tender nature, like water suddenly struck, made one effort to maintain itself against the blow. And, although in affliction she was so nearly able to appear unmoved, I never knew her to pass a day without that frequent swell of unshed tears from which the sympathetic observer never failed to learn what she felt. An instance of devotedness or endurance, a tale of suffering or of wrong, a touching verse or song, a trait of the moral sublime, always show us in her eyes no idle tears; all that know her, know what they mean.

These years of her early womanhood, full as they were of grief, anxiety, and laborious preparation, had yet the comfort of an increasing maternal sympathy and appreciation. Her mother’s character was directly opposed to her own, in not being Edition: current; Page: [160] strong enough on the side of the imagination for the exercise of sympathy, except, so to speak, in a straight line on her own level. Her daughter, having now grown up to that line and level, came within the field of her affections.

I regret inexpressibly that Miss Martineau’s long journalizing letters of this period cannot, in consistency with her introductory principle, be made public.* With but few exceptions, such confidential family letters must needs contain too much that is common property to admit of their being printed. But one cannot help wishing this whole collection came within the terms she has laid down. Every letter is full of charm and instruction in various ways, as well as finely illustrative. So far as she is concerned, they might all go to the press as they stand, without a word of omission. They show, not the hidden springs of life, but the severely beautiful life itself. There are all the occupations of each day of absence from her mother, whether at London and vicinity, Newcastle, or Norwich; the failures and successes of each fresh effort for a maintenance, or endeavour after excellence; the little plans for making each member of the family happy in his or her own way; the kindly thought for the servants; the anxious solicitude to please and satisfy all; the passionate devotion to the young sister, to whom she was mother, sister, and teacher in one; the ever-new contrivances by which to increase her income and economize her expenditure; the consultations about the shawl or bonnet, which, by good management, she might continue to wear another year; and the presents by which she hoped to surprise and please the children, — all are charming in their simplicity, and from the absorbing family feeling that dictates the record.

Profoundly affecting is the controlled agony of the letter that tries to tell how her lover died, so as not to awaken anxiety for herself in the heart of her mother. Very touching are the occasional allusions to attentions and commendations of her works received from those whose opinions she respected; “because, my dear mother, it is your right to know, or I could not be so vain as to mention such things.” She never fails to notice with Edition: current; Page: [161] disgust any thing like flattery. She had already become a competent critic by means of the “Monthly Repository” and its editor, Mr. Fox, and uses her newly acquired power on her own productions; saying, “they praise this too much, but not so egregiously as the other,” with a love of justice entirely above personal considerations.

Here, too, are occasional gleams of Unitarian satisfaction or discomfort, as the case might be. She loved Unitarianism as the faith of her own family, without having so closely analyzed it as to have ascertained in it any want of essential stability, and she identified herself with it, without having assimilated it. Its high standard of morality was very dear to her, and stood instead of much that she missed. “Mr. —,” she says, “has been guilty of a forgery. What a disgrace to us!” Such and such writings, she goes on to say, “are a credit to us Unitarians.” Copies of the last poems she had written occasionally help to fill the enormous letters of those days, — the shilling sheet of unlimited size before the discovery of penny postage.

One of these poems, written for music, and afterwards set and admired, may have a place here, because, apart from the music, it has never been printed before.

WINTER.

True hearts! true hearts! the time is cheery:

Who says the days are chill and dreary

The frozen winter through?

Come, skim the deep blue ice so free;

Or away with me beside the tree

Where the robin chirps from day to day,

While tinkle the rocks with his song alway

The gladsome winter through.

True hearts! what though the sun full early

Goes down with blink or frown so surly,

The hazy winter through!

We have the lady moon so fair,

That showers through the air her diamonds rare,

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While the waiting earth is hushed and bright,

So delicate in her vestal white,

The frozen winter through.

True hearts! come change your cares for folly;

The bowl is brewed and green the holly

The cheery winter through.

Now age and childhood share their mirth,

And love hath birth beside the hearth.

O, no more can our way be waste and dead

While the springs of the soul are found and fed

The heartsome winter through.

Another of these little poems seems never to have been printed. It was written in 1822.

Bright shines the sun upon our spreading sail,

And flashes o’er the foaming crested wave:

And briskly blows the spirit-rousing gale,

And laughing waters our light vessel lave.

But now the orb has sunk below the verge

Which parts the sea and sky, — is lost to sight.

The dying winds no more the vessel urge,

But a deep calm succeeds; — a softened light

Melts into one vast whole the sky, the deep,

And the far-distant shore: how still they sleep!

So when the deepening twilight of my day

Succeeds my early youth’s more brilliant light,

No more careering on my joyous way,

But each subsiding wave as still, as bright,

May heaven’s calm hues so in my spirit shine

As to illume my path; may heaven’s pure breath

Still waft me on; and may the fading line

Be scarce discerned which parts ’tween Life and Death:

While Hope’s soft voice shall every fear control,

And her sweet strain shall soothe my listening soul.

Her poetry (all of it at least that I have been able to collect) is very correct and flowing, but, like most early versification, entirely imitative in its form. No one could infer from it what she afterwards became. It is the voice of one who, in Edition: current; Page: [163] the vision of the poets, has drunk of the first pool, and heard the first bidding, “Be holy and cold!” She was to drink, long afterwards, of all, — world’s use, world’s love, world’s cruelty,* — that she might fitly lead, not chant, the world’s great battle-march against wrong.

She thought it singular, on revisiting in after life the large, plain, comfortable house where these and the succeeding years were passed, that it should have been the spot where her imagination wrought most strongly. Yet, notwithstanding the absence of outward stimulants, this does not seem otherwise than natural, in the circumstances of her greatly increasing deafness, and the severity of her sufferings from what one cannot help seeing to have been a most wearing degree of friction in the family life. Less sensibility, less filial piety, or more experience would have neutralized this last source of pain; but experience it is impossible to have at these years; and she preserved her best feelings unimpaired, by taking refuge in the world of dreams when the world of letters and of actual life became too severe a trial to her slender stock of health. It was the natural sanctuary of a mind too large for its circumstances. It was not an aimless, diseased wandering of the fancy, as she seems to have supposed in those days, but a state of renovating aspiration and high resolution which greatly aided in overcoming all obstacles, particularly those her deafness threw in her way.

Her course with regard to this great trial was the same she always pursued in all cases of trial and suffering. Though she often wrote of it, she never made it a subject of conversation. She was silent respecting it with intimate and family friends, to whom talking of it might prove a source of affliction and misunderstanding, — till such a time as she might seek the alleviation of that not too painful sympathy which the world at large never fails to give to them that use their own sufferings as a means of ministering to its relief. During the whole course of our intimate friendship and correspondence she never once mentioned to me what, with her career, duties, and aspirations, could not have been any thing less than a continual pressure of Edition: current; Page: [164] heavy calamity. I have reason to think that the simple and affecting statement in a preceding volume as to the labour of living a life of undiminished usefulness under such a deprivation will be a revelation to most of her friends.*

The peculiar anxieties and responsibilities of womanhood were now at hand. It is not for me to do more than mark this as the heart-wearing period of long uncertainty which preceded her engagement with Mr. W —; of the loss of property that involved a change in all her parents’ hopes and prospects for their daughters; of the death of her dear elder brother and his infant child; the death of her father; the death of her lover, in the moment of happy union of heart; and, heaviest blows of all, coming as they did from a quarter which should have given only sympathy and furtherance, the evil offices which, by creating delay and misunderstanding, contributed to his death. They who had the privilege of being her personal friends during these terrible hours have told me that her demeanour was nobly calm and composed; but she seems, notwithstanding, to have been still, from time to time, beset by the idea that suffering necessarily proves something blameworthy in the sufferer.

“I have been so above the common lot

Chastened and visited, I needs must think

That I was wicked,”

is always the thought of the heart that has been tormented by fault-finding, whether with itself or with human nature. This superstition is one of the most difficult to be eradicated, because it springs out of the deep and real grounds whence come our best intimations for the government of life.

These were times of terrible toil as well as of terrible sorrow. Besides the labours performed for discipline, preparation, and maintenance, what she wrote in one year, 1826 - 7, under the influence of thoughts and feelings that would be expressed, an imagination too active to keep silence, a high sense of duty, and some stirrings of ambition, would amount to volumes. I will hereafter give a list of their subjects; and now need mention Edition: current; Page: [165] but one, — a little tale called “The Rioters,” which was the true precursor of the coming fame. Of her other stories of this period none strikes me so much as the one called, I think, “Mary and her Grandmother.” I found it in the Mansarde of a Paris friend, and stood reading on the spot where I took it up, without the least idea of its authorship. It seemed a Sunday-school book, but how different from its class in general! It was crude and strange in a sense, and impressed one, as so many of her after works have done, as a plant that has outgrown its bed; but the sacred fire was there. She did not, however, remember it, and thought it could not have been written by herself; still I was assured of the authorship by those whom I might suppose to know. It was beginning to be a work of experience. “Five Years of Youth,” written some time afterwards, leaves the same impression. But “The Rioters” leaves no impression of inequality or discrepancy on the mind. It came home to the business and bosoms of the lace-makers of Derby and Nottingham with so much power that they instantly put themselves in communication with Miss Martineau, requesting a second story on Wages. These tales are remarkable, not only for their deep political insight and even-handed humanity; not only as coming from one of her youth and sex, on subjects hitherto thought the special province of elderly members of Parliament; not merely as able illustrations of political economy. They are the first examples of a new application of the modern novel. To the biographical and the philosophical novel, the descriptive and the historical novel, the romantic and the domestic novel, the fashionable and the religious novel, and the novel of society, was now to be added the humanitarian or novel of social reform. These tales are the pioneers, not only of the thirty-four monthly volumes of her illustrations of political economy, but of the multitudes of social-reform novels that have since followed, up to the time of Mrs. Gaskell and Mrs. Stowe.

Among the papers of the time immediately succeeding I find many that more perfectly illustrate Harriet Martineau’s nature and character than could possibly be done by any recollections of hers or any statements of mine. Written without any thought Edition: current; Page: [166] that they could possibly meet the public eye, we have in them the actual reflection of what she then was; and they differ from autobiography and from narrative, as the object from the picture, as life itself from the story of a life.

First in the order of time is the following paper, written at Norwich, and dated June, 1829: —

PRIVATE.

For some years past my attention has been more and more directed towards literary pursuits; and, if I mistake not, my capacity for their successful prosecution has increased, so that I have now fair encouragement to devote myself to them more diligently than ever. After long and mature deliberation, I have determined that my chief subordinate object in life shall henceforth be the cultivation of my intellectual powers, with a view to the instruction of others by my writings. On this determination I pray for the blessing of God.

I wish to hold myself prepared to relinquish this purpose, should any decided call of duty interfere; but I pray that no indolence or caprice in myself, no discouragement or ill-grounded opposition from others, may prevail on me to relinquish a resolution which I now believe to be rational, and compatible with the highest desire of a Christian.

I am now just twenty-seven years of age. It is my wish to ascertain (should life and health be spared) how much may be accomplished by diligent but temperate exertion in pursuit of this object for ten years.

I believe myself possessed of no uncommon talents, and of not an atom of genius; but as various circumstances have led me to think more accurately and read more extensively than some women, I believe that I may so write on subjects of universal concern as to inform some minds and stir up others. My aim is to become a forcible and elegant writer on religious and moral subjects, so as to be useful to refined as well as unenlightened minds. But, as I see how much remains to be done before this aim can be attained, I wish to be content with a much lower degree of usefulness, should the Father of my spirit see fit to set narrow bounds to my exertions. Of posthumous fame I have not the slightest expectation or desire. To be useful in my day and generation is enough for me. To this I henceforth devote myself, and desire to keep in mind the following rules. (A frequent reference to them is necessary.)

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I. To improve my moral constitution by every means; to cultivate my moral sense; to keep ever in view the subordination of intellectual to moral objects; by the practice of piety and benevolence, by entertaining the freedom and cheerfulness of spirit which results from dependence on God, to promote the perfection of the intellectual powers.

II. To seek the assistance of God in my intellectual exertions, and his blessing on their results.

III. To impart full confidence to my family respecting my pursuits, but to be careful not to weary them with too frequent a reference to myself; and to be as nearly as possible silent on the subject to all the world besides.

IV. To study diligently, 1. The Scriptures, good commentators, works of religious philosophy and practice, — for moral improvement; 2. Mental philosophy, — for intellectual improvement; 3. Natural philosophy and natural history, languages and history, — for improvement in knowledge; 4. Criticism, belles-lettres, and poetry, — for improvement in style. Each in turn, and something every day.

V. While I have my intellectual improvement ever in view, to dismiss from my thoughts the particular subject on which I have written in the morning for the rest of the day, i. e. to be temperate in my attention to an object.

VI. By early rising, and all due economy of time, and especially by a careful government of the thoughts, to employ my life to better purpose than heretofore.

VII. To exalt, enlarge, and refresh my mind by social intercourse, observation of external nature, of the fine arts, and of the varieties of human life.

VIII. To bear in mind that as my determination is deliberately formed and now allowed to be rational, disappointments should not be lightly permitted to relax my exertions. If my object is conscientiously adopted, mortifications of vanity should prove stimulants, rather than discouragements. The same consideration should induce patience under painful labour, delay, and disappointment, and guard me against heat and precipitation.

IX. To consider my own interests as little as possible, and to write with a view to the good of others; therefore to entertain no distaste to the humblest literary task which affords a prospect of usefulness.

X. Should my exertions ultimately prove fruitless, to preserve my cheerfulness, remembering that God only knows how his work may Edition: current; Page: [168] be best performed, and that I have no right to expect the privilege of eminent usefulness, though permitted to seek it. Should success be granted, to take no honour to myself, remembering that I possess no original power or intrinsic merit, and that I can receive and accomplish nothing, except it be given me from Heaven.

June, 1829

.

Such were the sheet-anchors: no wonder the vessel never drifted in any stress of weather. By comparison of dates it must have been these of which she says, “I promised myself that nothing should ever draw me away from them.” I now recall to mind the seal, — a present from her grandmother. It was one then in fashionable and sentimental use, — an evergreen leaf, with the motto, “Je ne change qu’en mourant.” But her friends were often surprised in this way to find that what with others might be a matter of fancy or of course, was with her a thing of solemn significance. I shall often have occasion to tell of such instances. One sees by such a record as this in the early life of such a person, that stability of character is affected by change of “views” exactly as the dropping of the bark affects the tree.

After reading these ten resolutions, no one would fear to predict admirable results. One of the first was the “Traditions of Palestine.” The title and the treatment of the stories indicated a more than Unitarian severance from authority. This was more felt in America than in England; and in the Boston reprint, the beautiful title was changed to fit the new meridian. The same self-constituted editor had caused the latest edition of the “Devotional Exercises” to be republished, with an apology on his own part for an able additional essay on the study of the Scriptures, “where in one or two instances the writer may be thought to have expressed herself incautiously.” The American Unitarian public knows the “Traditions of Palestine” under the name of “Times of the Saviour.” The “poetical expressions,” as the editor called some of the beauties of the book, are cut out, and the whole structure of one story spoiled; but it matters little, as the “Traditions” still are continually republished in their original form in England.

It was this book which first brought Miss Martineau fairly Edition: current; Page: [169] before her own Unitarian public. Her studies, tastes, and feelings all combined to make it interesting, and it still gives great delight to all, especially to those whose interest in the Scriptures has been impaired by injudicious methods of reading. It is a successful effort to give actuality to the past, — to make her imagination the ally of the unimaginative faith into which she was born.

But whoever desires to watch the progress of her mind and the effect of her literary education should read the fifty-five miscellaneous papers of this year. I will mention one especially, — the review of the Essays of Bailey, of Sheffield, on the Pursuit of Truth, Progress of Knowledge, and Principle of Evidence, — because it was the one which more than any other showed to Mr. Fox, then editor of the “Monthly Repository,” her value as a contributor, and made him predict that she would “be one of the first of the age by and by.” It was the old (and in her latest, mature judgment, unsound) argument against Hume’s treatment of the miracles. At that time, however, it was not only new to her, but mainly original, being wrought out by her own mind; and she gave me an account of the circumstances under which she wrote it. It was in June, before the Municipal Reform Bill, so that the old Norwich Mayor’s feast was still in existence, — the guild feast, — a dinner in St. Andrew’s Hall, to about six hundred gentry of the county and city, with a ball at the assembly-rooms. “I was never,” she said, “at one of those dinners, nor wished to be. I regularly avoided them. On that occasion all the family were absent from Norwich but brother Henry, Rachel, and myself. They went: I stayed at home, to their great amazement, to write my review. It was a convenience, because the servants always expected to go out and see the shows of the day. So I dressed Rachel, and saw them off in their hackney-coach before four o’clock; had the tea-things set out on the sideboard and the kettle filled in the kitchen, sent out the servants, locked the doors, and wrote. When the servants returned at ten, they set cold meat and bread on the sideboard, and I sent them to bed and sat down again. I remember that the time seemed but five minutes, till I was startled by the ring of Edition: current; Page: [170] the door-bell. I opened it, and lo! it was daylight, between three and four. Rachel was weary and out of curl, and I was as fresh as twelve hours before. That review did more for me with Mr. Fox than any one article, and he did not think it so unsound as he doubtless does now. But the thing which makes me so vividly remember this day was the miraculous passage of twelve hours, and especially of the last five. I doubt whether I have ever since experienced such absorption in work, though I have made a similar stretch more than once. The mere work will appear nothing remarkable to you, but the experience was really so to me.”

This “mere work,” which she supposed would appear so little remarkable to me, may be found in the American edition of her Miscellanies, Vol. II. p. 174, through twenty pages onwards, — a train of close, steady, and condensed thought on philosophical necessity, the limitations of human testimony, causation, possibility and probability, and the various abstruse considerations involved in a treatise on the Principle of Evidence. The limitations of her field of thought at this time are plainly indicated, but the vigor of her thinking faculties is very strikingly demonstrated. The exercise of them in this way was her true vocation; and she says, in a letter to her mother, written at this time, “Writing is a more delightful employment to me than ever, and I could sit all day at it.” There were periods, about this time, when, after writing ten hours a day for six weeks, she says, “Never be uneasy, dear mother, about my writing so much. It is impossible to give you an idea of the increasing facility and delight which come with practice. It is the purest delight to me, when there is a fair prospect of usefulness; and it is easier than the mere manual act once was. How I once marvelled at the manufacture of a volume! Now I wonder that those who once write do not always write.”

It is worthy of notice that even in these early writings there is that strong grasp of facts, and correctness in drawing inferences from them, which want of opportunity for study and observation makes uncommon in the works of women. From the beginning, Harriet Martineau’s anonymous writings have Edition: current; Page: [171] always been attributed to a man; her industry, judgment, and insight went so far to supply the want of what men learn in the university and the market-place.

What are the elements of that strange gift of influence that some human beings possess in addition to all their other gifts? I notice about this period the first instance of the great power possessed by Miss Martineau to lead and control human affairs, sometimes without the thought or purpose of doing so, — an article on India, which occasioned a sermon on Indian abuses, and a consequent investment in East India stock, to enable the holder to influence the Company’s doings by his vote. Yet these were the times in England when so many prejudices existed against women’s thinking and acting in conformity to their natural endowments, that on the publication of the “Traditions of Palestine,” Miss Martineau, in writing to Norwich about advertising it there, felt the necessity of breaking it to her mother. It was ever a peculiarity of Harriet Martineau’s writings that their reality operated as a personal introduction to her readers. The first thought was, “She will know exactly how we feel and be able to tell us exactly what we wish to know and what we ought to do.” The second was, “What is she like? how does she look? I must see and know her.”

She is described at this period of her young ladyhood as plain and unattractive in appearance, and many of her own pleasantries in conversation confirm it. She was pale and thin, rather above the ordinary height, with abundant dark brown hair. “I never had but one civil speech about my looks,” she used to say, “and that was a compliment to my hair. As a child, I used to take the matter into consideration. ‘What did I take myself to be?’ Not pretty, certainly. But was it a hopeless matter altogether? The chin was not bad (advancing and retreating before the glass), it had rather a nice point, I fancied. But at fifteen a saucy speech of a satirical cousin — ‘How ugly all my mother’s daughters were, Harriet in particular’ — settled the question for me. I never doubted my ugliness after that. I tried to think I danced well, and my feet did go well enough. But I was too weak to be a good dancer, and all my complacency Edition: current; Page: [172] in dancing was destroyed on being told by my sister (an admirable dancer herself) of a quizzing clergyman who got behind me and imitated me till every body laughed.”

She was herself very serious in these days of humiliation; like the ugly duckling, so superior in nature to those about her, that, judging in the only way possible to them, — by comparison, — their self-love looked down contemptuously upon the future swan. Colonel Radice, an Italian of the emigration of 1822, a favourite with her mother, said of her at the age of twenty, in his foreign English, “James [her brother] lauch [laughs] seldom; Henriette lauch never.” Of this brother Colonel Radice remarked, “Henriette is always his defendart.”

By and by the weight of Norwich began to lift. Occasional visits to Newcastle, London, and its neighbourhood showed her what provincial opinion is worth. As appreciation gave her more freedom, and more freedom made her more and more appreciated, the singularly attaching quality of her character was constantly made manifest. Especially did persons possessing any superiority of ability become strongly interested in her. She was, during these years, more than a great general favourite: she was also held in admiring respect by the most remarkable persons in the society she met. Ladies of great musical genius, elderly gentlemen of business, the clerical, the legal, the literary, the learned, all became in their several ways what is called romantically attached to her: they felt, to wit, without analyzing the causes, the comprehensiveness of her intellect and the power of her sympathy. All that they were she could have been in a greater degree.

In estimating her powers at this time, one should think not so much of what is commonly considered literary and critical ability, as the quality and depth of thought that measures human life aright; and one finds the means for making such an estimate in her remarks on biography, written at the age of twenty-seven.

“And yet, in no department of literature, perhaps, is there so much imperfection; in none so much error and deception. The causes of this imperfection are so obvious, and so many curious discoveries Edition: current; Page: [173] have been made here and there, that a pretty general distrust of the fidelity of biographers now exists; and few but children and the wilfully credulous now believe all that is told them of the great and good and wonderful people whom they long to resemble. This distrust, however unavoidable, has a very demoralizing effect; and it is worth a serious inquiry whether there is any probability, or at least whether there is not a possibility, of its being removed. . . . .

“Have we ever met with a representation of character supported by facts at all approaching in fairness to those discussions of the characters of our friends which are held in conversation while they are alive and active? For ourselves we can answer, never. In the longest and most fair-seeming narrative of a life we have always found something deficient, something unsatisfactory, something which we cannot reconcile, or which it is impossible to believe. Much as we grieve, we do not wonder at this, for we see where the difficulties lie; and these difficulties are so various and so nearly insuperable, that we consider the position of a conscientious biographer one of the most perplexing that can be conceived. Did he know intimately the character he is going to describe? If he did, how can he bring himself to notice the weakness, the follies, the peculiarities, which he desires should be forgotten in the grave, and which, to the eye of friendship, have already faded away into shades too slight to be caught ere they vanish? If he did not know him, how is he qualified for the task he has undertaken? Did he love the departed? If he did, can he form an impartial estimate of his virtues? If not, how came he by the knowledge of those finer qualities of soul which can only be revealed to a kindred soul, and which yet must not be omitted in a delineation of the mind? It is obvious that no delineation of the mind can be complete. The obstacles are too many and too great. But true philosophy can argue from things that are known to those which are not known; and here we have a method by which we may surmount many difficulties. For this purpose, the facts with which we are furnished must be true, the details faithful, the materials of unquestionable originality. If we cannot have the whole truth, we ought to be told nothing but the truth; and if this rule be observed (as in common fairness it ought), we will contrive to make out for ourselves whatever it is of material consequence to ascertain. But can we ever feel entirely satisfied of the fidelity of the meagre relations which are afforded us? Alas! in very few cases; but in a few we may. How do we know, how do we distinguish such cases from the many? By Edition: current; Page: [174] the presence of a simplicity which carries conviction with it; by an impress of truth which cannot be counterfeited; by a verisimilitude analogous to that by which we are enabled to pronounce on the resemblance of a portrait without having seen the original. Where are we to look for such? Not in volumes of panegyric which assume the form of narrative. Not in quartos whose chapters contain one fact enveloped in a multitude of observations, where the author forgets his subject while striving to immortalize himself. Not among the equivocations of timid friendship, or the mysterious insinuations of a writer who sports with the interest of his readers, and seems proud of knowing more than he chooses to tell.”

This remained her permanent judgment; as one may learn by reference to the Preface of her “Biographical Sketches” in 1869, forty years later, when expressing her satisfaction at the extensive appreciation which had attended her endeavours to discharge a biographer’s duty, — a satisfaction greater than any literary success can yield; for this appreciation was to her an assurance that the deliberate judgment of society pronounces for an ethical standard of character in the first place, and in the next for fidelity to that standard.

Early and late, she thought men’s characters a more important possession than any thing they could do. More than their deeds is what they were, and how they came to be what they were.

She by no means absolved a biographer from presenting the whole truth because it was unacceptable or painful. “It is high time that some one should set an example of intrepid fidelity.” Later she confirms this; and, remarking the confusion of thought and the unchastened feelings which occasion so many readers to misapprehend altogether the purpose and character of biography, she asks if readers do not feel that there is no right way but to tell, in the spirit of justice, the whole truth about the characters of persons important enough to have their lives publicly treated at all.

And now, after so much toil and conscientious preparation, as laid down in the resolutions; after having written in the course of it the matter of at least half a dozen octavo volumes, with Edition: current; Page: [175] fancy-work, needful needle-work, and German literature crowded deep into the night, the way seemed to be opening to a successful literary career, when the very next month brought the failure of the Norwich manufacturing house of which her father had been formerly the head.

She has told how her hopes were disappointed; but how she bore the disappointment the following letter tells better. She writes thus to her mother, absent at Birmingham:—

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

July 5, 1829

Norwich

Norwich,

July 5, 1829

.

My dearest Mother,—

I am glad that our good friend Mr. Hutton goes straight to Birmingham, that we may make him the bearer of some comfort to you. He will tell you that we are well and cheerful, and I am sure we shall be yet more so when we have heard of you. This is our great anxiety at present, and we can scarcely turn our thoughts to the future, till we know how you have borne what is past. It must, indeed, be a very heavy blow to you; and all other considerations, we find, shrink to nothing compared to this. I wish it were possible to transfer to you all the comfort we derive from the circumstances which are happening every hour; but I am afraid there are no means of assuring you, till you come home to witness it, how manifold are the consolations which arise from the respect and kindness of friends. Still, there are better consolations than this, and you possess them; and if it will gratify you to hear it from your children, I have pleasure in expressing what we all feel, that if we should be found able to go through this trial better than some, it is to you chiefly that we owe it. We have by you been trained to habits of industry and economy, which will now prove our best wealth. We may thank God that, instead of wealth, he has given us more durable blessings, various and abundant. Our best comfort, dearest mother, will be to hear from you. I am sure fresh trials inspire fresh love, and in this belief I sign myself more than ever your dutiful and affectionate.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Your letter has just arrived. What a blessing it is to us! Our greatest anxiety is now at an end.

Mrs. Martineau having decided that her daughter’s hopes of a literary career should be crushed, the daughter wrote thus. Talking over with old friends this obedience of hers (this Edition: current; Page: [176] “going back with them and being subjected unto them”), one of them said, “How could she be so foolish?” “Nevertheless,” replied the other, “it was Christlike.”

The following letter is the story of that time, told at that time:—

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

January 22, 1830

Robert Martineau

Martineau, Robert

Stamford Hill,

January 22, 1830

.

My dear Mother,—

I received your letter yesterday, and the purpose of my answering it already is to prevent —’s having the trouble of writing. He knows how I like hearing from him, but his time is very fully occupied, and I shall be glad to save him trouble. I have read yours to my dear aunt, who has been my confidante in the business, and we agree in seeing that there is not a shadow of doubt as to what I am to do. We chiefly regret that such painful feelings should have been excited, where my sole intention was to offer a confidence which is your due. I could not but let you know how entirely my prospects are declared to depend on certain circumstances; but once knowing your wishes, I have no other desire than to comply with them, reserving to myself, however, the liberty of changing my plans when I find my resources fail, as Mr. Fox says they inevitably will, if I remain at a distance from town. There is no periodical work ever sent into the country, and my choice lies between the little stories for Houlston and Darton, and original works, which I have neither capital nor courage to undertake. Mr. Fox is exceedingly sorry that I am obliged to decline the three offers which have been made me, — the Westminster, the larger engagement for the M. R., and Mr. Hill’s assistance. If Mr. Fox can get his work done under his own eye, I cannot expect him to send it to a distance, and he declines doing so. Mr. Hill has asked the essential question, whether I have continual access to the Museum and other libraries, and literary society here; and finding that I live in the country, can do nothing for me, and “Pemberton”* is coming back to me. I must try if Baldwin or somebody else will take it. Mr. Fox will keep his eye upon my interests, and, if anything offers, I shall be sure to have the benefit of it. A better and kinder friend I cannot have; and he shows his kindness in not puffing me up with false hopes. He says £100 or £150 per year is as much as our most successful writers usually make, with all the advantages of town: and I must not expect any such thing except in particularly lucky years. Edition: current; Page: [177] Neither he nor I dreamed of writing to dispel selfish doubts in you, my dear mother, but only to show that my change of views arose from no fancy of my own. When I came, I believed as firmly as you do that my means of subsistence were in my own power at home. Now I see that they will probably not be so; but I am not anxious, while I have any prospect at all of useful employment. I have given up Derby. We see no use in going to Bristol, as there are no literary people but Sydney Smith, who is but a slight acquaintance of Aunt K.’s and has little literary influence, and there I should not have the leisure for writing which I should enjoy at Derby. So, if you please, I will remain here for a few weeks, and make the most of my time and opportunities. My aunt insists on my remaining here, as being near Mr. Fox. One thing more, — I never entertained so preposterous an idea for a moment as that of going alone into lodgings, and must have expressed myself very ill if I led you to think so. It would be positively disreputable. I thought of boarding in a family. So the conclusion of the whole matter is that you will see me in two or three months, quite inclined to be happier at home than any where else, as long as I can maintain myself there in a useful way; but holding the power of seeking employment elsewhere, should my resources fail. I cannot regret (and here my aunt bears me out) having mentioned to you the proposals I have received; but if the manner has caused you pain, I ask your forgiveness, and beg you to forget the matter as speedily as possible. We know well how far you are from being selfish on such occasions, and this consideration made me the more ready to be perfectly open with you. And here I make an end of the subject entirely.

I have been enjoying myself exceedingly since I last wrote, and some very pleasant things have happened. The thing which was more wanting to my peace than any one circumstance besides has been granted me. Albina W —* called on me at Chiswell Street on Monday; and we had a very long and satisfactory explanation of past mysteries, the particulars of which you shall hear when we meet. There is nothing so delightful as coming to a clear understanding in such cases, and a load has been taken off our minds by it. She is a very sensible girl, and talked in a way that I liked very much. She is not in the slightest degree like her brother in countenance, which disappointed me. I think I never before failed to trace a family resemblance. . . . .

My aunt is so pleased with the basket making that she has given Edition: current; Page: [178] me two dozen pieces of braid and cord, satin, — lilac, blue, and pink, — paper, etc. How very kind! I have seen a most beautiful new sort of bag, which I find I can imitate; and I have several orders already in this family, and shall probably make two or three guineas by them. . . . . As I write much and often to you, I am obliged to hurry, which I hope you will pardon.

Farewell. With dear love to all, believe me, dear mother, your very affectionate

H. MARTINEAU.

This disappointment was a severe one, but it was not in her nature to stay disappointed. The very next day after her return from London she began to prepare for the competition proposed by the Unitarian Association, as a means of obtaining the best effort of the denomination for the promotion of its views among Catholics, Jews, and Mahometans. Instinctively placing herself, with her own belief and opinions, as far as possible in their point of view, and seeking whatever agreement existed, with a courtesy and sympathy rare in theological writings, she avoided controversy, and strove to make Unitarianism an affirmative faith. These essays placed her at the head of the denomination. They are able and complete in all Unitarian learning, and in the clear order and arrangement of the arguments and the appropriateness of the style give proof that she had thoroughly accomplished herself as a writer. In execution they answer exactly to what the French call des travaux admirables et serieux. They are not works of experience, but beautified traditions, such as youthful piety receives unquestioning from the beloved elders, and delights to worship and adorn. One fruit of her own thoughts, however, as well as the heartfelt respect for the right of opinion, is to be seen in them all, — that doctrine of necessity, predestination, election, or by whatever name men call it, whose inconsistency with other parts of Unitarianism seems to have struck neither herself, her judges, nor the denomination at large. The tone and handling of these three subjects are so excellent as to take attention from the anatomy and the perspective. They were immediately translated into French and Spanish, and the Catholic one was circulated on the Continent. Whether or not Edition: current; Page: [179] it made converts there I cannot learn. She herself seems to suppose not. But it certainly must have struck strangely on the ears of the persecuted English Catholics of that time to be addressed as “our Roman Catholic brethren.” This truly catholic tone subjected her afterwards to insult from one of the Anglican Church who had long lost all notion of the meaning either of brotherhood or protest.

It was ever one of Harriet Martineau’s strongest characteristics that nothing in life came to her void or left her profitless. This seems to have been the compensation of her great misfortune of deafness, which, in conjunction with her actual faculties, compelled so much closer observation and reflection than others exercise. It was at this period that the distinguished Hindoo Rammohun Roy visited England; and I gather from her correspondence of this date that his character, appearance, and, above all, the manner of his reception, afforded a lesson soon to be of essential service to her. She honoured in him the high qualities of the man, set off to advantage by his high position, and was astonished to see persons striving selfishly to use his celebrity for their own illustration; and she was thus prepared to rate at its true value much of the general homage that waits on greatness.

She was now to share with the great Hindoo convert the regards of the English Unitarian world. She writes thus to Norwich on the occasion. The letter begins with a preface from her cousin, certifying to her health, and prudence in exertion.

London

London,

Wednesday morning.

There, dear mother! will this do? I thank you a thousand times for your friendly and tender warning, but I do assure you that I am in perfect health. I have been resting at Maidstone, and I further assure you that I know too well what it is to want health, to venture to trifle with the very unusual portion now granted to myself. On Nelly’s affairs I will write when I have seen her. In the mean time, this glorious meeting to-day is engrossing all our thoughts. We had such a crowd this morning, and are expecting a greater to-night! The Rajah was there. Little as I had reckoned on the mere sight of him, I shall never forget it. Never did I see any thing so touching. He looks spirit-broken and wasted by illness. I believe Edition: current; Page: [180] his domestic troubles have been very severe. So melting an expression of meek suffering was never seen. I could not have pressed upon him for an introduction, as a hundred ladies did. I had rather wait and see him in peace and quietness. The people actually stood on the benches to catch a glimpse of him. What a moment it was to me, when the most beautiful of the hymn-tunes was being sung, when the Rajah was bending his head on his breast, and my old friend Dr. Carpenter was sitting next him! With these feelings mingled some for myself, for I had just heard that the committee had talked of inserting my name in the report, and had determined that the winning of the prizes was too remarkable and honourable an achievement to be passed over in silence, and that they had jokingly said they should put the Rajah on one side of the chair and me on the other. I was afraid I must stay away to-night, but my friends say it would be a sad pity to lose such a meeting. How little could I have imagined, but lately, that I should be publicly noticed as the benefactor and advocate of a cause which I have always had at heart, but scarcely hoped to aid! The result to-morrow. I begin to be afraid that dear Nelly* will not come. It is scarcely to be expected, but I do especially wish it.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Wednesday night.

And now to my narrative again, dear mother. I went very early, and as I left the gate gave a sigh to poor Ellen, who, I thought, could not be coming; and it was easy to see that this meeting would be infinitely grander than all former meetings. There was a crowd about the unopened doors when I arrived, and when we got in, Mr. Fox, who stood aloft on the platform, directed me to the corner of a quiet pew. In a very few minutes the whole place, except the platform and the reporter’s seat, was filled to overflowing. The windows, even, were crowded. Then Mr. Mardon† came to be introduced and make his obeisance about the essays. His wife sat beside me and pointed people out whom I did not know. Mr. Aspland made a capital chairman. After the money-matters had been discussed, the report was read by Mr. Mardon, who stood on my side, so that I heard every word. My corner was so quiet that I thought nobody saw me; but I was mistaken, for when, after a pause in the midst of the book part, Mr. Mardon cast an instantaneous glance at me from the corner of his eye, I saw them all on the platform turn half round and away again, to see whether I was attending. Edition: current; Page: [181] Then followed this, which Ellen thinks is nearly word for word as delivered.

“It will be remembered that three premiums were offered last year for the best essays whose purpose should be the introduction and promotion of our faith among Catholics, Jews, and Mahometans. The first of these prize essays was printed some months ago under the title of ‘Essential Faith of the Universal Church.’ The other two have been so recently adjudged, that your committee must leave to their successors the work of printing and publishing, and of causing translations of them to be prepared in the various European languages in which it is intended they should be circulated. For the purpose of fulfilling to the utmost the intentions of their predecessors, your committee appointed three distinct committees for this special purpose, three judges being provided in each department. The result is, that after the strictest and most impartial investigation the premiums are all awarded to the same individual. It cannot but be thought most honourable to the successful competitor, Miss Harriet Martineau of Norwich, that her compositions have united all suffrages.”

Then came a round of loud applause. I was glad enough when Mr. Mardon went on to other things. When all the business was discussed, and two or three of the resolutions, a buzz announced that the Rajah was coming. He seemed very feeble, and was quite perplexed to know what the clapping and cheering meant, and very simply asked Mr. Aspland. He does not object to it, however. Then Bowring made a capital speech about him. I wonder he could say so much before his face, but it really was beautiful, particularly the parallel between the Rajah and Peter the Great. There is something about Rammohun Roy that melts one irresistibly, and the more, the more one looks at him. He spoke briefly on account of his chest, and was heard only by a few. Two sentences, however, reached the ears and hearts of all. “I have done nothing to cause all this, — nothing for your Association. What I have studied in the Gospels was for my own salvation. I have done nothing for you.” His upward look at Mr. Aspland, the meek expression of his countenance, his majestic bending figure, and the peculiarities of complexion and costume, made it such a picture as I shall never again behold. The enthusiasm was beautiful; and when the chairman requested assent to the resolution of welcome to the illustrious stranger by rising instead of the usual method, the instantaneous compliance was startling. The Rajah may well “never forget it till his latest breath,” as Edition: current; Page: [182] he says. After the resolution had been unanimously carried, the place suddenly thinned almost to emptiness. It was over by a quarter past ten, and all agree that such a meeting was never before held. The Rajah left (through inability to remain) about an hour and a half after he came in. My party were in the gallery, and when I joined them at the foot of the stairs, I was delighted to see Ellen with them. She had set off in bare time, put herself into an omnibus, and arrived just before the business began. She had leave of absence till breakfast-time, so we talked over all affairs during the late night and early morning.

She writes again about the Rajah:—

He always leads the conversation, and expects others to follow; and he talks to people in their own way or what he thinks such, with exquisite politeness, and a knowledge which appears almost miraculous. With all this cultivation, the most remarkable thing about him, his finest characteristic, is his intensity of feeling. Nothing surprises me more than the notions of some folks at a distance who seem to think the Unitarians must all be on intimate terms with him; or that we may be kind to him as we might to refugees. They forget that he is, by rank, a companion of our Royal Dukes, if they had the minds of a Brougham. . . . . Feeling as I do about him, I was better pleased to hear of his advancing to sweeten Mr. Fox’s coffee on Saturday, than of any of his sayings about us. . . . . He looks as if he had gone the round of human griefs, to perfect in himself the dignity of meekness.

I am sure this letter, in spite of the egotism, will give you great pleasure. I hope to become more steadily and reasonably industrious in proportion to my encouragements; and having been granted the honor of spreading my favourite principles in so many strange lands, to cherish them up into their full perfection in my own spirit. How few women have had so extraordinary a stimulus!

Farewell, dearest mother.

Ever yours most affectionately,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Few women indeed! This was the full, complete measure of sectarian and provincial fame, — won at the first grasp. Here was the door flung wide open to that tempting missionary ground where the youthful imagination loves to revel. The chosen expositor of the faith to foreign lands, the main pillar of its periodical Edition: current; Page: [183] literature at home, the leader of its devotions in song and prayer, — where she began, aged doctors of divinity are content to utter their nunc dimittis. Why could not she have sat down with Carpenter and Chalmers and Rowland Hill and Robert Hall, a crowned ruler in her denominational realm? I find nothing among her papers of this date foreshadowing any higher destiny. She would then have avoided life, and enjoyed an industrious repose; escaped the pain of that growth that bursts the bonds of family traditions and fraternal dictation, the hold of friendship and the habits of thought induced by society. There seems evidence to show that she had very nearly begun her work for the world in the cramped church-fashion that can reduce the strongest powers to its own narrowness. To one sect it would hardly have been possible to confine her; but to all dissenting ones, she might have been an oracle, if not indeed a centre of union. About this time she began to be sought by “highly evangelical” and “very superior” men. Students of Oriental literature, first attracted by the “Traditions of Palestine,” were now more deeply interested by the essays. Her “parables,” “tales,” and “musings” were cited by divines as ministrations of imagination to the cause of religion. These were the days when the artificial method of sermonizing seemed to her the most natural and effectual mode of approach to the minds of educated persons; and when she could utter exclamations of delight at fanciful dogmatism. “O this sermon!” she says of one she was so fortunately placed as to be able to hear. “The text was, ‘He hath made every thing beautiful in its time,’ and after the adaptations in the beautiful objects of nature were pointed out, we had the whole survey of all the principal religions in the world, with suggestions that each was beautiful in its time, and that there is one whose time of ceasing to be beautiful can never arrive.” “I was much struck with J. J. Tayler’s ‘Evidences of the Resurrection.’ ” But Biblical science soon took the lead of Biblical literature, and she now thought of preparing a work on the natural history of the Bible; and meeting the excellent Dr. Stokes, who had given up a professorship for conscience’ sake, he offered to place at her disposal his valuable body of manuscript Edition: current; Page: [184] notes on the subject. Mr. Kenrick, too, “has sent me Jahn’s Biblical Archæology, from the York library, to keep till the close of the vacation. It would cost three guineas; and, necessary and valuable as it is, I could not afford that. Little did I think to make such a use of German already. I am busy now, reading the Bible through in course for my work.”

Singularly enough, with these alternate workings of fancy and matter-of-fact within their ordinary range, comes a single glance into the less frequented region of thought which became long afterwards so delightful to her. “In conversation with Mr. Fox he spoke to me of his illnesses, and their effect on the nerves and on the mind. It is well worth while for philosophers to be ill, that we may have the benefit of their observations.” In a similar spirit was written her review of Major Carmichael’s “Physical Considerations connected with Man’s Ultimate Destination.” It is the forerunner of the philosophical studies of her after years. It is a stretching after proof on subjects where assumption had been deemed sufficient, and will be extremely interesting to all who are curious to see the first workings of a great mind in search of reality below the traditional limits. This paper was afterwards read with great interest in America, and was much sought for at the time in England. A High-Church clergyman immediately ordered the “Monthly Repository,” and employed another, his friend, to find out the author. This latter was so much struck by the article that he thanked Miss Martineau in the church porch, where they first met, for writing it. Such things were the beginnings of the discontent springing up in England with the diseased ghostly element in religion.

The essays, meanwhile, were at work, and she writes thus to her mother in relation to the work they did.

August 28, 1831

.

“O my mother, one of the greatest joys I have in success is in your share of my pleasure and gratitude. And now I have something to tell you which far exceeds all I have had to relate. I was not sure of all the facts till this hour, or I should have told you before; and even now I am bound not to tell names at present. A Catholic priest, a Edition: current; Page: [185] young, talented, educated man, has been converted by my tract, and has nobly renounced his office and all his expectations, and avowed himself a Unitarian. He has now but £ 5 in the world, and no prospect. His case is under the consideration of the Unitarian committees in London and here. They will probably send him to York for two years, to qualify him for our ministry; but this is uncertain, and not to be repeated, therefore. He belongs to a large city, where he is well known, and where his conversion, when fully understood, may produce a great effect, and probably emulation of his conscientiousness. I cannot describe what I feel when I read the letter which says that this is all true, and that the essay is the cause of it all.”

One cannot help remarking the main elements of this joy over her convert to Unitarianism. It was the noble conscientiousness, the resistance of authority, the renunciation of office and expectations by one who had not £ 5 in the world. Righteousness was stronger in her soul than sect. But one is obliged to admit that, in ceasing to be a Unitarian, she burst as strong a tie of denominational consideration, sectarian attachment, and theological training as ever held a confessor to the shrine of his faith.

Why, why could she not be content to let her spirit sleep upon her fame, and live on, — half fancifully, half studiously, — an imitation life, such as would have sent her down to her grave crowned with Unitarian blessings, — a mother in the little Israel into which she was born? Why could she not have taken warning from that “look of one who had gone the round of human griefs,” that sunk so deep into her heart from the countenance of Rammohun Roy,—to escape the bitterest grief of all, as well as to distrust the noisiest praise?

It could not be; for real life now opened before her, strenuous and grand. And, happily for the world, she shrunk from none of its high obligations.

Edition: current; Page: [186] Edition: current; Page: [187]

FAME.

“Fame, is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights and live laborious days.

. . . . .

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Nor in the glistening foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies.”

Milton.

“The dignity of this end (of endowment of man’s life with new commodities) appeareth by the estimation that antiquity made of such as guided thereunto.”

— Bacon.

“They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars, for ever and ever.”

Prophecy of Daniel.

And how did life present itself to the young lady of twenty-eight, so quick to see and feel, so clear to think, so sound to judge, so skilled to express, thus suddenly emancipated by acclamation, and freed, so to speak, by imposition of hands, from the family authority to which her strong affections always disposed her too readily to yield? We ought now to call to mind the daily events which she had been reading from childhood up, in the distressed looks of the people in the streets, in her father’s anxious face at home, in the evening sky lighted up by riot and rick-burning, as well as in the parliamentary and police reports and leading articles of the “Globe” newspaper.

Only a hand’s breadth before and after, like the section of a battle-field seen through a mountain rift, is allowed by biographical limitations to the eye that follows through the fight the course of one illustrious life: yet the narrow opening is sufficient Edition: current; Page: [188] for the same vision of a land in agony, knowing neither why nor wherefore, that set her strong, statesman-like mind and feeling heart at work to find the cause and the remedy. The sight was terrible indeed. To French statesmen and historians it then seemed as if England could not much longer hold together as a nation. To the few American observers who better knew the quality of the blood themselves had sprung from, the whole condition-of-England question was a frightful enigma. There were bloodshed and famine in the East Indies, and slavery in the West. There were twenty-five millions of people shut up to starve in the small area of the British Isles, exhausted by war, and taxed up to the war-point after the peace, in ways so distressing and vexatious as to be almost past belief. They were dying for want of bread, while hindered alike from producing and importing grain, as well as from going to live where it grew. The straitened manufacturers were compelled to witness the destruction of their property by the starving workmen, whenever they attempted to economize by means of machinery. Enterprising merit was condemned to the lifelong heart-sickness of hope deferred, by that prestige of rank which enabled the great families to appoint their own members, dependants, and supporters to the posts of profit and honour. Class wrought against class, and every man’s hand was against his brother. Coast-guard and smuggler, parson and parishioner, press-gang and peasant, landlord, tenant, and poacher, rioter, rick-burner, and cabinet minister, soldiery and mob, chill by turns with terror or hot with the sense of wrong, stood ready to clutch each other by the throat. Men in power saw no cure but in killing, and they caused the masses, driven into the streets by ignorance, starvation, and despair, to be fired upon where they stood for sedition, or destroyed individually by legal process for crime. The hangman had a fearful work to do; for men were put to death in rows at Newgate and all over the kingdom for five-shilling crimes committed to sustain life. A half-naked youth might be taken to the gallows for stealing a strip of cloth from the bleaching-ground. The only remedy in use besides the gallows and the bayonet was the old poor-law of Elizabeth’s time, so unequal to Edition: current; Page: [189] the case of the nineteenth century that it operated as a millstone round the necks of the virtuous and industrious, and as a bounty on idleness and crime. England claimed to be a Christian nation, but Catholic, Churchman, and Dissenter each denied the other the name; and Paul’s description of Pagans applied at this time to them all, — “hateful, and hating one another.”

In the midst of all this disorder government itself was coming to be considered a curse by the bulk of the people; for class-legislation had caused the poor — the many — and the rich — the few — to consider each other as natural enemies. What wonder, amid the sharp fermenting of such a state of mutual misapprehension, that Treasury, Council, and Chancellor, Privy Seal, Admiralty, and Exchequer, Boards of Trade and Control, and all the “departments,” should have been at their wits’ end, and all sense of mutual obligation between them and the people have been seen melting away?

In such a crisis it was that Harriet Martineau set herself to consider the cause. She found it in the utter ignorance of the highest and the lowest classes, and the half-informed apathy of the middle one, in combination with the selfishness of all. And why might not all be led to feel for each other as brothers, and to perceive the universal applicability of the principles she had from childhood been studying? She was sure of their power, and felt the wisdom and greatness of the minds that had discovered them. She would assail the general prejudice against political economy and its sages which stigmatized both as partial, hard, and cruel. She would appeal to that appreciation of the noble, the heroic, and the holy, beating so high in her own breast, which she felt sure had not yet died out of the British heart. How safe and happy might the nation become, if it could once be made to know and adopt the course and the principles so exactly fitted to that time and that people! They would secure the welfare of all; and to all she therefore addressed herself, in the thirty-four little volumes of “Illustrations of Political Economy,” which she sent to the press monthly during the ensuing two years and a half. She has told us the circumstances of their issue, and we have seen how her resolute despair Edition: current; Page: [190] conquered every public and private obstacle, as she undertook to bridge the gulf of ignorance and class exclusiveness which kept Englishmen at enmity, and to show them how all things contributing to the support and enjoyment of life might be produced and conveyed to all. “The people want this work, and they shall have it!” she said, at the darkest hour of her undertaking, before the attainment of the means. We know from the Autobiography* what was in her heart at the time. Let us see if there are tears in the tone that reached the public ear, out of such depths of trial and difficulty.

The Preface to the “Illustrations” that tells us is eighteen pages long, and so close-linked in statement and reasoning that it can with difficulty be divided or shortened. It declares the everlasting truth on the chosen subject. A short extract will show the tone and temper of the mind that, in view of the darkness of the past, was determined to brighten the future.

“ ‘Example is better than precept.’ We take this proverb as the motto of our design. We declare frankly that our object is to teach political economy; and that we have chosen this [narrative-pictorial] method, not only because it is new, not only because it is entertaining, but because we think it the most faithful and the most complete; . . . . and when we dedicate our series to all to whom it may be of use, we conceive that we are addressing many of every class. To address it to all whom it may concern would be the same thing as appealing to the total population of the empire.

“Is there any one breathing to whom it is of no concern whether the production of food and clothing and the million articles of human consumption goes on or ceases? whether that production is proportioned to those who live? whether all obtain a fair proportion? Is there any one living to whom it matters not whether the improvement of the temporal condition of the race shall go on, or whether it shall relapse into barbarism? Whether the supports of life, the comforts of home, and the pleasures of society shall become more scanty or more abundant? Whether there shall be increased facilities for the attainment of intellectual good, or whether the old times of slavery and hardship shall return? Is any one indifferent whether famine stalks through the land, laying low the helpless and humbling the Edition: current; Page: [191] proud; or whether, by a wise policy, the nations of the earth benefit one another, and secure peace and abundance at home, by an exchange of advantages abroad? Is there any one living, in short, to whom it matters not whether the aggregate of human life is cheerful and virtuous, or mournful and depraved? The question comes to this: for none will doubt whether a perpetuity of ease or hardship is the more favourable to virtue. If it concerns rulers that their measures should be wise, if it concerns the wealthy that their property should be secure, the middling classes that their industry should be rewarded, the poor that their hardships should be redressed, it concerns all that political economy should be understood. If it concerns all that the advantages of a social state should be preserved and improved, it concerns them likewise that political economy should be understood by all.”

The effect was instantaneous. The wise and benevolent few felt that they were comprehended and appreciated by a master spirit. Political leaders grasped the helm of state with a firmer hand. Leaders of parties struggled to get possession of the new influence. The poor, selfish little publisher felt his bark float, and laughed for joy that from the king to the cobbler every body was buying the Series. The reviewers read up Smith, Malthus, Mill, and Ricardo, and qualified to the best of their ability to help or hinder, as their respective party badges required. The little-great strove to illustrate themselves by the reflected light of the famous author of the “Illustrations.” The really great and good gathered round the new luminary, rejoicing in its radiance and its warmth. Half the world read these books merely as novels (as, indeed, they were, and of the rarest originality and merit); and while statesmen and members of Parliament hoped readers would not lose sight of the political problem in the charm of the characters, the witty and the frivolous boasted to each other that, be she clever as she might, she could not sift in the science so cunningly as they could contrive to skip all but the story. Publishers in other lands and languages sent to demand biographical notices to prefix to their editions, one of which came back to the author in an absolutely unknown tongue. Newspapers at home gave her pedigree, and newspapers Edition: current; Page: [192] abroad her history. Doubts were not unfrequently expressed as to the real authorship of the series; and it was always attributed to some leading statesman of the time, being thought far beyond the political ability, not merely of a woman, but of any except a great legislator. The editorial world fell to advising, in common with the moral world and the religious world; all seeming to feel personally responsible, lest so great a genius should go wrong for lack of counsel. Half the gossiping world gave her in marriage to the other half. Great historians, divines, and church dignitaries made her the homage of their works and sought the honour of her acquaintance. She was thanked in every possible form, publicly and privately, by every body who was the better for her work of justice and mercy. Complimentary letters came from all quarters like a storm of snow. These she uniformly destroyed, except when it was necessary to preserve them on account of their connection with moral business and legislation. Some such remain, showing how deep and decisive was the effect she produced on the minds that led the political and literary life of the time.

The public at large soon knew its favourite by sight, and she could not walk in public places without being followed by a deeply interested crowd. It is, perhaps, the strongest characteristic of her works, — one distinguishing every word she has since written, — that, as it came, full strength, from the depths of a heart filled with “the spirit of love and of power and of a sound mind,” so it went as deeply home to every reader’s bosom. This sort of public homage was painful to one so constitutionally timid and retiring. Sometimes, when it drew the curious and the self-seeking into her train, it gave rise to comic incidents for which she was not responsible. The unavoidable draught on her time and strength became so great that it was necessary, at length, to avoid the mere idlers who sought a selfish gratification by obtaining an introduction. A Mr. Burke begged to be presented to her. “What is your qualification?” asked the quick-witted friend to whom he proposed it. “Sir!” “I mean what purpose have you to answer? Have you any thing to tell her? or do you want to know any thing from her? Only Edition: current; Page: [193] give me your qualification.” “I know no better than that I am the last descendant of Edmund Burke.” “That won’t do. That is not in Miss Martineau’s way. She has to talk to far too many people already, with a better title than that. I cannot introduce you.”

So great a personal popularity is ever a severe trial of the strength and of the character; but hers bore a threefold strain uninjured. She was novelist, political economist, and philanthropist in one, and constantly receiving admiration in each capacity. It was perpetually said of her, not by fools, but by wise men, that she was the first woman of the age. By those who are neither fools nor wise, the people at large, she was equally appreciated. Dean Milman could have told an amusing instance of it; and how he was cheered at a sad moment by the mirthfulness with which she related to him, at a dinner at Mr. Rogers’s, when the conversation drew it from her, — the amusement she had had from a letter received by that day’s post. It was scribbled all over, in the way that lost letters are. It was addressed to “The Queen of Modern Philanthropists”; and the post-office had put in the corner, “Try Miss Martineau.” It reached her in Fludyer Street; and one could set Dean Milman laughing at any time with, “Try Miss Martineau.”

Such is fame in one of its aspects. A look into her letter-bag on any single morning of her London life will tell us something of its toils and temptations, and give us the pungent aroma of the mingled incense, ordinarily so intoxicating to the novice, which was daily offered up to her. Here are five invitations to dinner for the same day, at houses where the splendour of the appointments “always suggests to me, by contrast, the idea of the factory-children. Not that I blame the rich and noble for their enjoyments, but I would have no huge inequalities.” “It is the charming freedom from stiffness and pretension that, after all, delights me; not the blaze of lights, and the double doors, and gold plate, and rare coffee.” Here are patronesses’ tickets to their fancy-balls at Willis’s rooms, — if she can be prevailed on, they add, to give herself the recreation. Almack’s has no Edition: current; Page: [194] restrictions of costume for her. Here are cards of barristers, parliamentary commissioners, and cabinet ministers. Here are all manner of prospectuses and plans for her to “honour with her sanction.” Here are invitations from editors, to favour their reviews and magazines with her contributions. Bulwer has a quick eye for literary power; and hers shall grace “the new monthly” as well as the rest. Little “V.” of the little “Repository” has achieved greatness among the magazines. Then come heaps of concert tickets, museum tickets, library tickets: loads of blue-books, reports of sanitary, factory, and poor-law commissions, — there is no end to the variety. “Here is a curious arrival, come just in time for you, my dear mother; an honourary diploma from the Royal Jennerian Society, ‘who, the Duke of Wellington in the chair, have done themselves the honour of unanimously voting to Miss Harriet Martineau the diploma which constitutes her a member of their body.’ They are right if they think I can help the spread of vaccination, and I think I can.” These recognitions of her character as a labourer for the welfare of society were ever far more valued by her than testimonies of mere literary estimation. And yet in after days she made light of this: “I am afraid such things are sometimes a push for subscriptions to declining funds.”

She now began to feel the embarrassments of greatness in being expected to dispense patronage. Every one-sided character of her acquaintance looked to her to bring his particular insanity into a reputation for soundness. In reviewing the number of opportunities for benefiting others now laid before her, one cannot but think of poor Marmontel, oppressed in like manner by his native village after the success of his first piece; “And all this depends upon me!” But she early became aware of the risk to independence from incurring obligations to patronage, and she never hesitated to utter the unwelcome “no” which her conscience prompted when solicited to obtain advantages to which no claim existed but her request. The claims of benevolent associations with whose objects she warmly sympathized were never resisted. The Polish Association, in particular, owed much to her and to her family for the protection and maintenance Edition: current; Page: [195] of their orphans as well as the promotion of their cause. Her hymn written for their exiles, set to very touching music, made a profound impression: —

PRAYER OF THE POLISH EXILES AT THE PATRIOTS’ ALTAR.*

God! scorched by battle-fires we stand

Before thee on thy throne of snows;

But, Father! in this silent land,

We seek no refuge nor repose:

We ask, and shall not ask in vain, —

“Give us our heritage again!”

Thy winds are ice-bound in the sea;

Thine eagle cowers till storms are past;

Lord! when those moaning winds are free,

When eagles mount upon the blast,

O, breathe upon our icy chain,

And float our Poland’s flag again!

’T was for thy cause we once were strong;

Thou wilt not doom that cause to death!

O God! our struggle has been long;

Thou wilt not quench our glimmering Faith!

Thou hear’st the murmurs of our pain, —

“Give us our heritage again!”

The party struggle for her political influence had by this time become so vehement that she was obliged to write a special Preface for the Corn-Law tales, declaring her determination to defend from party what she meant for mankind.

These few emphatic words, it is to be hoped, satisfied the “Examiner,” the “Critic,” “Tait’s,” “Fraser’s,” and all the newspapers: they certainly did the public at large.

It was not merely the actual merit nor the positive utility of these publications that gave them a world-wide celebrity; neither was it their exquisite adaptation to the wants of England at that time; nor their novelty in execution, or originality in design: Edition: current; Page: [196] although the idea of conveying the facts of moral science by this method was so little familiar to the public mind that multitudes supposed all science might be taught in a similar manner, and felt wronged, as by a feminine caprice, that Miss Martineau refused to move their souls a second time by a series of illustrations of natural philosophy; while at the same time, although some of the tales are comic in parts, they remonstrated against the great preponderance of painful interest in what she had written. They needed to have it explained to them that the evil institutions that wring the human heart are the only subjects of a nature to permit a scientific demonstration in the form of fiction; that although an imperfect smelting apparatus may be as fatal to the purity of gold as mistaken methods of government are to national virtue, yet fiction cannot be made the vehicle of metallurgy; nor the miseries of mistaken legislation be gayly set forth in a story of happy conclusion. There had been tales before these, awakening sympathy with suffering; but tales showing the causes of suffering in the neglect of those principles of government which men in given circumstances must adopt in order to be happy were a new thing under the sun. To this especial originality of purpose they owed a part of their unprecedented popular success.

These books were also new in their special literary aspect, as well as the beginnings in England of a science of sociology.

A feeling of resistance had long been gathering in Harriet Martineau’s mind against that law of the kingdoms of poetry and romance, generally observed by all their rulers, from Homer to Scott inclusive, of filling the scene with the great and the powerful, — the occupants of thrones and the leaders of armies; and bidding the intricacies of the plot bear them along through “high feastings of kings with nobles and dancing of knights with ladies;” till a reproach from the majority of middle-aged readers had gone forth against novels and poetry as untrue to any life that came within the observation of whole-minded human beings then living. Going to the root of the matter, she found them untrue, by reason of their one-sided partialities and aristocratic prejudices. Now, as on so many subsequent occasions, Edition: current; Page: [197] she showed the genius that directs public thought and feeling; pointing out in advance the way in which she took the lead, and proving while proclaiming the power of fiction as the agent of morals and philosophy, — the servant of the poor and the lowly.

I need but refer to certain passages from those remarkable productions so much talked of in their time as “the Scott papers;” in which, while giving to Walter Scott, with all the enthusiasm of a grateful heart, his full due, and more than he himself ever dreamed of claiming, she points out his lack of the deeper moral insight, and calls on his successors in the field of romantic literature to make good his deficiencies. Every reader’s memory will bear witness to the effect her criticism and her example have had on novel-writing since that time; but few, except the watchers by the springs of great social changes, can tell upon what multitudes fell the awakening music of her affirmation of all that is great, noble, and heroic in woman. It met a response in the universal heart. America above all felt the grandeur and beauty of the appeal. Ella of Garveloch, Cousin Marshall, Mary Kay, Letitia, little Harriet, with all the troops of the high-minded poor and the high-hearted lowly that rose from every pictured page, became the friends and educators of the young matronage of the United States. As manuals of political economy, the “Illustrations” were not then so much needed there. The Transatlantic world was already in possession of all (save one) of the blessings they demanded. But as illustrations of high character and lofty virtue and heroic endurance and uncompromising integrity, they possessed an incisive power, as welcome as it was timely, to restore the features of the antique virtue of our earlier New England time, fast softening and wearing down beneath unmarked abuses. The observation of English critics was that she understood the springs of the machine of state. American ones said, “she knew how to

‘Ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.’ ”

As far as criticism can be a benefit, she was to be congratulated; for no writer ever received a larger share of it. From the Edition: current; Page: [198] leading reviews and great London dailies, down to the most obscure provincial and sectarian journals and magazines, all were full of the “Illustrations.” The “Edinburgh Review” was perfectly amiable in the spirit of its criticism, though utterly incompetent, in this instance, to its function, for want of breadth and power to comprehend the mind of the writer. The editor had at first admired Harriet Martineau as a lady, and afterwards esteemed her as a friend; but his attempts to reconcile her action with the feeble, narrow social views of the time were amusing instances of unconscious insult. He hardly knew how to excuse her as a student and a teacher of what he had thought exclusively manly truths. He was obliged to justify her to himself by a syllogism. “Women might, and it was becoming they should, protect and comfort the poor; political economy has an immediate connection with this; therefore a woman may be a political economist without being supposed to have abated any natural and right horror of Amazons in politics.” But he condemned any thing which could be called public life out of her own village, — the circle of a Lady Bountiful among her poor. A certain kind of knowledge is even here necessary, and so political economy might come in. He shuddered a little at Miss Martineau’s sense and spirit, but he “rejoiced to acknowledge that she had more than the fancy and feeling of Miss Edgeworth,” and he thought he had saved his admired author’s credit. How far was he from seeing that the most public of all public life was the one on which she had just entered! The life commonly called public of an ordinary member of Parliament was private in comparison. Her very thoughts were fast becoming of more public importance than all their doings for the public weal. Their doings were of importance as the complement of her feelings and thoughts.

The criticisms were as various as the powers and purposes of the men.

A critic is but a man like another; and when he chances to be the man of some specialty, most likely proves less able than another to pronounce a general judgment. He is so often obliged to “cram” for all but his own special questions, he is so often Edition: current; Page: [199] tempted to cover with a strain of brilliant sarcasm his want of power to appreciate his author, and, above all, he so often permits the actual power of judgment he may possess to be blunted by the retaining-fee of a party, or at best imperceptibly worn away by the continual suggestions of self-interest, that, in the field of real thought and action, he becomes a hindrance rather than a helper to both author and public. In the field of mere literature he may promote public pleasure by the perpetual attrition that polishes and perfects the individual writer, whose works thus formed and finished react in refinement on the public mind; but it is not in the field of literary criticism that the man capable of appreciating the great ethical natures of any time will be found: for the sympathies of such a man will draw him into their field of action. Hence it was that, with all Harriet Martineau’s immense popularity, she found but little competent criticism at this period. The crowd of review and newspaper writers were competent to only one half the case. They were profuse of eulogy because, without embracing the whole, for lack of depth and grasp, they were honestly and enthusiastically pleased with all they could comprehend. They welcomed her exactly as they might a great painter or musical artist who had charmed and won the public mind in taking it by surprise. Here was something at once out of their way and beyond their limitations; but they were pleased, with the rest of the world, and it was safe and agreeable to say so. In conquering the public she had conquered all the critics except the unscrupulously partisan ones. Without comprehending her nature or object in life, these felt, by mere oppugnancy, one quality of her power, — its freedom. It was neither to hold nor to bind nor to buy. They were afraid of it, and they tried to destroy it. Empson and Lockhart — “The Edinburgh” and “The Quarterly” — were fit types of the professionally critical power of that time. To the shallow but highly cultivated mind that could dwell in the tents of the Whigs, Harriet Martineau was a puzzle. How could she work month after month, and year after year, upon the most abstruse problems of civil polity and legislation, growing fresher and fresher as she went on? How could she make these Edition: current; Page: [200] dry bones live and dwell in the scenes and cities of all lands, painting them into pictures in which the beauty of the colouring and the force of the feeling were all used to prove the accuracy of the perspective, and yet remain so rich, so full, so free? Mr. Empson could not even imagine the power gained by living for the truth. She herself was less clear as to cause and effect (perhaps merely less precise in nomenclature) at this time than she afterwards became; while occupied in serving the world in this strenuous manner, she called the great source and stimulus of her life by the names of “principles” and “science” alternately.

Lockhart, as the editor of the Tory Quarterly, was of course hostile; that was only to have been expected. But he disgraced himself and the review by an utter want of decency and honesty. The preceding Autobiography is not very clear as to the precise point of Lockhart’s evil doing. The sensitive and the high-minded shrink from the details of falsehood and abuse which they have endured, till to do so passes into a habit of mind, almost into a principle of duty. Their great thoughts and great objects bear them above and beyond the sphere and feeling of insult. They do not care even to understand the meaning of a vicious animal’s attempt to throw them. The biographer has a different duty.

The worst feature, then, of Lockhart’s servility to his party — the party to which, as a hanger-on, he looked for literary patronage and pecuniary support — was his attempt to crush the rising young advocate of the people, by identifying her by all the weight of the great Tory party’s organ, with the advocacy of vice and crime. Because one political economist was said to have circulated papers encouraging young servant-girls and their seducers of rank to licentiousness, Mr. Lockhart thought to fling his mud and dust so dexterously as to attach to Miss Martineau the same imputation. The reaction of the indignant public mind against this baseness was such that this article of the “Quarterly” greatly promoted the popularity of the series of “Illustrations of Political Economy” it was intended to destroy.

Aside from its falsehoods, there is nothing that strikes one so singularly in Mr. Lockhart’s criticism of Miss Martineau’s “Illustrations,” Edition: current; Page: [201] or in the subsequent criticisms of the “Quarterly,” as their strain of ironical eulogy. His severest attempts now seem simple historical statements. It is curious, too, to remark at the outset the two-edged appeal to bigotry whetted sharper by masculine assumption, — well known as Lockhart was in those days as one of the orthodox who believe in nothing.

“This young lady has the high recommendation of being a Unitarian.” “Her theological works are all published, we believe, at the expense of the Unitarian Association; at least, such is the case with the ‘Essential Principles of Christianity,’ addressed to her ‘dear Roman Catholic brethren.’ ” It shows the coarseness of his nature that in this very article he calls Ella of Garveloch — one of the most nobly and beautifully conceived beings in literature — “a bare-legged Scotch quean!”

However unable to appreciate, even such a man is compelled by mere intellectual conviction and a politic reference to the same in other men to acknowledge “the praiseworthy intentions,” “benevolent spirit,” “varied knowledge,” “acute discrimination of character,” and “power of entering into and describing the feelings of the poorer classes.”

“Demerara,” he admits, is powerfully written, “but the picture is drawn from the imagination, and from the accounts of antislavery missions;” and he scoffs at the “notion” that man is not property, as one who considers the claim of ownership in man founded in the eternal laws of nature, to which those of states cannot but conform. And this very year, helped to the work by this very tale, which popularized the principles of freedom as the only sound political economy, while painting the slaves as outraged human beings, the British Parliament abolished West Indian slavery. And so in like manner the three great questions touching the factories, the poor-laws, and the currency, were successively agitated, and the question of the corn-laws fairly roused. To one so absorbed in successful public service as to be personally important to all the wronged and suffering classes, and proportionately beloved and honoured by them, criticism was what it ought to be, — desired as a thing to learn by; and abuse, when its purpose was once understood, but of the slightest moment.

Edition: current; Page: [202]

By this article of Lockhart’s I seem to see thrown into the mind of Harriet Martineau the first germ of her afterthoughts on the general subject of property. Quoting from the summary of principles in “Demerara,” he says: “Property is held by convention, not natural right. As the agreement to hold property in man never took place between the parties concerned, — i. e. is not conventional, man has no right of property in man.” On this he goes on to comment: “Why, by this rule, what have we a right to hold as property?” “Let Miss Martineau say where the convention sat which agreed to make the Marquis of Westminster a present of his stud or his streets. Miss Martineau is said to be high authority in the law courts. Let the next thief plead at the Old Bailey that he never agreed the prosecutor should hold property in his silk handkerchief, and therefore he has no more right to it than he, Timothy, the thief.”

Miss Martineau was never one to stop thinking because an enemy of truth (so ignorant of it at the same time as to be unable to discriminate between a just inference and a reductio ad absurdum) found it for his interest to come forward to prevent, with a mixture of sophistry and defiance like this; and we shall see hereafter to what conclusions she came on this matter of property in after years. The blank astonishment of conservatives at such plain incontrovertible statements of facts as these, — that, shut up in an island, population going on at geometrical rates, and production in arithmetical ones according to their wont, there will, without prudence, be famine, is in the mean time amusing. Neither could they comprehend any more clearly that their poor-laws were degrading and self-defeating, their lying-in hospitals a bounty on improvidence, and their almshouses a temptation to idleness. They dreaded, apparently, to see the feudal system broken up by the development of a capacity in the people to do without it; and seemed to mourn the lost occupation of Lord Lansdowne and the Duke of Devonshire, when Ireland should become well educated and industrious. The attempt to confound Miss Martineau with the low and criminal distributors of demoralizing publications and the like, Edition: current; Page: [203] was fatal to his gentlemanly character. He concluded by adjuring Miss Martineau to burn her little books; and, after quoting in a scurrilous way a quantity of ridiculous doggerel, winds up thus: “Did Miss Martineau sit for this picture? No. Such a character is nothing to a female Malthusian: a woman who thinks child-bearing a crime against society; an unmarried woman who declaims against marriage: (! ! !) a young woman who deprecates charity and a provision for the poor. (! ! !)”

This was the sort of moral gauntlet to be run in undertaking to illustrate a principle “as undeniable as the multiplication-table;” and this the tenderest and most keenly feeling heart I ever knew did not shrink from; because to teach prudence as one among many means of chasing away pauperism was to do the nation service. What the excellent Malthus had been seen to undergo of calumny and abuse (and it seemed to her so repulsive as to make her ask him how he bore it) would have been sufficient to deter one less high-minded than herself. But now seems to have begun to take ultimate shape that heroic type of character which became in after life so recognized a part of her greatness, that the persecuted for whatever right’s sake felt the glorious reproach of their cross to be a claim she could not set aside. Her infant visions of martyrdom, little as she respected their memory, as mingled with childish vanity and unbalanced by the sound knowledge and vigorous judgment of the after time, were yet the basis of the noble temple of life she was always at work in building. Whether this stepping to the front under fire, publicly to express the reverence and gratitude felt for those who have aroused to noble work or shown the excellent way, be, as church and clergy claim, a special trait of Christianity, or as nobles feel, an evidence of nobility, is of little consequence to decide. That it was the only way that became her to “fulfil all righteousness” was, in brain and blood, a part of Harriet Martineau’s being. As Gibbon says of Bayle, “Nature meant her to think as she pleased, and to speak as she thought.”

All the reviews of this period, hostile as well as friendly, took for granted the fact of her great genius. Unquestioned as it was Edition: current; Page: [204] by the world, by herself it was always steadily denied, not only at this time, but ever afterwards. Her friendly critic of the “Edinburgh Review” was so impressed by her as a woman of genius, that he vigorously contested the point with her in argument. And surely if genius be the faculty called divine, of creating in literature, from what life actually is, the vision of what it may be, — if it be the intellectual force or creative inspiration in life itself, which brings forth, directs, and organizes, whether by “a special instinct or faculty,” by “grace from on high,” or by “superiority of organization” (as different schools might express the same fact), — if it be that inspiration of great thoughts and great things which instantly distinguishes from the crowd and arrays inferiority against itself, — if it be that power in action which, to whatever department of human life it come, seems to change the nature of things, or that power in utterance which drives a keener tide of blood through them that read or hear, — then surely Harriet Martineau was in truth the genius that popular enthusiasm declared her to be. Nor the less so because the popular definition of the word has taught her countrymen on both sides of the ocean (if I may say so) that “genius is that talent or aptitude that men receive from nature to excel in any one thing whatever,” while she excelled in many. Nor is she the less “a genius” because the Sheridans, the Fieldings, the George Sands, have habituated the world to associate genius with selfishness, disorder, and licentiousness, and caused a doubt whether it can exist in even balance with perfect self-control and wise and steady self-devotedness. Thus I have often argued with herself, but, I am bound in truth to state, without effect. She always persisted in the same final reply, “I am pained and ashamed when any body I care for talks of my possessing genius.” I think the difference between her and others on this point arose from her want of general self-esteem, of which deficiency I have seen a thousand instances; she held so tenaciously to the French proverbial opinion, that “le génie doit faire ses preuves,” that she obtained at this time of a reviewer whose article came to her knowledge before publication, that his high estimate of her genius as a writer of fiction should be suppressed. Edition: current; Page: [205] “Not,” she said, “till I have succeeded in making a plot.” Thus much I was willing to concede in the argument; that a character less truly proportioned, faculties less accurately balanced, might, even while weakening its actual effect, have produced a higher general estimate of her genius, — just as we are most struck by the disproportion, the deformity or caricature that lessens the goodness of a face or the real value of a portrait; for I observed this known effect of perfect proportion in reducing the popular estimate of size, in her elder and grander time; and as her faculties were taking a wider and stronger range, I seemed to see them less generally, though more worthily appreciated. But if genius be the perfection of good sense, she possessed it as few others have done. How many have we seen proclaimed geniuses, on the American side of the ocean, by mere dint of deficiency or irregularity, who would never have been named in that category, had they been, like her, subjected to the remorseless English higher-middle-class training which at once grinds down oddity, nor likes to spare even originality, and which only true genius can survive and profit by.

Had Harriet Martineau been only a reviewer or essayist, — only a great religious, political, or philosophical writer, — only a novelist, traveller, or historian, — she would have necessarily seemed greater as an author to the generality of readers. They love to see power pushed in one direction. They can only judge of it so. They measure only length, so to speak, and take little account of breadth and depth. They have been so accustomed to minute subdivision in mental as in other labors, as to have enchained their minds by a proverb, that “the Jack at all trades is good at none;” and this very means of exclusive application which they take to avoid mediocrity is the reason why this century affords so few universally admirable persons like Harriet Martineau. This variety of mental accomplishment, this natural and cultivated capacity to meet each man on his own ground, made her one of the most popular, while her overflowing sympathy of the heart made her one of the most beloved of authors. She pleased and amused the public, though she never made it an object to do so.

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She was thus early the most substantially successful author of her time, without ever having sacrificed to success. She had deliberately chosen her part, — to utter, as fast as she attained it, what seemed to her good and true, let the personal result be what it might. Her works had brought round her the leading men of her time, and she began to judge them as fit or unfit for the times, with continual personal and political effect. Her influence many a time put the right man in the right place, who came to thank her and ask her advice as to how he should best fulfil his duty in it. She could and did sway from time to time the administration, while counselling the leaders of opposition. A less comprehensive mind could have done but one of these things. But both sides felt that she was warmly with them as men, while free from “entangling alliance” with either as parties. Now came the moment when, strong in her knowledge of the general public mind, — its tastes, its habits, its views, its leaders, — the temptation might have come to her that wrecks so many first-rate writers, — the temptation of giving to the public sentimental expressions and agreeable drollery signifying nothing, but all the more enriching, in the pecuniary sense, for its want of reality. Now might well have come the temptation to leave unturned the last uncompromising screw that takes the writer out of the hands of his readers, and lays upon him the responsibility of leading, instead of leaving him in the exercise of the subaltern function of amusing them. But she never seems to have felt it. Literature remained ever to her a sacerdocy; and through its most trying phase, — that of becoming through its means world famous, — her sheet-anchor of secret resolutions* never dragged. She does not need, like Dr. Young’s man of the world, to “resolve or re-resolve.” Without doing either, she will clearly “die the same.”

Before inserting such of the few letters as I rightfully and dutifully may, from the great mass of those of this period which now lie before me, I will gather up a few of the recollections of that time. Some of her old friends (not the most intimate) were astonished at her coolness in these new circumstances; while Edition: current; Page: [207] others, superficial observers, pronounced her, on account of it, the proudest person living. Of these she said, “They little know how utterly I sometimes despise my work, — its execution, I mean. But not the less do I mean to avail myself coolly and amply of all the advantages of society it brings me.” And this work, of whose execution she speaks, was the one thing the world was so delighted with. Mrs. Bellenden Ker tells of a pretty little illustrative scene, which shows how it seized the minds of the least impressible. “My father came in to dine with us just as dinner was served. ‘How do you do, my love?’ says he, and takes up “Demarara.” In vain did we call him, and remind him that dinner was waiting. He was like one under strong possession, and never thought of dinner or laid down the book till he had read it through.”

I must not forget to say that the “Series of Illustrations of Political Economy” was printed at a cheaper rate than it would have otherwise been, on account of the clearness of the writing; a thing worthy to be put on record in vindication of the rights of printers.

All the compliments and admiration of the early period of these years of fame, — phrenologists declaring her head incomparably the best female head they had a cast of, both for size and harmony; admission for the first time, in her person, of a lady to the distribution of prizes at the London University (this year by Lord John Russell), the head professor’s family declaring “her presence gave it a consequence which they wished to secure for it;” huntings-up of her early writings, — “the Chancellor wants the ‘Traditions’ sent after him to Bath;” Coleridge watching anxiously for the numbers; family consultations in so many distinguished households about who was sufficiently distinguished to make one with herself at the same dinner-party, and what great previous celebrity should be spared such a wound to his self-complacency as witnessing the homage paid to the new one, and the like sweet social flatteries ad infinitum, — all this had no ill effect on her appearance or character. At the end of her first London year Sydney Smith said, “She has gone through such a season as no girl before ever knew, and she has Edition: current; Page: [208] kept her own mind, her own manners, and her own voice. She’s safe.”

And so the last year of the first London life left her; though the trial, from being merely superficial, as at first, and such as literary ladies and gentlemen were all in their lesser measure subjected to, had become the deeper one that statesmen only, in conscious possession of the nature that is a power in the land, can feel. Now there was mush buzzing and flinging the sounding-line about a pension. Lord Brougham evidently did not like the result. He clearly saw the inconvenience to the government of having one standing in the relation of pensioner on whom it could never reckon with any greater security than its own adherence to the people’s interests might claim. The language of friends whose characters had been moulded by personal aspirations and political expediency was not likely to bring her own mind into a state to be pensioned. “Provided,” said one of them, “that you do nothing in the mean time to upset your dish with the government, you are sure of one.” Without coming to any decision on the general subject of literary pensions, the thoughts such experiences suggested made her only the more solicitous to preserve her own independence as the advocate of the people’s interests, and naturally pointed out her course in after years as often as the time for decision came.

Appreciation in the highest quarter was not wanting to her. “Lord and Lady Durham told me,” she said, “how delighted the Princess Victoria was with my series, and this took place. I told Lord Durham that that particular young lady’s reading was of some consequence, and that it was worth something for her to know what the inside of a workhouse, for instance, was like; but that I did hope she did not read for the story only. In her position it really would be a very good thing that she should understand the summaries and trace them in the stories. He agreed, and in a few days he sent me a note to say that my hint had been well taken and was attended to. Lady Durham told me how, one evening, the little girl (then eleven years old) came with hop, skip, and jump from the inner drawing-room to show her mother the next paper, with the advertisement of the Edition: current; Page: [209] ‘Illustrations of Taxation,’ whereby her pleasure was extended, when she thought the series was just done. The Queen has always said that ‘Ella of Garveloch’ was her favourite.”

Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography gives the impression the world made upon her: a memoir ought to give the impression she made on the world. Of this there would be no end of books: — a few traits must suffice in the space afforded by one. She was, Mr. Carlyle used to say, an instance, and the only one he knew, of clear activity being compatible with happiness. He could not talk before her, he added, about every effort being painful and all labour sorrow. “You are,” he said to herself, “like a Lapland witch on her broomstick, going up and down as you will. Other people, without broomsticks, drop down, and cannot come up when they would; and that’s the difference between them and you. Hartley Coleridge declared her to be “a monomaniac about every thing.” Sydney Smith was of a similar opinion. “A true heroic nature,” he said. But it was not remarkable men alone who were stirred to admiration. She made a profound impression on every body she met. The busy mother of a family of a dozen children, cumbered with much serving, with whom she was one evening taking tea, forgot every thing else in the charm of her conversation, and said, while following her to the door as she took leave, “I am so sorry, — so sorry you came, for I cannot bear to have you go!”

It was after the completion of “the series” that Monsieur Guizot, then Minister of Public Instruction in France, was establishing a new periodical for its promotion. He directed that the numbers should each open with a biographical sketch, as always sure to interest the readers, and he ordered the first to be a memoir of Harriet Martineau; she, he said, affording the only instance on record of a woman having substantially affected legislation otherwise than through some clever man.

The public action of this period directly to be traced to Harriet Martineau’s political influence may be seen in the reform song, sung with uncovered heads by what were called the “monster meetings,” — the immense assemblages of the people that in 1831 shook the kingdom into a speedy but pacific and constitutional reform in 1832.

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“Demerara” told upon slavery; “Cousin Marshall,” upon strikes, in conjunction with the author’s constant testimony against them to the people. The “Charmed Sea” was influential upon the Polish cause. The Corn-Law and other tales told upon monopolies. For the influence of “The Tenth Haycock” upon tithes, and for the effect upon the house and other taxes, the new postage and Canada, reference being had to the Autobiography and to the “History of the Peace,” there need be no further mention of them here. An amusing dialogue between Lord Althorp and “an adviser” may be found in the “History of the Peace,” — the adviser being Harriet Martineau herself.

Some of her letters to her mother here subjoined were written during the publication of the “Illustrations.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

June 11, 1833

London

London,

Tuesday night,

June 11, 1833

.

I thought I should have nothing to tell you, dear mother, for some time, so quiet a life as this fortnight is to be; but some little matters usually turn up which it strikes me you would like to hear, and you see I always fill a letter somehow.

Yesterday I read diligently for the Corn-Laws. Mr. Malthus, passing the door at nine o’clock, inquired when I was to return from Paris, where he saw by the papers I now am; and to-day he came and stayed an hour. Mrs. Coltman sent for me to dinner, and Mrs. Malthus and I had much pleasant talk, and at dinner I sat between father and son. This morning I corrected proof, made summary of Corn-Laws, and drew out some of my story. It is to be in the picturesque part of Yorkshire, near Sheffield, where there are hills for my miller, foundries for my artisans, meadows for my farmers, sheep-walks and farms for my land-owners, black moors and grouse for their sons, and so on. I do believe that as an illustration it will be perfect, whatever it may turn out in other respects. I will give free course to my feelings and opinions on this tremendous subject, and it shall go hard with me but I will make others think and feel too. I wonder whether you ever heard the story Mr. Potter tells of a college companion of his, who blundered dreadfully under his examination for ordination. As a last resource, he was asked if he could repeat any one text from the Old or New Testament. He readily quoted “And Moses said, when he was in the whale’s belly, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” It is long since I heard a jumble that tickled me so much. And now good night.

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Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Wednesday.

It is late, dear mother, and I have had a hard day’s work; but I cannot let my birthday pass without a line to you. I was reminded of it by a sweet letter from —, thought of and written with her accustomed grace of sisterly love. I never passed so quiet a birthday, and never, assuredly, so happy a one. I had set it apart for work, and much work I have done with pen and needle, and much more with thoughts. These are the days when I can scarcely believe my own destiny, and when I feel that I can never work too diligently or disinterestedly for my own great responsibilities. Good Janetta writes her congratulations and wonder at my not being altered. If she was here she would see that there is that in my office which forbids levity as much as it commands cheerfulness, and that I have more need than ever of old friends and their supporting love, as gazers and admirers of my efforts crowd round me. When my efforts relax, these last will retreat; and then what would become of me if I was “altered,” or had lost my old friends? What a year this has been! “Ella” was published this day twelve months, but how little way had I made compared to what I have now! I trust this Corn-Law story will carry me on further; and if it helps to open eyes and soften hearts on the tremendous question which involves millions of lives and centuries of happiness or misery, my birthday will have been well spent in working upon it. To make quite sure, I have for the half-dozenth time compared the summary and the plan, and I am certain that the summary contains the whole question, and that the story illustrates every bit of the summary. I am also sure that the characters are characters, if I can but keep them up. I mean to get it all into one number if possible, and shall therefore condense the emotion into great depth and retrench the description as much as possible. Every page shall tell. How singular is the faculty of conception! That Yorkshire vale with its people is become as perfect a real existence to me since yesterday morning as if I had lived there. May it soon be so to you! And may I be permitted for yet another year thus to handle God’s works for the good of those who so unhappily and unconsciously abuse them! To-morrow is to be quiet too, the only engagement being to take William Stoker* to see the model of the copper-mine in the Strand. This we can do between dinner and tea. Cresson called to-day;† so did Mr. —, bringing me a pretty coffee apparatus for making my own breakfast Edition: current; Page: [212] without a fire, in first-rate style. He also offers an order for the opera for Monday or Tuesday next, which I accept. Mr. Evans called to fix on to-morrow for a final sitting.* I have done a chapter to-day of “Sowers not Reapers.” Now for tea, and then filling up my frank, and to bed. One of the funniest things is the number of tradesmen’s cards that pour in, beautifully sealed and directed, puffing a hundred things I shall never want, — lamps and stays, china, shoes, and soaps, harps, divine oils, and celestial essences.

Mr. — says I should suit his purpose as a critic much better if I was more vain. If he could find a sore place he would rub and rub, as he declares he delights to do. But I see all the faults of my books, he says, as plainly as he does. I tell this only to you, as I know it will please you. I do believe more has been done for me and my books by my being glad of enlightened criticism, than by any one part of me besides.

Pardon this, dear mother, and take it not as vanity, but the communicativeness which you ever command from your most affectionate

H. MARTINEAU.

P. S. I find the newspapers report me as in Paris; and Mr. Fisher has just sent to know when I am expected to return from Paris! The Jeffreys have just called, and are kind and pleasant. The Lord Advocate is in a thorough panic about the country. The Queen† and royal family are behaving abominably. The King will not make peers, and the House of Lords can and will throw out the Ministry. Will they get back as quietly as before? Every body is full of this to-day. Lady Mary Shepherd was surprised to hear yesterday that I am not in Paris. Had told Lord Henley I was. Now I am to meet him there next week.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Monday.

O, but do you know Coleridge told me yesterday that he watches “anxiously,” for my numbers from month to month? Can it be that I am paying him in any measure for what he has done for me? He now never stirs from his Highgate abode. He is not sixty, and looks eighty, — and such a picture of an old poet! He is most neatly dressed in black; has perfectly white hair; the under lip quivering with the touching expression of weakness which is sometimes Edition: current; Page: [213] seen in old age; the face neither pale nor thin; and the eyes — I never saw such! — glittering and shining so that one can scarcely meet them. He read me (most exquisitely) some scraps of antique English; and, talking about metres, quoted some poetry so as to make my eyes water. He talked some of his transcendentalism, which I wanted to hear. He talks on and on, with his eyes fixed full on you, and distinctly as possible. He told me wherein he differed and wherein he agreed with me; but this is too transcendental for a letter. . . . . He begged me to see him again. I must go.

Mr. Hallam has just been giving me a comfortable, long call. I like him much, with all his contradictiousness. Did I tell you how popular the whole story of Vanderput is? — i. e. Mrs. B. Wood, Mr. William Smith, Mr. Hallam, and many others love “Christian” to my heart’s content. Mr. Hallam says the whole story is one of my best, — the idea new, the picture faithful, and Christian exceeding almost any thing preceding. I hope he is right. But Whately and the poor-law commissioners pronounce “The Parish”* the best thing I have done.

I am delighted at the number of people who now ask me about Mr. Fox and Finsbury Chapel, and go to hear him. Nothing could exceed him yesterday, and there were plenty to hear him. It was on the different ways of loving the world, — the duty and delight of loving it in its upward tendency, and the guilt and despicableness of seeking it in its defilements and sinking into them. Paul and Demas were the examples. This is a good thought to sleep upon; so good night, dearest mother.

You see more notices of me than I do, I believe. I have not seen the “Spectator” for months; and the “Englishman’s” dedication has not met my eye.

And now my candle is just burnt out, and it is bedtime; so good night, dearest mother. Fancy me always, in the midst of clamour and applause, merrily at work by “my ain fireside.” When I first lose five minutes’ sleep by night or tranquillity by day from any thing the world says, I shall think myself in a bad way. I sleep “like an infant,” to use your own expression, and am as happy as the day is long. This once for all.

Dear love to your home party, and love abroad where due, from your most affectionate

H. MARTINEAU.

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What between the scoffing of the “Quarterly” and the scepticism of the “Edinburgh,” the hungry people are ill fed. I hope a third quarterly will some day arise, wherein the people may be grounded in the grand truth that faith in God — in his PRINCIPLES — is inseparably connected with faith in man. This will soon happen, now that circumstances are teaching us the utter helplessness of a system of expediency. Meantime I have chosen my lot. It is to teach principles, let what will come of it. Nothing but good can eventually come of it, and I have and shall have many helpers. . . . . Dearest mother, never mind the “Quarterly.”

— — called, and requested me to mark out the line of inquiry I wish him to pursue. I have promised to ponder the matter. The idea was not only my own. — and others suggested — — to me as the man; but my having written on factory-children gives me a sort of claim to suggest.

Wednesday night.

I breakfasted with — — this morning, and have since had a letter from that precious little lady. She sends her kind regards to your party. Old Niemcewicz called yesterday, which he is fond of doing. Fine old man! As a poet he is pleased, he says, with “the rare union of imagination and logic” in my tales, and would fain translate them into Polish, if there were any book-market in that unhappy land. They are actually translated into German, which you will be glad to hear. A large party to-morrow.

Thursday night.

It was a sort of compromise. The Chancellor was there, but went away early. I was placed between the Chief Justice and Malthus, both of whom were very talkative to me. What a fine face Denman’s is! We were eleven. Mr. Wishaw was going to Holland House, and offered to bring me home, calling by the way on Mrs. Marcet at the Edward Romilly’s. They are just home from Ludlow, of which place Mr. E. R. is member. Mrs. Marcet is sorry to find that Mr. E. R. and I are of the same opinion about the Factory Bill, and I am very glad. She ought to hold the same, namely, that legislation cannot interfere effectually between parents and children in the present state of the labour-market. Our operations must be directed towards proportioning the labour and capital, and not upon restricting the exchange of the one for the other, — an exchange which must be voluntary, Edition: current; Page: [215] whatever the law may say about it. We cannot make parents give their children a half-holiday every day in the year, unless we also give compensation for the loss of the children’s labour. The case of those wretched factory-children seems desperate; the only hope seems to be that the race will die out in two or three generations, by which time machinery may be found to do their work better than their miserable selves. Every one’s countenance falls at the very mention of the evidence which has lately appeared in the papers.

June 17

.

A note from Lady Mary Shepherd this morning, to say she would send the carriage for me between three and four o’clock, which was done. I have had a long, pleasant confab with Lord Henley, whom I like very much. We had lunch, coffee, and much talk, — we two, Lady Mary, and her daughter. The real object of the interview evidently was to urge me to America instead of on the Continent, when the series is done. Lord Henley says that however inferior the Americans are in some respects, in others they have got down to principles of justice and mercy in their institutions better than we have. . . . . He thinks our Church, in its present state, the dead-weight on our improvement, and instances our cathedral towns as being worse than others. He told me that till he read “Cousin Marshall” he never thought of any thing more in the way of charity than easing sorrow when it was before him, and had at first much difficulty in reconciling me with his Christianity.

Wednesday.

Now the plot of my extraordinary life thickens, dearest mother! I can give you no idea of the scramble which is going on for me among parties. . . . The poor-law information on which I proceed is ten times what is published, and the publication was not contemplated when I undertook the work. The Chancellor tried in vain to persuade Lord Melbourne to delay it till mine was out. I am glad it was published, as it corroborates me, and leaves me plenty of material which cannot be published except in my tales. . . . . However it may take away my breath to see my early guides and friends taking away my supports from under me, and leaving me to stand or fall by my principles alone, I will not allow my weakness to overcome me, while I see clearly what those principles are, and feel that they are trustworthy. . . . . But what strength they must suppose in me while they bring these conflicting principles to bear upon me! It would not be politic in the Radicals thus to prove me if they did not believe I Edition: current; Page: [216] could stand it; and they shall end in respecting me for my independence, as the Tories do under all their sarcasms, and as the Whigs do amidst all their regret for my “exaltation of sentiment” and what not. Mr. Fox’s mission is to lead a party, and nobly he discharges it. Mine is to keep aloof from party, to take my stand upon science and declare its truths, leaving it to others to decide whether these be Tory, Whig, or Radical. One by one I shall surmount hindrances if I live. Ridicule has been tried, has failed, and is done with. I trust to disprove Whig prognostications by completing my work regularly, rationally, and consistently; and the Radicals will presently find I am not under their control. Here I am, placed in an unparalleled position, left to maintain it by myself, and (believe me) able to maintain it; and by God’s grace I will come out as the free servant of his truth. This language is not too high for the occasion. The more my connections enlarge, the more I see the eagerness of speculation as to what I am to turn out; and (for your sake I add) the more affectionate is the respect and the more cordial is the confidence of my reception wherever I have once appeared. There is no misinterpretation of me by any who have seen me. They see and admit that the ground of my confidence is principles and not my own powers; and they therefore trust me, and eagerly acquit me of presumption. . . . .

I send you the Preface to the Corn-Law story. I dare say you will find an opportunity of sending it back before printing-time next month. I think you will all like it.

Farewell,

H. M.

I am confident it is not the partiality of friendship which makes me see in the package of letters from which I have made these random selections material for a most interesting and instructive volume. But the writer meant them only as material for something which I might write, and I do not know enough of the private or public relations of the vast numbers of persons whose lives at this period touched hers, to venture to give this revelation of them to the press, even if I were doubtful as to her intentions. But my instructions left no doubt. “Read them,” she told me, “as throwing light upon my life at that time. How much or how little I cannot tell, for I dare not read them myself; and I dread to think that you may find them full of egotism and vanity.” I do not so find them; what would be so, if said to another, is only dutiful to mother, brother, Edition: current; Page: [217] and sister, husband, child, or next friend. And for the rest, it is a self-confidence as rare as well deserved, when one on the confines of age can thus confide to another’s eye the records of youth. But she knew they were all right when they were written, — true, that is, to her light and judgment of that time: and this committal of them to help my knowledge of her before we met seems to me in fact an illustration of her courageous integrity.

The pride and satisfaction of the mother, so constantly kept informed of the happenings of each day, was too great to remain satisfied at a distance, and the hazardous step was taken by Harriet Martineau of adding to all the public cares and private labours of her London life the care of a household. I find, by reference to these letters, how trying the position became, to which she so tenderly alludes in the Autobiography as a “troubling of the affections.” The more she loved and honoured her mother, the more truly she estimated the many really admirable qualities that made her character, the more she must naturally have suffered from a fretful and domineering temper which claimed continually what it was absurd and wrong in the daughter to yield. She was not a second time guilty of the folly of sacrificing her career of life and duty to her mother’s insufficient judgment, but she suffered profoundly from the pain of resisting it; and in combining her mother’s wishes and her own loving sense of filial duty with the exigencies of her position as one owing a duty to the world, took every proper precaution against the readily foreseen ill consequences of the new step.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

July 8, 1833

Robert Martineau

Martineau, Robert

TO MRS. MARTINEAU.

July 8, 1833

.

Dearest Mother, —

I have rather put off writing, feeling that I have much to say, and now I must write after all more briefly than usual. Mrs. Ker has told you that I am well, and so I go on to what you most want to know next. About our future. I know of no risks that you are not at present aware of, and I have no fresh doubts. You are aware that I must travel, after 1834, for a year or little short of it; and we all know that my resources depend on health, and in some degree on popularity. I say “in some degree,” because I am pretty sure that I can now never be without employment unless I Edition: current; Page: [218] choose. I wish to put the pension out of the question because, though it is as fully designed for me as ever, I am just as likely to refuse as to accept it; and besides, it is intended for purposes of improvement, unless sickness should oblige me to live upon it. But I incline more and more to refuse it, though I need not make up my mind till I see how I am circumstanced with respect to the people when it is offered. I have every hope of being able to supply my annual £150, and you are as well aware of the chances against it as myself. I shall be very happy to invest £200 in furniture, in addition to that of my own two rooms, and you can take it out, if that plan will make you easy, at your convenience. If not, we shall not differ about these matters, I am sure. My advice is that we begin modestly, — with a house which we may keep after a time, when our income may be reduced. With prudence I think we may hope to live comfortably on our means, while I may be laying by something against a time of rest, if it should please God to preserve my health. I see no other plan which promises equal comfort for the three parties concerned, and if you are willing to trust to our industry and care, so am I; and I have no doubt we shall make one another happy, if we at once begin with the change of habits which our change of position renders necessary. I fully expect that both you and I shall occasionally feel as if I did not discharge a daughter’s duty, but we shall both remind ourselves that I am now as much a citizen of the world as any professional son of yours could be. You shall be most welcome to my confidence, as ever, and to any comfort that may be derived from living in the same house, and meeting at the same table, and taking frequent walks, and having many mutual friends. My hours of solitary work and of visiting will leave you much to yourself; this you know and do not fear; so now the whole case is before you, and you know exactly under what feelings I say “Come.” I may just mention that I see no sign of disapprobation on any hand, though there are naturally doubts here and there as to how a removal from a place where you have lived so many years may affect you. We, however, know that removal to be necessary, whether you come to London or fix your abode elsewhere; there is another chance, dear mother, and that is, of my marrying. I have no thoughts of it. I see a thousand reasons against it. But I could not positively answer for always continuing in the same mind. It would be presumptuous to do so; and I especially feel this when I find myself touched by the devoted interest with which some few of my friends regard my labours. I did not know till lately any thing of the enthusiasm with which such services as I attempt Edition: current; Page: [219] can be regarded, nor with what tender respect it could be testified. I mean no more than I say, I assure you; but, strong as my convictions are against marrying, I will not positively promise. As for my money prospects, the sale cannot now fall below the point of profit, and large profit; and there is the cheaper edition to look to, which every body says will yield an income for years to come. . . . .

Do not trouble yourselves about the vagabond who took my name at the police-office the other day. Nobody but “The Age” will take her to be me.

Then follows the usual journal of the week. Visitors, dinners, evening parties, work completed. It was at this time that the fine incense of the eighteenth century was made to smoke around her by Mrs. Berry and her friends. It appears to have been delicately done; for, after a long list of distinguished names, — “a charming little party to meet me,” — she acknowledges that it was very pleasant, “though I was made the principal person, quite.” She goes on: —

I have been doing again about the factory business. What a sweet letter from Ellen! I am much obliged by Aunt Rankin’s bag. Dear love to you two from

Yours most affectionately,

H. MARTINEAU.

The above letter is dated “July 8,” from the house of a lady who tells her mother, on the same sheet, of the merry time they are having together, — “rather noisy, sometimes romping even, but on the whole reasonable,” — “freaks of opera-dancing,” etc., which Mrs. — — wishes might last a month. This lady always saw with the most painful sympathy how sad a thing it was that one like Harriet Martineau, with a head so clear, hands so busy, and a heart so tender, — constantly devoting herself for her family, and feeling as if, in fact, she could never do enough for their interests and pleasure, — should have been subjected to the trial, to her the greatest possible, of a deficiency in tenderness. But “that which is wanting cannot be numbered.” Mrs. Martineau, always a severe mother, had now become an exacting and jealous one, and no precautionary measures could avail. As Edition: current; Page: [220] her daughter’s sphere of duty outgrew her own, she again became as really unable to sympathize with her as when, in childhood, she had so fatally mismanaged her.

A loving, dutiful, and reverential nature never sees at the time where the cause of such a difficulty as this lies, especially when, as in this case, the place of the string wanting is filled with all the vigour and activity of a strong character.

It is wide of the present purpose, the harmonious, mournful verse of the finely endowed Felicia Hemans, that

“Bought alone by gifts beyond all price,

The trusting heart’s repose, the paradise

Of home, with all its loves, doth fate allow

The crown of glory unto woman’s brow”;

since the same, as far as it is true, is equally so of illustrious persons of both sexes; as the lives of so many great men show, notwithstanding the public opinion of these centuries; which, favouring the notion that it is man’s exclusive privilege to do great things, has hindered woman in doing them by abundance of morbid statements like the above.

But greatness, in man or woman, must bear its special burdens. They are neither heavier nor widely different from those imposed by littleness. It is a very common thing to see family peace wrecked where there is no greatness to awaken jealousy.

Though all her devotedness failed to satisfy her mother’s unreasonable requisitions, one thing could be and was done by Harriet Martineau at this time. She relieved literature of the reproach of making human character undomestic and irritable, and showed, in her own instance, that public duty does but fit the better for private life. It needed as high a motive, joined to all her filial tenderness, to go on to the very end of possibility with this suffering family life. It was not (as we who look back upon it can now readily see) the best thing to have done for the parties concerned; but it shielded literature and the character of woman from a reproach which, at that period — the birthday of a new public question — it was of the utmost consequence to avoid. Her “unvarying sweetness of temper,” so often mentioned Edition: current; Page: [221] by early friends, enabled her to fulfil to the utmost the domestic duty of this period.

Happily, the heavy trial of the time was divided to Harriet Martineau by her American life. On leaving London she seized the opportunity of visiting her good elder brother Robert and his wife, her early friend, with their numerous young family, at Birmingham. It was an hour of delightful heart’s ease and recreation. Before leaving them for Liverpool, to embark, she begged the beloved little flock to say what they wished her to bring them from America. The same shy, dutiful answer from all, — “whatever Aunt Harriet pleased,” except the little Maria, who said, “Bring me a humming-bird’s nest.” It was this child who, twenty years after, joined her in London, at the time that her recovery was pronounced hopeless, with the devoted determination of never leaving her again; who was unto her as a daughter, and who died by her side.

But I must not anticipate.

Meanwhile, amid present anxieties and future hopes, proofs of the success of her labours for the public welfare were continually reaching her. Not only did the Manchester workmen declare that “her hero was their hero,” and their conviction that “she must have passed her life in a mill,” to have written of their hopes and wrongs, their sorrows and temptations, their rights and their needs, in a manner so experimental and effectual. The most influential among the employers were of the same mind, and co-operated to their utmost in the way she indicated. Her mind was of the high mediatorial character that can seize the truth and the right amid conflicting interests, and make it seen and felt of all. About this time her friend, Lord Durham, wrote to her thus: —

Loard Durham

Durham, Loard

January 18, 1834

Lambton Castle

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Lambton Castle,

January 18, 1834

.

Dear Miss Martineau, —

I have desired a Newcastle paper to be sent you, with an account of some observations of mine on the unions of this district, and of the steps taken to counteract their bad tendency by the institution of an association carrying into effect all the good objects of the old unions, without their accompanying evils. I will send you the rules, etc., when they are printed. Hitherto the attempt Edition: current; Page: [222] has succeeded well. There were 1200 members when I addressed them, and many have joined since, on the mere hearsay report of what I had said. No doubt it is expensive, for it will cost me £200 per annum at least; but so much is at stake that I do not grudge it. I hope to engraft on this association schools and libraries. The funds are flourishing; at the end of this their first year they have a balance of more than £500.

I assure you when I was addressing the men I could not help thinking how much more effective it would have been had I merely read to them an extract from your Manchester strike.

I hope you will, however, enable me soon to circulate amongst them that which will compensate for my deficiency.

Yours very truly,

DURHAM.

The members only subscribe 4d. a week. They collected, in 1833, £1,170 13s. 2d., and spent £663 15s. 9d., leaving a balance on hand of £506 17s. 5d. I, as proprietor, name the president, and the members elect the committee and stewards.

Loard Durham

Durham, Loard

January 1st, 1834

Lambton Castle

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Lambton Castle,

January 1st, 1834

.

Dear Miss Martineau, —

I have read your excellent paper with great pleasure, and thank you most sincerely for having spared us a portion of your valuable time. I shall see Mr. Morton to-day, and arrange with him as to the best mode of circulating it. Its style and tone is perfectly adapted to win the confidence and convince the understandings of the working classes. No time is to be lost, for on the Tyne the combination is spreading rapidly, and the most violent and bloody measures are openly avowed.

I leave Lambton to-morrow, and expect to be in London on Monday night. . . . . I am endeavouring to unite our three great parishes of Chester, Houghton, and Gateshead under one overseer, with a liberal salary, to carry into effect the Southwell principle of administering the poor-laws, — in fact, that which is illustrated in your works. If I succeed, you might perhaps tell me where I could find the proper person. The salary would be large enough to tempt a first-rate person to undertake the office.

Yours very truly,

DURHAM.

The fearful “Condition-of-England Question,” which Harriet Martineau thus confronted in her active time, was not without Edition: current; Page: [223] cause; one of its causes was the ignorance and apathy of the middle class.

Persons of the highest intelligence, literary cultivation, and religiously trained thought, like Sara Coleridge, took such a mistaken and merely literary view of the matter as this: —

“What a pity it is, that, with all her knowledge of child-nature, she should try to persuade herself and others that political economy is a fit and useful study for growing minds and limited capabilities, — a subject of all others requiring matured intellect and general information as its basis! This same political economy which quickens the sale of her works now, will, I think, prove heavy ballast for a vessel that is to sail down the stream of time. . . . . And she might have rivalled Miss Edgeworth! . . . . And then, what practical benefit can such studies have for the mass of the people for whom, it seems, that Miss M— intends her expositions? They are not like religion, which may and must mould the thoughts and acts of every-day life, the true spirit of which, therefore, cannot be too much studied and explained. But how can poor people help the corn-laws, except by sedition?”

Edition: current; Page: [224] Edition: current; Page: [225]

FOREIGN LIFE,—WESTERN.

“Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest rock,

States climb to power by; slippery those with gold

Down which they stumble to eternal mock:

No chafferer’s hand shall long the sceptre hold,

Who, given a fate to shape, would sell the block.”

James Russell Lowell.

“Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore.”

Milton.

“He that would bring back the wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the Indies:” and the knowledge of this was what caused the unusual excitement in the public mind of America when it became known there that Harriet Martineau was about to visit the United States. They had been annoyed by incompetent persons assuming to be their factors and interpreters to Europe, but here was one of a different type; and the single thought was of the return freightage. No English traveller had before visited the country with so brilliant a prestige. She brought out such a reputation for learning as well as genius, for piety as well as power, for trained critical ability as well as natural observing faculty, for thorough knowledge of England as well as kindly dispositions towards America, that the statesman-like acquirements and literary success which had constituted her greatness at home were but few among many of the considerations that made her fame abroad.

She came with a social prestige to the showy dwellers of Atlantic cities. These were the persons whose ambition, or rather lack of genuine self-esteem, was shown by their efforts, in humble imitation of the obnoxious class distinctions which the Edition: current; Page: [226] best Englishmen think the least worth perpetuating, to keep up among themselves dim traditional notions and literary illusions unrecognized by the land at large. Her aristocratic friendships were better known to them than her democratic sympathies; and they desired the reflected light of such glories. She came, too, with an unequalled religious prestige to her own denomination; which, unlike Unitarianism at that time in England, was here an influential one for its wealth, social position, and literary culture. She came with unexampled claims on the minds of leaders in national and state politics; while our “millions,” the reading public, who were to succeed to this leadership in their turn, were longing to express their grateful acknowledgments for the pleasant awakening she had given to their moral sense.

For the thing that had principally marked the few years immediately preceding her arrival was a singular moral apathy or paralysis of the public mind, which made its literature, politics, and religion all seem either formal and unreal, or disproportioned and extravagant, — the smooth, relenting movement of the spent engine, with great noise and bustle among the conductors. Life was fast degenerating into insipid sentimentalism or ridiculous caricature among all who were not actually struggling for a living. There was no advance, for that part of the nation that ought by position and cultivated intelligence to have led had lost the way.

But popularly accepted and borne onward by the admiration of all, Harriet Martineau enjoyed unequalled opportunities for coming to just conclusions about America. She landed in New York in the middle of September, 1834, and travelled first in the states of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, examining their cities, villages, and manufactories, visiting friends and making pilgrimages to every scene of interest, from its sublimity and beauty, or from its moral associations. She remained six weeks in Philadelphia, where there are as many circles of society as at Geneva, each personally unknown to the other, having constant intercourse with most of them; and she stayed three weeks in Baltimore before establishing herself Edition: current; Page: [227] at Washington for the session of Congress. While in the capital of the nation, she was earnestly sought by all the eminent men of all parties among senators, representatives, and judges of the Supreme Court, and was on terms of friendship and intimacy with the leading minds of the whole Union. She enjoyed the advantage of intimate and confidential intercourse with a class of men of whom none now remain, — the founders of the Republic and their immediate successors. She was in Richmond while the Virginia Legislature was in session, and then made a long winter journey through North and South Carolina. Thence she traversed the State of Georgia to Augusta, and from that capital to Montgomery, Alabama, descending the river afterwards to Mobile. Her route led thence to New Orleans and up the Mississippi and Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee, on the Cumberland River, and to Lexington, averaging a fortnight in each place. After visiting the wonderful Mammoth Cave in Kentucky she descended the Ohio to Cincinnati, and after making a visit of ten days there, and again ascending that river, she landed in Virginia, visiting all the natural wonders and beauties of the region. She arrived a second time at New York about the middle of July, 1835. The autumn she spent in the smaller towns of Massachusetts, not neglecting to visit its principal cities, making a long visit in the family of Dr. Channing at Newport, and an excursion to the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. All this time the newspapers were zealous heralds and homagers, so that it might have been a refreshment to her to take up one that did not follow her progress with praise. One winter she passed in Boston, during the session of the Massachusetts Legislature, always in the houses of persons who had become intimate and dear friends; who, though of opposite parties, sects, and aims, had the common feeling of affection for her, and the common wish to put in her possession every means of information, or opportunity for becoming acquainted with New England. Plymouth, the landing-place of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620, she saw at the celebration of “Forefathers’ Day,” December 22, 1835; and the day completed two hundred and fifteen years since the ancestors of the people she had been studying emerged Edition: current; Page: [228] from their little vessel with that independence of mind which made of their posterity

“A church without a bishop, and a state without a king.”

Another two months’ visit in New York, with another month of New England farm-house life, and then came her last American journey into the West by ship across the great inland seas, and along to the prairies beyond the far lake-shore; again, through the State of Ohio, taking the river at Beaver and visiting Rapp’s Communist settlement, thence onward by Pittsburgh and the canal route through Pennsylvania, and by railroad over the Alleghanies, reaching New York in time to sail for England on the 1st of August, 1836.

An amount of life was crowded into these two years which her six volumes on America could by no means fully tell, nor her Autobiography, nor her voluminous private journal, now lying under my hand. She had entered by sympathy and insight into the lives of so many families and the secrets of so many hearts, as to have been to them like a sister, daughter, and next friend and counsellor. The society of a foreign country is to few travellers more than a stage procession, to most an enigma; but to her it was a field of action and a host of friends for life. She had formed no special plans of American travel, not even the common one of not venturing to take a living interest in the land while she remained in it, nor to write a book about it when she should return. She came for rest and the refreshment of change; and in order to learn what were those principles of justice and mercy towards the less fortunate classes which the Americans had been thought by good men in her own country to have more truly ascertained than themselves.

“As to actual knowledge of their country,” she says, “my mind was nearly a blank. I remember the vague idea I had, before this expedition to the United States, that there were thirteen of them, and that was almost the only idea about them I did possess.” Her journal is a full memorandum of facts, events, statistics, experiences, and all those special “happenings” of which some persons have to a proverb more than others; and Edition: current; Page: [229] she was one of those who have most. The best knowledge ever is the knowing how and what to learn: and this she possessed in such an abundant measure, that her two American years were better than the ignorant and careless lifetime of many another. Her letters and journals are filled with sketches of personages, traits of character, and pictures of scenery, — jottings of the salient points of the new life she was living, and its consequent ideas, thoughts, and queries. They are not a record of feelings or opinions, but texts for the long running commentary of conversation with family and friends on return.

Her first care is seen to be the acquirement of a thorough knowledge of American parties and American politics, and the morals of both as shown in all the action and inaction of the country. She studied the theory and the apparatus of the government, she watched the office-seekers and the office-holders, and the state of the citizens’ minds, as shown in speeches and conversation, in silence, and in various public life. She observed to what motives the newspapers appealed or declined to appeal, what were the sectional and caste prejudices shown in the political non-existence of certain classes. In looking into the social economy of the United States she shared the life of the solitary pioneers of civilization, and the life of the fashionable watering places; the various life of the far West; the plantation and city life of the South; the life of the New England farming and manufacturing populations and fishing villages; the life of the leading statesmen, magistrates, and literary men; the family life of its fashion, of its gentry, and of its ministers of religion.

She especially studied the agriculture of the country, and all the land and labour questions it involves, with its markets, means of transport, and internal improvements.

This was a time of masonic and anti-masonic strife; of bank and anti-bank excitement; of tariff and anti-tariff: and she enjoyed every possible facility for life-studies of the commerce, manufactures, and currency of the country. Slavery, as a part of its economy and as interwoven with its morals, a subject too on which she had so recently written and thought, she could not of course overlook.

Edition: current; Page: [230]

But what most deeply interested her was, what new type of civilization is to evolve from these new institutions? Is suffrage to remain subject to its present restrictions? Is woman to remain subordinate? Is property to remain subject to its present laws, or shall there be better mutual arrangements? Does the evident dissatisfaction of all classes with the present prophesy a reorganization of society on a better basis in the future? She looked to see what are the points of honour among the people; what the position of the women; what the standard of elegance and politeness; what the treatment of children; what degree of happiness is the result of marriage as existing among them. She was full of thought about the suffering classes, — whether through crime, or by reason of deficiency or infirmity of organization, or misfortune of position. One of her main objects was to observe the workings of slavery. The religion of America in its science, spirit, and administration was closely observed by her; and the book of which her mind was then full, and which was published after her return, is entitled “How to Observe.” It gives her methods of obtaining facts and coming at the truth by their means. Her powers of observation were enlarged by greater exercise than other persons undergo, for her deafness compelled a persistent course of inquiry, — a more careful inspection and a more thorough examination than they think of exercising. It obliged her also to take the precaution of being always accompanied by a friend. This gave a double strength to her testimony; for although one may be presumed to be sometimes mistaken, in the mouth of two witnesses every word is established. She was thus obliged to know every thing at first hand, and too soon and too certainly learned how little persons in general know of their own country, to feel any temptation to take second-hand information. Previous to coming to the United States she had written that letter to the deaf, which brought her very near the hearts of all afflicted like herself with that exclusion through the failure of the sense of hearing of which none but the sufferers can know all the sadness. One natural reward of the frank, self-regulated course which made her example so powerful a seconder of her precepts was, to be placed on all public occasions so as to Edition: current; Page: [231] hear the speakers. One natural consequence of her inability to hear general conversation was that intimate interchange of thought and feeling which made her the confidential friend of all the eminent persons she met; and their number was very great. There was not an eminent statesman or man of science, not an active politician or leading partisan, not a devoted philanthropist, not a great jurist, nor university professor, nor merchant-prince, nor noted divine, nor distinguished woman in the whole land who did not to the fullest measure of their natures pay homage to the extraordinary compass of hers. At the South she was in every city she visited the honoured guest of its most distinguished families. The Madisons and the Clays, Calhoun and the Porters, were especially devoted to her. Her visit to the Madisons was never to be forgotten by them or by herself. All parties possessed the eminent social gift of talking and letting talk. Of this time the whole of each day was spent in rapid conversation. Mr. Madison, for his share of it, discoursed on the principles and history of the Constitution of the United States; and his insight respecting the condition of foreign nations, and his dispassionate survey of that period, with his abundant household anecdotes of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, were an invaluable privilege. Judge Marshall was the daily guest of Mr. Madison during these profoundly interesting days. Their interest was not confined to the past nor to the present, but stretched far into the future, and Harriet Martineau always spoke of this period with delight: she came at a happy hour, — the last possible one for the enjoyment of these privileges, which brought her into the line of our American traditions, while yet these founders of the state were living to give her the key-note of the American Republic. Of Judge Marshall she never spoke without emotion. He had at once felt in hers a kindred mind; and she had instantly reverenced in him that majestic grace of departing days that attends the close of a grand and virtuous life. There was too much of mutual respect in their first meeting; and it was not until succeeding ones had made them intimate friends that she learned, in addition to her general knowledge of his character and services, how rare were his individual merits: and in after times she was never tired of Edition: current; Page: [232] describing “the tall, majestic, bright-eyed old man.” “Old,” she somewhere says, “by chronology, and by the lines on his composed face, and by his services to the Republic, but so dignified, so fresh, so present to the time, that no feeling of compassionate consideration for age dared to mingle with the contemplation of him.” Of the admiring friendship that she saw existing between himself and Mr. Madison, so strongly tried, yet never touched by their long political opposition, and of his reverence for woman, seldom seen so impressive in kind or in so high a degree, founded on his extensive knowledge and experience as the father and grandfather of women, she never spoke without enthusiasm. “Made clear-sighted by his purity,” she said, “and by the love and pity which their offices command, he had a deep sense of their social injuries, and a steady conviction of their intellectual equality with men.” One cannot find space even to name the multitudes at Washington with whom she became intimately acquainted. She was, among many other such happenings, invited to assist in doing the honours of the British Legation to the seven judges of the Supreme Court and seven great lawyers besides: “The merriest day that could well be. There is no merrier man than Mr. Webster, who fell chiefly to my share, and Judge Story would enliven a dinner-table at Pekin.”

The letter of moral credit, so to call it, which Judge Marshall gave to Harriet Martineau on every inhabitant of the land, expressing in advance his gratitude to any and all who should do her service, was with him no customary form or idle compliment. It was the expression of his sense of the value of her character to the nation through which she was passing.

Without a reference to the map of the United States, and a sketch of their origin, chronology, and modes of life, I could not give to a European an adequate knowledge of the wide sections of country visited by Harriet Martineau during the years of her American life. It is a nation as various as its territory is vast; and such geographical particulars as I have found space for are given merely to show the great opportunities that her genius then opened to her, and which she had the eye to see and the tact to Edition: current; Page: [233] seize. It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the influences she set in motion, both by origination and sympathy. She visited the prisons, the hospitals, the asylums, the educational institutions: the factories, the farms, the plantations, and the courts of law were equally familiar to her. She was in ball-rooms and drawing-rooms in alternation with senates and legislatures. She was the beloved and venerated guest of the richest and the poorest, — dwelling by turns in all America had to show for palaces, and in the log-houses of the pioneer settlements. She saw the two proscribed races — the negroes and the Indian tribes — in all their aspects, and the dominant one in all its forms. She met men in their families, churches, and markets, at their festivals, funerals, and weddings, at their land-sales, political gatherings, and slave-auctions.

There are persons whose gift it is to teach, lead, influence; persons of so loving a nature that, without a thought of popularity, they make themselves generally and passionately beloved: and of these she was chiefest. I could not count the American families who held her dear as one of their own members: and who ever spoke of her as one whose intercourse brightened their whole past. In some instances there was a tone of regret that she had not always remained as they knew her first. Like doting families who dread to see their youth outgrowing youth’s peculiar charm to man and womanhood, they wished her always to remain an inquirer into their institutions. They were ready to weep on seeing her depart from the region of Sabbath rest where she found and left them in this season of refreshment from toil and preparation for battle. But this feeling of course diminished in exact proportion as her influence made them worthier; and at length even slaveholders seemed, in after days, in some instances to have forgotten their anger at the time when her carefully formed judgment was pronounced upon the agitating and in after years successfully solved problem, though the consequences of delaying the solution are still strongly felt in America. They began to fancy her philosophy the only bar to friendship between them and herself.

The subjoined letter from one of the Southern cities in which Edition: current; Page: [234] she passed a delightful period will show how she was esteemed there. It is from Mr. and Mrs. Gilman of South Carolina, to her mother, in England.

1835

Charleston

Robert Martineau

Martineau, Robert

TO MRS. MARTINEAU.

Charleston,

S. C.,

1835

.

Dear Madam, —

An hour before parting from your daughter I offered, in the fulness of my heart, to write to you. Knowing the feelings of a mother, I send you this letter as I would give a piece of bread to a hungry man, not because it is the most savoury thing in the world, but because a good appetite will make it sweet. — The fortnight Harriet passed with us (you know she loves that appellation) we shall never forget: not from the development of her fine powers in general society, but from the winning manner in which she gave and inspired confidence at home. I love to remember the frank and hearty air in which, when we had fought through a day of varied and sometimes exhausting engagements, she threw aside her cloak and said to my husband and myself, at eleven o’clock at night, “Come, now, let us have a little talk!” How far we looked down into each other’s hearts in those winged midnight hours! and what a treasure of friendship was garnered up, not for this world, — for, alas, we shall probably never meet again, — but for another, where no wide sea shall separate us!

I had written thus far when an unusually rapid scratching of my husband’s pen attracted my attention, and peeping over his shoulder I perceived that he was writing on the same subject as myself to his brother, E. G. Loring of Boston. It saves me a little embarrassment to copy his letter, because I cannot pour out my thoughts as unreservedly to you on your daughter’s merits as I would to another.

Caroline Gilman

Gilman, Caroline

“Dear Friend and Brother, —

I have been for some days meditating a letter to you on the subject of Miss Martineau. It was a true and happy impulse which caused both Caroline and myself to think of sending her a letter of invitation to stay with us as long as she remained in Charleston. The letter met her in Richmond; and, as she has since repeatedly said, gave her great pleasure. We expected an elegant, talented, good woman. We did not expect, in addition to all this, a lively, playful, childlike, simplicity-breathing, loving creature, whose moral qualities as much outshine her intellect as these last do those of the ordinary run of mankind. But exactly so, Edition: current; Page: [235] and without any exaggeration or enthusiasm in my picture, we found her. On account of the necessary irregularity and dissipation of her present mode of life, I gave her full liberty to keep her own hours, and to be free from the rules of the family. But no; she found out our hours of family prayer, and always came in most punctually with her favourite Bible, the Porteusian edition, which she reads more than any other book. In fact, though intending to be with us only a fortnight, she at once domesticated and ensconced herself among us as quietly and closely as if she had come for ten years. Dining out frequently and passing the evening at one or two parties, as soon as she came home at night, and had read at my request a devotional hymn in her own sweet and primitive manner, she would take Caroline on one side and me on the other, and there, fixed eye to eye and soul to soul, would she enchain and enchant us until long after midnight, when we were obliged to tear ourselves away, only out of tenderness to her. I do not think a woman ever lived who had such power to inspire others with affection. So you will say when you know her; so every body says who has passed two hours in her society. — One peculiar bond of interest between us was that all her early attempts at publication, which laid the foundation of her subsequent fame, were issued in the ‘Monthly Repository,’ just about the time when I used to contribute to that periodical a series of papers called the Critical Synopsis of the ‘Monthly Repository,’ consisting of remarks on every piece inserted in that work. We passed several hours in looking over those volumes. She never knew the author, or his name; but told me she used to figure him as a fat old gentleman in New England, sitting in his easy-chair, with a blue coat and yellow buttons, pronouncing decisions on her youthful compositions. On the second of the two Sundays she passed with us I taught her a part of John’s first chapter in Greek. Her accuracy and determination to pass over not a single principle in grammar or criticism, however minute, was astonishing. — When I asked my Caroline, who was with us at the time, if she was not jealous of my growing too fond of Harriet Martineau, my glorious wife* said, ‘O, no! take all the comfort in her that you can.’ She has a wonderful power of inspiring confidence, and extorting from those in whom she is interested the whole history of their past lives. This power was exercised over several of our leading politicians at Washington and elsewhere, as well as over us. Mr. Calhoun took infinite pains to indoctrinate her into the system of nullification. When we dined with General H. we were invited an hour before the other Edition: current; Page: [236] guests, that he might give her, at her request, his views on slavery. She studiously avoided arguing on these subjects, but quietly and keenly directed her attentions and questions to gentlemen of all parties in such a manner as to bring out the whole scope of detail of their several opinions. She made no secret of her aversion to slavery. She perceives and acknowledges, however, that the movements of the abolitionists have injured and retarded the cause of slaves here. Many little presents were sent her and Miss J. while here, and the mode of attention would probably have been manifested much more frequently had she remained longer. Mrs. W’s. gift (your Louisa will be interested to know) was six linen cambric handkerchiefs, marked with various emblems of Harriet’s character and fame. She threw out many little pleasantries on the six carriages that were offered for her use (one of which stood regularly at our door at eleven o’clock daily), threatening to make a procession of them and sit in the first. We gave her no party on account of our accumulated engagements, but invited friends to breakfast with her. She loves children, and children love her. She has brought ours a Bible play for Sunday evenings, in which adults join with great interest. On the last day of her being in Charleston she resisted several invitations in order to comply with our girls’ desire to have her visit their dancing-school. Caroline and I accompanied her eighteen miles out of town, where we spent the day in rambling in the woods or reading her works. We could not have done any thing else. On our return home at night we found that our Louisa (fourteen years old) had beguiled the time by composing her first piece of music and calling it the ‘Martineau Cotillon.’ I have purchased the Boston edition of her ‘Illustrations’ for my wife, and Miss M. has written, after a little coaxing from her, one or more sentences in every number, giving a precious bit of history or remark respecting the tales. She could hear most of my sermons through her horn, and has, I trust, benefited me by her remarks and encouragements. She is a deep adept in the philosophy of Carlyle, the reviewer of Burns, and the characteristics, in the Edinburgh. She devoted several reading evenings to these articles for us and Colonel C.’s family, our charming neighbours. She will speak of Coleridge and Wordsworth and spiritual growth to your heart’s content. Colonel P., the senator from Columbia, who says to her in a recent letter, ‘How can you make people love you so?’ has purchased her portrait, by Osgood. General H. sent her a set of the ‘Southern Review,’ and we had a delicious evening after she went away marking the author’s names and talking her over with the C.’s. — She contrived Edition: current; Page: [237] to run through several books in one fortnight, besides writing to her numerous correspondents and bringing up her journal; yet she never was in a hurry, never kept people waiting, and seemed only to hanker for long, sweet, private conversations with Caroline and myself. Her friend, Miss J., is an original, keen, frank, intelligent young lady, and secures friends in every quarter; my wife abandoned herself to the pleasure of intercourse with them. Her deportment to them was that of resistless hilarity, while mine was more solemn, under the painful consciousness that our interview must soon be over. My letter is a poor, faint idea of what you will find her. Her laugh is exquisitely amiable, frequent, and joyous. Wife is going to write to Harriet’s mother. She adores her brother James, a young Liverpool minister, more than any body else in the world,* and next to him Mr. Furness; but E. G. Loring will step in between brother James and Mr. Furness.”

My long extract, dear madam, will give you a correct impression of the nature of the intercourse with your daughter on our part. I will only add that her journey through the United States has thus far been one of triumph, — the best kind of triumph too, for she has been borne along on our hearts.

Remember us to “brother James and sister Ellen” and the other members of a family whom “not having seen we love.”

Yours respectfully,

CAROLINE GILMAN.

Harriet Martineau was deeply impressed, on arrival in the United States, with a society basking, as she somewhere says, in one bright sunshine of good-will. Such sweet temper, such kindly manners, such hearty hospitality, such conscientious regard for human rights, received from her a warm tribute of admiration. Her journals and letters record it all; and room should be found for a few passages, all in harmony with the preceding letter.

September 22, 1834

New York

65 Broadway,

New York,

September 22, 1834

.

. . . . General Mason and family are loading us with attentions. He is one of the most finished gentlemen I ever saw; and, if I am not mistaken, one of the most sensible of men. . . . . He is guiding us as to our route, and insists on our whole party to Niagara taking possession of his country-house on Lake Erie, which he writes to direct his son to prepare for us. His son is governor, and lives at Detroit.

Edition: current; Page: [238]

How shall I ever tell you what we are doing? At the table of honour appropriated to us I am compelled to take the highest place. Half our day is taken up with callers. Such trains of them! The late mayor, to bid me welcome, members of Congress, lawyers and candidates for office, interested in poor-laws and what not, — you must fancy all this. Some of my honours are, having three special orders issued for my things to pass the custom-house untouched; tributes from Bryant and others ingeniously placed under my eyes; a letter from the principal booksellers of the State, asking leave to negotiate for any work I may think of publishing, and begging me to designate from their book-list what works they shall have the pleasure to present me with. And every copy of my books is snapped up. . . . . To-morrow we dine with the Carys. . . . . Mr. Furness preached at Mr. Ware’s chapel on Sunday. It was most delightful. The chapel is large, cool, and well planned and well filled. The pews are beautifully disposed, and the white building with its large green blinds might tempt in wanderers on a hot day. . . . . The quiet, deep tones of Mr. Furness’s fine voice suited my ear so well that I heard every syllable without effort. . . . . Mr. Furness came straight down from the pulpit to me, in much agitation, — begged me to accept the hospitality of his house first when I go to Philadelphia. He was almost in tears, and so were we, it was so like a brotherly meeting. I have had divers invitations to Philadelphia, but Mr. Furness is to entertain us first.

I am told that the violence about the slavery question is all among the Irish and low labourers, who are afraid of the coloured people being raised to an equality with them. If this is true, it alters the state of the case.

There is no bringing away any thing about Jackson, they contradict one another so flatly.

Within five minutes after I had crossed the threshold of my Broadway lodgings I was informed that the institutions of the country will have fallen into ruin before I leave; that “the levelling spirit” is desolating society here; and that America is on the verge of a military despotism! Such were the first politics I heard in America! I need not tell you my informant was not over wise.

JOURNAL.

New York, September 24. — Mr. Gallatin called. Old man. Began his career in 1787. Has been three times in England. Twice as minister. Found George IV. a cipher. Louis Philippe very different. Edition: current; Page: [239] Will manage all himself, and keep what he has. William IV. silly as Duke of Clarence. Gallatin would have the President a cipher too, if he could, i. e. would have him annual, so that all would be done by the ministry. As this cannot yet be, he prefers four years’ term without renewal, to the present plan, or to six years. The office was made for the man, — Washington, who was wanted (as well as fit) to reconcile all parties. Bad office, but well filled till now. Too much power for one man: therefore it fills all men’s thoughts to the detriment of better things. Jackson “a pugnacious animal.” This the reason (in the absence of interested motives) of his present bad conduct.

New-Englanders the best people, perhaps, in the world. Prejudiced, but able, honest, and homogeneous. Compounds elsewhere. In Pennsylvania the German settlers the most ignorant, but the best political economists. Give any price for the best land, and hold it all. Compound in New York. Emigrants a sad drawback. Slaves and gentry in the South. In Gallatin’s recollection, Ohio, Illinois, (?) and Indiana had not a white except a French station or two: now a million and a half (?) of flourishing whites. Maize the cause of rapid accumulation, and makes a white a capitalist between February and November, while the Indian remains in statu quo, and when accumulation begins, government cannot reserve land. The people are the government, and will have all the lands. [Ponder this.] Drew up a plan for selling lands. Would have sold at $ 2. Was soon brought down to $ 1¼, with credit. Then, as it is bad for subjects to be debtors to a democratic government, reduction supplied the place of credit, and the price was brought down to ¼ dollar.

All great changes have been effected by the democratic party, from the first, up to the universal suffrage which practically exists.

Aristocracy must arise. (?) Traders rise. Some few fail, but most retain, with pains, their elevation. Bad trait here, — fraudulent bankruptcies, though dealing is generally fair. Reason, that enterprise must be encouraged, — must exist to such a degree as to be liable to be carried too far.

Would have no United States Bank. Would have free banking as soon as practicable. It cannot be yet. Thinks Jackson all wrong about the bank, but has changed his opinion as to its powers. It has no political powers, but prodigious commercial. [Is not this political power in this country ?] If the bank be not necessary, better avoid allowing this power. Bank has not overpapered the country.

Gallatin is tall, bald, toothless, speaks with burr, looks venerable Edition: current; Page: [240] and courteous. Opened out and apologized for his full communication. Kissed my hand.

Van Buren is the chief of the tories. Clay is the father of the tariff system. A hearty orator. Is it the Irish and low labourers who riot against abolition?

September 24, 1834. — Rode to the James King’s, at High Wood, two miles beyond Hoboken. Saw bullocks yoked; ridge of rock and wood; splendid sunset, with crimson sky; pretty white wooden cottages, with thatched verandas. View from Mr. King’s garden beautiful; down to the Narrows, and up twelve miles. Glass-factory flaming among woods opposite, and elegant sloops moored in soft red light on river. Pretty and free-and-easy young people. Once made a qualification for office that the candidate should never have fought, and should never hereafter fight, any duel. God rid of by moving that promissory oaths are unlawful. Fight at Hoboken, and escape into New York. Robert Sedgwick thinks Webster equal to Demosthenes, and Clay’s warmth external. Saw Miss Sedgwick’s picture at his house, — fine expression, thoughtful and sweet.

September 25. — Colonel Johnson maimed in war. Likely to be President, General M. says. Saw Cass, Secretary of War. Shrewd, hard-looking man. Once vehement in politics, but tongue stopped by Jackson. Has been Secretary only this term. Irish driving of stage. Civility and freedom of manners. Rail-cars very comfortable. Snake Hill beautifully wooded. Many butterflies. Profusion of other animal life compared with human. Dwellings dotted. Indian corn. Hay left on ground to be carried in frost. Smooth Hackensack and Passaic. Alternate salt plains and wood. Fine weeds and elegant pokeberry, used (and hops too) as asparagus when young. Cattle feeding in enclosure where stumps are gray and like rocks. Paterson stands in a basin; but basin above level of stream. Rough and good people. Most immoral before manufactures were established. Now, drunkenness, but great improvement in other respects. Stand made by Mr. Collet against factory immorality. When currency troubles came, and all but three factories closed, young folks dropped into parents’ farms. When business was gradually resumed, dropped in again, so no want of hands. Difficult to get servants, from girls preferring factory-work. No place to deposit money; so often lost. The maid to-day with no cap. Pretty girl of fourteen nursing baby. Tall, and not awkward. Very simple. All seem to think that repeal of our corn laws would break up aristocracy. Also that they themselves are becoming too democratical. Must educate the people, and not legislate Edition: current; Page: [241] against democracy. All think Brougham mad or drunk. Cooper vain and petulant, Mrs. Griffith says. Lady fell from rocks at Passaic. Husband married again, and proposed bringing his second wife the day after their marriage! Fire-works at the falls; little water to-day; but wooded hills and rocks beautiful. Different levels of water, some turbulent, some still. Stumps in field. Fine fern. View of Paterson, under amphitheatre of ridges. Fine situation. Figures crossing turf, — “plodding homewards.” Young girls earn three or four dollars, and can board for one and a quarter. Talk on female education, &c., with Mr. Collet. Curd and preserves, cheese and fruit, for dessert. Raw beef and cakes and biscuits for tea. Delicious ice at eight.

October 10. — We must remember this day for having seen our first log-hut, and got some idea of forest sights. O, the dark shades of those thronging trees, with their etherealized summits! The autumn woods have hitherto seemed too red and rusty; these were the melting of all harmonious colours. And the forms! drooping, towering, — all sorts: and the tallest bare stems with exquisite crimson creepers. The cleared hollows and slopes, with the forest advancing or receding, but ever bounding all, is as fine to the imagination as any natural language can be. I looked for an Indian or two standing on the forest verge, within a shade as dusky as himself. I have written of utility being transmuted into beauty as time modifies tastes. This country must be the scene; for here, while utility is advancing gigantically, there is no time to impair the wild beauty of nature. The two will be found in new and natural combination. Should there not grow up from this a new order or period in the fine arts? Ought the Americans long to go on imitating? Ponder how much, and speculate on new orders of architecture, &c. . . . .

No beggary, but universal decency. I have seen girls barefoot, but they carried umbrellas! To-day we saw a pig-driver in spectacles! Reached Auburn in the middle of the day, and walked about. New houses on outskirts pretty, as usual, and beautiful bounding forest. 6,000 inhabitants; many of them contractors for prison manufactures, namely, clocks, combs, cabinet and chair work, weaving, tailoring, shoemaking, machinery, making carpeting, stone-cutting, &c. The contractors furnish the materials and superintend the work.

October 14.

Niagara. You must not expect a description from me. One might as well give an idea of the kingdom of heaven by images of jasper Edition: current; Page: [242] and topazes as of what we have been seeing by writing of hues and dimensions. Except the hurricane at sea, it is the only sight I ever saw that I had utterly failed to imagine. It is not its grandeur that strikes me so much; but its unimaginable beauty. All images of softness fail before it. Think of a double rainbow issuing from a rock one hundred feet below one, and almost completing its circle by nearly lighting on one’s head. The slowness with which the waters roll over is most majestic. There is none of the hurry and tumble of common waterfalls, but the green transparent mass seems to ooze over the edges. The ascent of the spray, seen some miles off, surprised me; it did not hang like a cloud, but curled vigorously up, like smoke from a cannon or a new fire. We have crossed the ferry, and done more than in my present state of intoxication I can well remember or tell you of. On the spot, I felt quite sane, — sure-footed and reasonable; but when I sat down to dinner, I found what the excitement had been. I could not tell boiled from roast beef, and my only resource was to go out again as soon as we could leave the table; and now I am very sleepy. I expected I should be disappointed, and told Miss Sedgwick so. She was right in saying that it was impossible. If one looks merely at a cataract, it would be easy to say, “Dear me! I could fancy a rock twice as high as that, and a river twice as broad,” but I do not think any imagination could conceive of such colouring; and I was wholly unprepared for the beauty of the surrounding scenery. Fragments of rainbow start up and flit and vanish, like phantoms at a signal from the sun. We have watched the growth of this moon, “the Niagara moon;” and there she is, at her very brightest! What pleasure there is in a wholly new idea! It never occurred to me before that there can never be a cloudless sky at Niagara. A light fleecy rack is always in the sky over the falls; and the watcher may here see the process of cloud-making. No more now. Rejoice with me that I have now seen the best that my eyes can behold in this life. . . . .

Yours most affectionately,

H. MARTINEAU.

Meadville. Hotel, October 29, 1834. — Waiting for breakfast, and then sitting down with labourers, but civil and respectable men. Then most hearty reception by the Huidekopers; father, and fine, handsome son and daughters. Pretty situation of the house, with woody hills opposite. A walk to the college. Mr. Huidekoper anti-Jackson, — strong. Gave a list of things that J. has protested against, Edition: current; Page: [243] and then done. Patronage can’t be done away. 150,000 interested persons, with all their influence to contend against.

Methodist college (purely literary) finely placed; has been opened just a year. Poor students pay by working at increasing the building, which is not new (twenty years old about). The Rev. — — is a pleasant specimen of Methodist minister. Library of 8,000 volumes, presented by Winthrop, and seems choice. Some Oriental specimens. Beginning of museum: Indian axe and arrow-heads. Peep into store in coming home. Drover raised from being a very poor boy, and likely to be wealthy. Now making $4,000 per month, of which half goes to the friends who advanced money to set him up. Meadville is on French Creek; has canal, and about 1,400 population. Good tea; English news in American papers, inundation of ladies, unexpectedly. Beautiful Miss — —. Fire in comfortable room; journal amid much sleepiness, and now to bed.

October 30. — Glorious weather. Talk and callers during morning till noon, when Mr. Huidekoper, Anna, and Mr. Wallace and I went out. A fine rapid walk of five miles, over opposite hill and through wood. Two black squirrels. Sweet, rich fields stretching under shelter of woods down to creek. Drive in afternoon. Long covered bridge, once shattered by a freshet; but children of two years play safely. Accidents don’t happen to little Americans. Walked to the C.’s to tea. Pleasant evening, with few strangers. Bad cold, and so to bed. Gentleman from Philipsburg says it is a forced settlement; poor land.

October 31. — Read Norton’s excellent, but supercilious, truth-telling Preface to work in disproof of Trinitarian doctrines, and some of the chapters. He gives up Revelations as a prophecy. Read some of Palfrey’s sermons. Read Reports of Blind Institution at Philadelphia: of House of Refuge, interesting, (why are not the children kept longer than from a few months to two years?) and of Penitentiary; interesting. Came down and found Mrs. — —, Mrs. H.’s deaf sister, a cheerful, shy woman, very good, I should think. Lent her my spare tube for two days. Sweet drive after dinner. Rich valley, and the softest woods when the red evening sun shone out. Saw good house building for a farmer who lost his by fire last winter. Neighbours bear the loss among them, so that he is better off for a house than before. Much talk on politics and morals in evening, with Messrs. H. and D. Horror here of ministers meddling in politics beyond just voting. Mr. H. a dismal looker-on in politics. Believes that thirty years hence they will be under a despotism: now coming under mob law. Asked him why he did not go elsewhere; answer, where could Edition: current; Page: [244] he be better off? Cannot cut off President’s patronage without altering the Constitution, and, besides, opposition is too strong. Sure that all the intelligence of the community is against Jackson. Attributes the evil to universal suffrage. Would have property represented instead of both property and person. Thinks ill of trial by jury. Here jury are paid a dollar per day, besides mileage. Hence needy men say, “Put my name in the wheel,” — thirty-six names for petty, twenty-four for grand jury. Lenient to criminal so far as to encourage crime. Also, protection wanted for prosecutor. If he fails to convict, culprit brings action for false imprisonment. (Dr. Follen disbelieves this, as a general statement.) Mr. H. upholds tariff system. During the war, America prospered from large markets for her corn. Then, no country would take it, and there was extensive ruin from want of subdivision. Relief brought at once by tariff, and since, New England has bought more corn than all other places, while she has been better employed than in growing it. This is the argument which Mr. H. seems to think will hold good for ever. Mr. Huidekoper says Jackson would give away lands, which are already sold too low. This would afford another premium on agriculture, which is too much pursued (he thinks) already. He says it is impossible to get on without a Central or National Bank, which must necessarily have great commercial power; but Jackson wants that it should be political power, and would have a treasury bank. (If it be true that the nation is verging towards anarchy and despotism, can I do any thing to show them what they have been, what they are, what they might be?)

We are going to visit Miss Sedgwick for two days. I wish Miss Mitford knew that we were going.

After speaking of the American women she had met, “some perfect ladies,” “some pale-faced, indolent folk who make a point of their shoes above all things,” “some pedants,” — she says: —

“It seems right, dear mother, to tell you that they are not at all shy of me. In all the letters we carry from one place to another the sentiment is amusingly uniform, namely: ‘The authoress and instructress of statesmen is forgotten in the,’ &c., &c. This looks as if pedantry was the common consequence of acquirement among the women. Miss J—’s cheerful intelligence makes her friends every where. We have begun a regular plan of Bible-reading and discussion together, and are quite disposed to rest invariably on the Sundays. When I told the General what is thought among us (and especially Edition: current; Page: [245] by Lord Durham) of the American Report on Sunday travelling, he was highly delighted, the author being his most intimate friend. He will introduce him to us at Washington, and thinks he has a good chance for the presidency next time; but every man thinks so of his particular friend.

“We have been exquisitely happy at Stockbridge, with the Sedgwicks. Miss Sedgwick is all I heard of her, which is saying every thing. All these Mr. Sedgwicks, her brothers, with their wives and blooming families, are an ornament to their State. They are among the first people in it, gracing its literature and its legislation, and spreading their accomplishments through the fair country in which they dwell. Such a country, of mountain and lake and towering wood! I was ‘Layfayetted,’ as they say, to great advantage. All business was suspended, and almost the whole population was busy in giving me pleasure and information. I never before was the cause of such a jubilee. If Ellen thought much of my mode of leaving Liverpool, what would she think here? We were carried to Pittsfield, to an annual agricultural assemblage, where I learned much of the people, and was made to drink the first out of a prize cup. O, the bliss of seeing not a single beggar, — not a man, woman, or child otherwise than well dressed! Captain Hall says no women appear at these public meetings, and that they are dreadfully solemn. We saw as many women as men, and few but smiling faces; but Captain Hall went to one meeting, on a wet, cold day, and drew a general conclusion, as is his wont. I am told he was asked if he would take a piece of something at dinner, and answered that he would have a bit, — that was the proper word; piece sounded very improper to English ears! What a traveller!

“I have learned more than I well know how to stow, at Stockbridge, the unrivalled village, where the best refinements of the town are mingled with the wildest pleasures of the country. We are to go again and again if they say true; and this morning at six we departed from amid a throng of tearful friends, feeling that we shall never meet with kinder. I never saw so beautiful a company of children as were always offering me roses, or lying in wait for a smile or an autograph, or to bring me lamp or water, or whatever I might want. Miss Sedgwick is the beloved and gentle queen of the little community. They gave me letters to Van Buren (the Vice-President, and centre of all the political agitation here), expecting that I should meet him at Washington; but on arriving here I found that he has just returned from the Falls, and had been inquiring for me, and after dinner he Edition: current; Page: [246] called with his son. He is simple in his manners, and does not look the wily politician he is said to be, nor as if he had the cares of this great Republic on his shoulders. He hopes to welcome me to Washington.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

December 12, 1834

Philadelphia

LETTER TO HER FAMILY.

Philadelphia,

December 12, 1834

.

I do not know where to begin, dear ones all, in my pleasant story, but seem to have lived half a lifetime when I think of my intercourse with these friends, and yet it appears but a day since I sealed my last to England. Briefly and from my heart thanking you for your full communications, I proceed to give you a few scraps of my delights. First, we are still here and likely to be. I should have been torn to pieces, or I should have set people by the ears together, if I had gone elsewhere. We are also so ineffably happy together, that we all banish the thought of parting as often as it obtrudes itself. All Philadelphia has called upon me, — people of many ranks and all opinions, religious and political. We have been to dinners and balls among “the high fashionables,” while through our host we have seen, I fancy, more of the enlightened men of the city than we could have met elsewhere. The Biddles and other great men have made much of me for my Political Economy, and the best of the Quakers on account of “Demerara.” So that I do believe I have been in the best circumstances for accomplishing my object, while I cannot imagine that I could any where else have found the deep repose with which I solace myself in this blessed house, after the vanities and toils of the day. [Then follows a charming description of a charming family.] O, those precious children! I must not now write. Our days are, — breakfast at half past eight (after worship), a lingering breakfast, and more talk than eating. Out early, to see sights, return calls, and escape callers, a pack of whose cards daily awaits us when we return to dress for dinner. We dine somewhere, drink tea somewhere else, and then go to an evening party, finishing with a delicious talk, till twelve or one, over the fire. A lady here placed a carriage and black coachman at my command the first day I came.

We stay here over the twenty-third, which is the anniversary of the young, admirable blind school, for which I have, by request of the patriarch Vaughan, written a prologue.

We see no difficulties before or behind, or on either side of us, and are full of happiness. Yet I have seen much sorrow here. If I have been much among the great and the gay, I have been also among the Edition: current; Page: [247] wretched. Not only have I been much in hospitals and such places, but there are daily appeals to me to visit some who are sick, that want to talk to me about the “Traditions;” or some who are deaf, that want to follow up with me the letter in Tait; or the managers of the insane, who want to know more about Hanwell Lunatic Asylum. If I did not know the vanity of all these things, I should think I had been able to do more good here than in any year of my life before. There is such an ordering of tubes from Baltimore, such a zeal to get a copy of our Poor-Law Bill, and such an earnest seeking after my opinion about their public institutions! The best of all is, that after one interview we all forget that I am a foreigner. The inquiries about my “impressions” are dropped, and we get at once to our subject, without any tendency to institute comparisons. The honours of a stranger are offered me without the penalties. The nearest place (that I may hear) is left for me every where; but there is a thorough union of hearts as to what is going on. I have now intimate intercourse with two or three valuable people, who had vowed to keep out of the way of the English, but who, finding others dropping all mention of the book I was to write, have come out of their holes, and laid open themselves and their country to me. I really believe this never happened to Hall or any other of our travellers; and I am truly thankful for it, for more reasons than I can mention now. Patriarch Vaughan and the venerable Bishop White (called here the bishop of all the churches) have done me the honour of seeking me; and when they are gone (as they must soon be), it will be a tender pleasure to think of it. I have presents of books and flowers, and tickets to public institutions, &c.; and this morning I have been touched (in spite of the absurdity) by a letter from an insane gentleman, of Ohio (gone mad on high subjects), appointing me high priestess of God and nature, if I dare undertake the charge.

The most interesting, perhaps, of my employments has been visiting the penitentiary, for the sake of discovering the causes of crime here. I am almost the first who has been admitted alone to the solitary prisoners. The board ordered that I should do as I pleased at all times in the prison, and I have been shut up with murderers, burglars, forgers, and others, listening to their eager and full confidences about their crimes and their miseries. It is all I can do to command my feelings for them when I see them look up in amazement at my unexpected entrance, and struggle with the tears which spring at the first kind word I speak to them. What revelations will I give you, some day, of the lives of these poor creatures! But it is too large a Edition: current; Page: [248] subject for this letter. The worst thing is, that the relations of the prisoners sometimes hear of my visits, and they come and insinuate family tidings to me, which I am bound in honour not to communicate. It is hard upon me to refrain from telling a prisoner how his wife is, and how she is labouring for his release. My rule is to tell all this to the governor, who can do as he thinks proper, and to keep the confessions of the prisoners to myself. It is a noble institution. But what must be the state of society where it is humanity to prepare such an elaborate apparatus of human misery!

Of slavery and public affairs I cannot write to-day. Only take care how you suppose you understand the case of the Bank till you hear from me at full length. I have never given an opinion on their politics since I came, nor is there any need. People bring theirs to me abundantly; but when they question me, it is not of their politics, but something which they rightly suppose I know more about. I have fully ascertained that at Washington one may mix freely with the leading men of all parties and not be liable to the charge of treachery or partisanship.

Farewell, all my precious family! Dearest Helen, kiss you bairns for me, and don’t let them forget me! God bless you, and keep you all as happy as I am!

Yours most tenderly,

H. M.

And now, furnished with half a hundred letters from every body worth having known to every body worth knowing, and anxiously expected by Webster, Calhoun, Clay, and all the rest, Miss Martineau took leave of Philadelphia, where she had been so much beloved. “I am sure I am a more virtuous person for all this happiness,” she said at the time.

I have succeeded in my search for the “prologue” which Miss Martineau wrote, at the request of Mr. Vaughan, for the anniversary of the Philadelphia institution for the blind, because it “would save Mr. Furness the trouble.”

The blind man sat beside the way

Hopeless and helpless, day by day,

While joy and music passed him by,

And all the shows of earth and sky.

And while he listened, they were gone, —

He could not follow, — dark, — alone.

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And so the wise complain — that they

Linger and listen by life’s way,

And painfully their tidings glean,

And wonder what all things may mean.

Almost as weak and blind as we,

They long to follow on and see.

But He who heard the beggar’s cry,

And raised his wondering gaze on high,

Calls on us also to arise, —

Alike the helpless and the wise, —

And, hand in hand, not faint and slow, —

Learn whence we come and where we go.

’T is by the love that Jesus taught,

And by the wisdom that he brought,

That we are shielded here from harm,

And roused to life’s and music’s charm;

From strength to strength our way can win,

And feel our hearts grow glad within,

And gather light from day to day,

To follow in that living way

Where purest pleasures throng and dwell, —

How pure, how rich, no tongue can tell.

Pleasures too fine for ear or eye,

That perish not, though every sense should die.

EXTRACTS FROM THE PHILADELPHIA, BALTIMORE, AND WASHINGTON JOURNAL.

It seems to me that reporters of the state of society here forget how heterogeneous it is, and what a marvel it is that there is any common mind at all, among so many. If the bigotry that marks the religious world extended to other matters, there would be no living in such a Babel as it would be.

Christmas. — Called on the Fortins. Mr. Fortin dusky, with white hair. Told us his history. By sail-making he has raised himself to competence. His son-in-law, Mr. Purvis, has been to England. Told us of O’Connell’s greeting. Would not shake hands with an American Edition: current; Page: [250] till he knew what part he had taken about slavery, but held out his hand instantly to one of the proscribed race. It is painful to hear them speak of their proscription. Purvis is a fine young man. The number of coloured people in the States in Mr. Fortin’s youth was 350,000; now between two and three millions.

January 1. — Snow piled up every where and the sleighs, with their belled horses, very lively. Mr. Read gave me for a New-Year’s gift an original letter of Washington, and has sent me Washington’s account-book, presented to Congress, containing his account of expenses during the war, when he would have no salary. Very small memorandums, and characteristic from their exactitude and justice. Mr. Latrobe means to inform me fully on colonization, — from this State.

January 2. — Sight-seeing, — infirmary, — medical school. Subjects almost exclusively supplied from the coloured people, because they can’t resist; — taken chiefly from the graves. So these dusky bodies are not contemptible when they are dead. Home. Found Mr. Read and Mrs. Cumberland Williams, who won my heart by her praise or rather love of my Philadelphia friends. She was Pinckney’s daughter. Met Governor Barbour, Dr. and Mrs. Collins, and Mr. Kennedy at the Skinners’. A merry party of little folks at the Shaws’ in the evening. Plenty of the little beauties came and gossiped with me.

January 6. — Sleighed round the outskirts for an hour. Pleasant party, and Mr. Latrobe full of information about colonization. He knows what he is about. It is plain that the North has one set of interests and the South another, and that the Colonization Society loses by trying to reconcile the two. Maryland is interposed, and what she does is most important. Mr. Latrobe wants to establish a cordon sanitaire of colonization States round the worst; and believes they are ready. Individual State action is the way. . . . . If abolition were ordained in any State, the blacks would only be sold into the South; and if every where, they would die of vice. The rule here is that all freed slaves must go away; so the more manumission there is the more opposition from the slave States, unless colonization be provided as an outlet. . . . .

The state of feeling about these poor creatures is monstrous. There seems no rest for the soles of their feet. . . . . O, what a retribution! Very pleasant day if I had been well; but I would have incurred worse illness for the sake of what Mr. Latrobe told me.

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January 14. — Mr. S. C. Phillips took me to the Senate Chamber, where Sir C. Vaughan welcomed me heartily. A beautiful room and forty-eight fine heads. Webster conspicuous. He and Clay spoke. It was the French Question, — against the President’s recommendation of reprisals. Webster’s voice beautiful. More to my ear than Clay’s. My head ached vehemently, and so we went home. Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun and Colonel and Mrs. Preston called, and were most affectionate. Mr. Sprague; — model of an American legislator. Thinks Calhoun not practical, though theoretically complete. Afternoon, calls, — calls, — calls. Evening, Mr. Palfrey, Judge Story, Mr. Everett. The rest went to a great party which we declined, and Mr. Everett remained. We talked on Furness, Dewey, Channing; on the Senate, on English reviewing, on Mr. Gallatin, on Jackson, on prisons. Mr. Phillips tells me that Massachusetts hopes to get Edward Everett to be either governor of Massachusetts or senator with Webster.

Read Carlyle’s article on Burns. Was mightily cheered and lifted up by it. I must read it again when I find myself growing worldly.

So few travellers feel at home in a foreign land, so many make it a principle to suspend actual life till their return, subsisting meanwhile as spectators, and hardly feeling the odd, unaccountable beings by whom they are surrounded to be fellow-creatures, that one cannot help wishing for the publication of all Harriet Martineau’s American letters; for they are all filled with the same live element of personality which shows, as in these few that can with propriety be copied, how differently she took foreign life. She stood in no need of Voltaire’s reminder to his friend on the eve of sailing for Japan: “Never forget, mon enfant, that the whole world are exactly like your father and mother;” and this makes the peculiar charm of those ingenuous outpourings of the worshipper of nature and the lover of humanity, sharing with her kindred what she reserved for them alone, — the innocent satisfaction of her nobly earned success, and the joy of new friendships, scenes, and thoughts in the new half-civilized world.

What the old over-civilized world would think of it all was the natural anxiety on both sides. Harriet Martineau was the representative to all, of the mother country, which stood to them Edition: current; Page: [252] as the representative of civilization. The United States seemed for the moment a mere whispering-gallery for the transmission of her opinions. In addition to her English fame, she had by this time attained an American popularity, and made herself everywhere felt by an especial adaptation or natural fitness in her character to influence that of our people. One gentleman “had heard from her such striking thoughts on prison discipline and criminal legislation as would modify his whole future political life.” Another “had found the Bible a new book since reading it in the light of what she said to him of its depth and power.” “The whole subject of family discipline has taken a new aspect to me,” said a lady to whom she spoke of the power of love and the evil effect of punishment in creating in a child the spirit of fear and bondage. She awakened whole societies to new and important ideas about health. She had sown deep in a thousand hearts new and grand thoughts of the nature, sphere, duties, and rights of woman; and wherever she went, the splendour of truth and the value of religious liberty and the importance of moral independence were talked of and felt as never before. All these things came daily to our ears, — every one telling with a sort of rapturous veneration what an awakening to the spirit her conversation had been. But with all this came from time to time reports of her condemnation of the abolitionists. “She says they have done the cause of the slave great injury.” “She says your language and your measures are unjustifiable.” “She says you do not understand the matter.” All this made no impression on my mind to her discredit, for how should one coming to learn, see these things otherwise than as presented by the authorities on such subjects: — the first people, — the best people, — the leading people. But one of her penetration could not be sent out of the country hoodwinked, however she might be led blindfolded through it; yet it might well take long to understand this “mystery of iniquity.” We had lived all our youth under the benumbing vassalage of slavery, and never dreamed it was so, till Garrison’s voice “broke the deep slumber in our brain.” How should she see at a glance what had been so skilfully wrapped up in darkness for wellnigh half a century? Edition: current; Page: [253] One of the clearest minds connected with the cause took the responsibility of entreating her to delay judgment till she should have examined thoroughly, in the following letter.

Ellis Gray Loring

Loring, Ellis Gray

April 18, 1835

Boston

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

ELLIS GRAY LORING TO HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Boston,

April 18, 1835

.

My brother, the Rev. Mr. Gilman of Charleston, S. C., has encouraged me, in a late letter, to venture the invitation I make to you of being my guest during your expected visit in Boston. He tells me he has spoken to you of his sister, my wife, and of myself, and I therefore take this way of recalling to you our names, and of expressing the hope, which would otherwise have appeared to me only a fruitless wish, that we may know you intimately. We have heard much of you personally from our correspondents, and we are as ready to love you cordially as a friend as we have long been to admire and respect the author of your works.

Your tour through the United States is contemplated with great interest by all who know the weight your opinions of us and our institutions will have both in Europe and America. A continual attempt will be made, and is, I know, now made, to prevent your seeing them in any but their most becoming attitude. I trust you will duly estimate the amount of compensation this circumstance requires. All that hospitality can do to win the heart and to seduce the judgment will of course be done. But your head as well as your heart is to act an important part in marking the destinies of this young empire. You know your responsibilities, and will observe, judge, and act accordingly.

You must see all around you illustrations of my meaning, — but one is so near my heart that I cannot but suggest it. The apologists for slavery in this country are thoroughly alarmed at your journey of observation. The author of “Demerara” is a formidable personage in the Southern States. Your coming was hailed with delight by the friends of the slaves and of the true interests of the country, and was looked to with dismay by those whose interest here is oppression. What is the course taken by these last? You are received with the most marked attention, writer as you are of the best antislavery tale ever written, — while a New England man who should have written that work would have been (pardon the truth) indicted and imprisoned, if nothing worse, had he set his foot for the next twenty Edition: current; Page: [254] years into South Carolina or Georgia. The highest literary rank and worth could not have wholly saved one of us from the consequences of such an unpardonable offence. But Miss Martineau is the world’s property, and as she cannot be crushed, she must, if possible, be blinded. — Forgive my zeal if I say to you, do not judge of slavery as you see it in the drawing-rooms of the men of refinement and perhaps of principle whom you visit, — of course the very élite of the Southern country; but look at it among the field slaves of Carolina, the semi-civilized back settlements of Alabama and Mississippi, or in the New Orleans slave-market. Alas! you cannot see it in these aspects; — your standing with its inevitable associations, but far more your sex, must prevent your catching more than partial glimpses of what it is not meant you should see. I might better ask you to keep in mind the dreadful statistics of our domestic slave-trade: 6,000 (chiefly young persons) annually exported from Virginia alone, away from relations and home, to die in the unwholesome Southwest.

You will have heard, before you return to the North, stories of the fanaticism and indiscretion of the antislavery party, from many sources, — from the ambitious statesmen, who wish to serve and be rewarded by two masters, who would stand well with the North and the South; from the “wise and prudent,” who think the whole truth on any subject inexpedient, and regard it as more dangerous even to talk of remedying an abuse than to wait for it to tumble down destruction on their own heads. You will, of course, be asked to measure the violence and recklessness of our Northern attacks on slavery by the irritation they cause in the slaveholder. Most of these accounts are exaggerations or falsehoods. But this would be comparatively unimportant, except as it may insensibly affect our view of the great controversy of principles which is awakening throughout the land. For the sake of the cause, I ask you to suspend your opinion of the antislavery measures and men till you can look at them for yourself. . . . .

I live in a retired and quiet manner at 671 Washington Street. Your welcome there would be most cordial. It would be a true gratification to my wife and myself to have you come to our house on your arrival in Boston, and to make it your home as long as we could succeed in making you happy there.

I feel that I have taken an unusual liberty in writing you such and so long a letter. I have no apology to offer but the gratitude and regard I feel for one to whom I have owed both delight and improvement, Edition: current; Page: [255] and who has done so much to make society wiser and happier.

With renewed apologies and the truest esteem I am your obedient servant,

ELLIS GRAY LORING.

Between the time of her receiving Mr. Loring’s letter and the date of this reply her private journal is extremely interesting. It was at this period that she was applied to to make a constitution for Texas, and there one sees all the passion of her enjoyment for natural scenery. The record all along, of each day, ends thus: “Read the New Testament.”

Subjoined is Miss Martineau’s answer.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

May 27, 1835

Lexington, Kentucky

Ellis Gray Loring

Loring, Ellis Gray

Lexington, Kentucky,

May 27, 1835

.

Dear Sir, —

Your kind and gratifying letter followed me from New Orleans, and has, at length, met me here, at Mr. Clay’s. Mrs. Gilman led me to hope that I should hereafter have the pleasure of becoming acquainted with yourself and Mrs. Loring; but I did not anticipate so early an intercourse as you have kindly offered me the means of holding with you. I have already engaged myself at Boston to Dr. Tuckerman and to your namesakes, Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Loring; but I hope to remain there long enough to avail myself also of your offered hospitality, and shall consider myself engaged to spend a little time with you when I have passed a week with each of these friends I have mentioned. I am sure we shall have a great deal to say to each other, and I shall say my share with peculiar ease and pleasure under your own roof. We should no doubt have known each other without the intervention of our dear friends the Gilmans; but that we share their love is a sufficient reason for dispensing with the usual preliminaries of a friendship.

We shall spend many a half-hour in talking over the principal subject of your letter. It is too copious a one to be entered upon now, but I cannot honestly let you suppose that I agree with you in thinking that there has been any attempt or wish to blind me as to the real state of things at the South. I have been freely shown the notoriously bad plantations because they were bad, and have been spontaneously told a great number of dreadful facts which might have just as well been kept from me, if there had been any wish to deceive me. I have seen every variety of the poor creatures, from the cheerful, apt house-servant, to the brutish, forlorn, wretched beings that crawl Edition: current; Page: [256] along the furrows of the fields. The result has been a full confirmation of the horror and loathing with which I have ever regarded the institution, and a great increase of the compassion I have always felt for those who are born to the possession of slaves; a compassion which has something of respect mingled with it, when I see them persecuted by a foreign interference, which is now the grand hindrance to their freeing themselves from their intolerable burden. How Christians can exasperate one another under the pressure of so weary a load of shame and grief I can scarcely understand; and I have been fancying, all through the Southern States, how, if Jesus himself were to rise up amidst them, he would pour out his compassion and love upon those who are afflicted with an inheritance of crime. If his spirit were in us all the curse would be thrown off in a day; and as it is, I am full of hope that the day of liberty is rapidly approaching, notwithstanding the mutual quarrels of colonizationists and abolitionists, and the hard thoughts which the friends and masters of the slaves entertain of each other. The reasons of my hope, — my confidence, I will tell you when we meet. I have had the honour of a slight correspondence with Mrs. Child, and look forward with much pleasure to meeting her. Dr. and Mrs. Follen are well known to me by name, which is the same thing as saying that I want to know more of them. We (my friend Miss J. and myself) have had the pleasure of travelling over many hundred miles with Mr. and Mrs. C. G. Loring. They are now at Cincinnati, and are going to the Virginia Springs, while we turn westward as far as St. Louis at least. We hope to be at Cambridge by Commencement, and then to travel through New England during September and October, previous to our settling down in Boston for a long visit.

I beg to present my respects to Mrs. Loring, and to assure you that I am truly your obliged

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Here were reproduced the very sentiments, and for the most part the phraseology of the more decent slaveholding world and its allies, — yet with a difference. None of them had ever said that “if all had the spirit of Jesus the curse would be thrown off in a day.” That they would have rebuked as “immediatism,” — a thing impossible to be so explained as not to be liable to misapprehension, and therefore not proper for the time. As to the spirit of Jesus in itself considered, all their logic went to prove that the slaveholders unquestionably possessed it; while Edition: current; Page: [257] the abolitionists were destitute of it in the precise proportion of their devotedness as such.

For the rest, these ideas were identical with the American ones. Just so the world that hated and despised the abolitionists viewed with mingled compassion and respect the men born to the possession of slaves. Just so it called our antislavery efforts, justified by our own guilty complicity, through the constitutional compact, “foreign interference.” Just so it laid the crime of the longer continuance of slavery at our door. Just so it claimed the peculiar love and compassion of Jesus for a blameless set of men, loaded down with the shame and grief of a burden they could not get rid of; — not sinners, but afflicted with the consequences of anterior transgression.

All this wrought somewhat painfully on the minds of many of the abolitionists, particularly when they found it gave intense delight to every body but themselves. Every body “hated and loathed slavery” too, but that was all. It was the step farther that was to cost, and therefore could never be taken. So men went on talking of the gentleness of Jesus; and of the Sunday schools for slaves, which antislavery violence had put a stop to; and of the revivals of religion at the South, which showed how Christ owned and accepted as his people the persecuted slaveholders: “And so Miss Martineau thought, and she had been through the whole Southern country;” and they never failed to inquire, thereupon, what we thought of the pious John Newton, “who had sweet seasons with God while he was engaged in the slave-trade.” “I think he was an old Antinomian!” was the reply furnished us by the Rev. Dyer Burgess, one of our excellent coadjutors from Ohio, who had been assisting at our five-o’clock morning prayer-meetings for the cause. There might have been seen representatives of every shade of opinion, from rationalism to the most extreme Calvinism, drawn together by the strength of a common desire. Dr. Watts’s description of heaven would in a sense have characterized these assemblies: —

“Ten thousand thousand are their tongues,

But all their joys are one.”

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The humanitarian said amen to prayers offered in the name of the Holy Trinity, for the triumph of the principles. Evangelical Orthodoxy embraced as brethren in the cause the Unitarians and philosophers who were ready to shed their own blood for its sake. One after another, with but little variation of form, they prayed the same prayer. “Bear with our many repetitions,” — prayed the hater of sentimental religion, faith without works, the antinomianism of a slave-trading piety, — “Thou who didst pray unto thy Father, in thine agony on man’s behalf, three times saying the same words!” We only wished Harriet Martineau could have heard.

Then, too, the “quarrels” of colonizationists and abolitionists! So she understood “that death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word!”

It was a great breach of conventionalism to thrust in at this stage of the correspondence between herself and Mr. Loring, but I felt sure of the real character of the illustrious personage, and that she would not fail, after having seen all, to discern the unusual stress of the time, and to find in it a reason and an excuse for so unusual a procedure.

I returned again and again in memory to her declaration, “If all had the spirit of Jesus it would be abolished in a day;” for I knew that to her mind “the spirit of Jesus” was the synonyme of all that was authoritative by reason of excellence. I did not build so much as others upon her having written the best antislavery tale. It would not follow because Mrs. Behn and Steele and the Duchess de Duras were equal to the conception of “Orinoko,” “Inkle and Yarico,” and “Ourika,” that they could be true to human nature, under the severest ordeal, — as that certainly was to which slavery in the United States subjected every foreigner of distinction. But the writer of “the Scott papers,” the true painter of woman, the exalter and consoler of poverty, — no, I never could doubt that she must eventually see things as they really were. I wrote to her, but I have no recollection of her reply as differing in tone or spirit from her letter to Mr. Loring, nor do I find it among the collection of her letters to myself. I suppose it was lent at the time, Edition: current; Page: [259] and worn out, as the other letters had wellnigh been. They were not private letters. Whatever it was, it did not shake my faith in her, and I awaited her coming with undiminished interest.

How well I remember the first sight of her so long ago! We had, as it were, a long sitting, for 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 colour 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. And the longer one knew her the more this charm was felt; for it was the very spirit “of love and of power and of a sound mind.”

In intimate conversation she was free and winning beyond any one we had ever seen. Her one great gift seemed then to be utterance; not rhetoric, not elocution, not eloquence, not wit, — though her talk was full of short corner-touches, — but the faculty of rapidly communicating thought and feeling. Her Edition: current; Page: [260] fulness of sympathy made it natural to her to meet every mind in private society just as she unfailingly did the public mind in her writings, — exactly where it laboured. She could not help saying to every person something not to be forgotten; and seeing how many there were whose after-lives she acted upon by a word, her one great gift seems to have been to influence and to teach. There was something in her which broke down the American caution and reserve. Give her ten minutes, and it all melted away. She was surprised to find the New-Englanders so merry a people; but interchange of thought in a free country, where each is sovereign, was then less safe than under a despotism; and a paid government-spy in every social circle less a check on intercourse than the American dread of public opinion under the rule of slavery; and so we laughed together, because we could do that without risk. We had a jesting spirit in conformity to our institutions, when slavery was one of them. It was neither the English humour nor the French wit, but a droll narrative humourousness of our own, — wit forced out of dangerous channels into safe ones. It was our refuge from the dulness of “non-committal” intercourse. Ladies might not avail themselves of it without so much of limitation that it then made them seem stiff and pedantic. And though at that time we were a friendly hearted, we were not, on the whole, a social people. And all this made Harriet Martineau’s cheerful, free simplicity like a fresh breeze in a stagnant place. Discussion, debate, monologue, and dialogue are all more natural to us than conversation. So little, in fact, was it then in our nature or habits, that we thought conversible Europeans must have been trained to it as an art. Parties not being permanent, no protection existed for the one-sided freedom of intercourse which could exist in England.

Then, in addition to whatever there was of natural inaptitude, increased by whatever might be the effect of institutions, came in the check of incessant strife between our theory and our practice. All this made a comparatively wintry state of heart; which, however it might warm up in the actual conflict of life, could seldom cast off in society the conversational mufflers Edition: current; Page: [261] of health, weather, light literary criticism, fine-art pedantry, and fun.

The passage through our society of one so full and free was a season of refreshing. Harriet Martineau did New England good wherever she went, entering with the liveliest pleasure into all the interests of the hour. At Salem, where she was the guest of Mr. Stephen C. Phillips, then our Massachusetts member of Congress, she became the influencing friend of many. It was for the Sunday school there that she wrote a new “tradition of Palestine,” the little story of “Elec and Rachel;” and the children gathered round to touch her dress unawares, as if she could put them in nearer communication with Christ. And she could not only, on occasion, make the young serious, but their elders gay. The annexed jeu d’esprit pleased her so much on account of its ingenuity, that, much as she herself deprecated flattery, she preserved it for her mother. It was given her after an evening’s conversation, by Dr. Flint, a Unitarian minister and a poet, who had made numberless inquiries about English living authors.

It was of these lines that an amused friend remarked, “They would have been capital for the nonce, if it had not been so difficult to read them effectively.”

Flint Sonnet

Sonnet, Flint

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

DR. FLINT’S SONNET TO MISS H. MARTINEAU’S EAR-TRUMPET.

Thrice precious tube! thou faithful voice-conveyer

Through thy accomplished mistress’ outward ear

To that within, — wont other sounds to hear

Than those of earth; — for all the Nine obey her

Oft as she wills their promptings to rehearse

In tale, or tract, or choice morceaux of verse: —

Through thee, quick, clear, and sweet response I win

From more than Delphic oracle within.

For spirits o’er the vasty deep I call

Through thee; and Endor’s witch to royal Saul

The prophet’s form not sooner brought than she

The gifted minds of her fair isle to me.

My heart’s warm thanks to her I fain would speak,

But words to tell their warmth are all too poor and weak.

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We gathered, from the surprise she seemed to feel at finding the abolitionists to be persons of good sense and education, — freer than the rest of the world from narrowness, violence, and fanaticism, — through what a course of misrepresentations of them she must have passed. Indeed, it could have been no otherwise. The whole land rung with the abuse of them that preceded and prepared for violence, and not a voice had spoken for the absent.

“Mr. Clay ought to have told me,” she said, “of such a man as Mr. Birney, living within thirty miles of him.” This was Judge Birney of Alabama, in poverty and exile in a free State for having emancipated his slaves, although surrounded by a young family dependent on him for education and support; and, what was far more a trial of faith and principle (as he, alas! afterwards found), he had joined the antislavery movement, to which he owed the happy impulse.

She was told the abolitionists were unsexing woman, so that good men found it necessary to republish in America good little English books on her appropriate moral sphere.

“But what is her appropriate moral sphere?”

“Why, certainly a special and different one from man’s.”

“But if so, she would have had a special and different Christ.”

“But, dear Miss Martineau, is it possible you think women have the same duties and rights as men?”

“I think their powers ought to settle that question.”

Circumstances coeval with the settlement of the country had been preparing it for that question, but it was Harriet Martineau who took the initiative in presenting it for a practical solution in the United States, by her conversation and example, seconding her writings.

Then, the abolitionists were “people of one idea.” “But you Americans,” she replied, “all seem to have a special mission. Is it not natural we should all have one, in accordance with our individual capacities? Some devote themselves respectively to temperance, education, peace, or the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts; why should not Freedom be the mission of others?” This made so wide an impression, that we became at length wearied with the echo of this saying about a “mission” Edition: current; Page: [263] among persons who still refused to let abolitionists have the benefit of it.

Once the conversation falling upon endurance, and what men might be called by a sense of duty to encounter in consequence of doing right, and what prospects the mind could be brought to dwell on with composure, she said, “I have often thought that the worst thing that could befall me would be to die of starvation on a doorstep; and (gleefully) I think I could bear it.”

Talking of the difficulties that beset Necessarianism as compared with the Boston Unitarian ideas, she said, “I find no difficulty so great as a God that did not hinder what happened to-day and does not know what is going to take place to-morrow.” Once when atheism was the subject of conversation, she was told there was but one avowed atheist in the State. “I wish there were a thousand,” she said; “for what depths of concealment and suffering the fact implies!”

This one avowed atheist, Abner Kneeland, was then under prosecution for blasphemy, for having declared in his newspaper, “The Investigator,” that he thought “the God of the Universalists, with all his moral attributes (aside from nature itself), a chimera of their own imagination.”

Harriet Martineau’s conversation with her friend, Mr. Ellis Gray Loring, on the subject of freedom of speech and of the press in connection with this case, resulted, on Mr. Kneeland’s subsequent conviction, in the preparation of a petition, signed by Dr. Channing and a hundred and sixty-seven others, all Christians, and some of them evangelical Christians, for the pardon of the offender.* This petition was rejected by the governor Edition: current; Page: [264] and council, but the end was not yet. Not only was it the last prosecution of a theological opinion in Massachusetts; it set in motion a demand for equal legal rights irrespective of theology; and what is popularly called “the Atheist Witness bill” — agitated from time to time in our Massachusetts Legislature for two-and-twenty years — passed both branches, to the statute-book, and was only prevented from formal record as a law, in accordance with the public conviction of its everlasting need, by the electioneering necessities of the moment.

At this time there was no discordance between herself and our Unitarians generally on the subject of a First Cause other than the approximation to the Orthodox world occasioned by her Necessarianism. Yet I think her mind must have begun to transcend their usual forms of thought. To one who spoke to her of the importance of sympathy with God she replied, “Yes! — for it is the love of truth.” “We must be true to our own consciences,” continued the first. “Yes, — but conviction is not truth.”

She was puzzled about our “harsh language,” as it was called by the tender-hearted country at large, that bore to look on torture and dare not look on truth. “Why don’t they prosecute you for defamation?” she said. “Because we don’t defame.” That then was not it; and she finally seemed to settle into the opinion that it was our bad taste that made the difficulty, — an unfortunate defect on our part to be deprecated as lessening the force of the idea. We were not prepared to make our defence on the score of taste. “Tastes differ,” to so proverbial an extent, that Lord Chesterfield forbade so rude a thing in society as finding fault with them. We only stated the fact that ours was the accepted mode of preaching of the vast majority of the clergy of the country, the evangelical custom, — not to say fashion; though to English Episcopacy and Unitarianism, and all who “never mention hell to ears polite,” it Edition: current; Page: [265] of course seemed to be removed from the category of profane swearing only by being couched in Biblical language. And though we loved the Hebrew sound of it, she might be allowed to find fault. But we refused to grant the same immunity to Andover and Princeton, whose mother tongue it was, without a scorching exposure of their hypocrisy.

“Now tell me how much of the ‘Liberator’ you really write?” said she, seeing I had defended it on both principle and expediency, and on the very grounds for which it was generally condemned. “One would think, to hear you, that there was but one duty in life, — rebuke.” “Exactly so,” I was about to say; “these are of the times when rebuke is ‘wisdom, holiness, goodness, justice, and truth.’ ” But something of elevated emotion in her look stopped me; and I only said, “I desire no further special conversation with you on this subject. I am sure of your determination to see and know all things for yourself, and of your determination to act rightly and justly in every emergency.” Again she had used the very words of the enemies of the cause, but with a spirit so foreign to the moral toadyism of Unitarian sentimentality and evangelical hypocrisy, that one could only hail it with satisfaction. The abolitionists had been reviled without exception for their sweeping, unmitigated censures, but always most unjustly. The blessing besought by the old Massachusetts divine had been vouchsafed to them, — “Lord, grant us thy crowning mercy to discriminate between things that differ.” By their fruits we knew men. Their words were merely their disguises at this time; and often plausible enough “to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect.”

I only added that I wished she knew Mr. Garrison, whose journal I had been defending as a means of the highest degree of excellence and adaptation in American affairs and character. I had no long conversation with her after. Previous to her accepting our invitation to attend the antislavery meeting of which she has given an account, she asked if the ground we had taken, of opposition to slavery, had cost us many friends? We said yes. “Remember not to be unjust, and say that they Edition: current; Page: [266] deserted you; for it is you who have deserted them. It is you who are changed. They remain the same.” It was very true; only men do not long remain the same under such circumstances, — they inevitably grow worse; and that she had opportunity to see afterwards, though the time was not yet.

We have seen what England was when she came into it; now let us look back to the condition of America when she entered it. It was during her first sojourn in Massachusetts, at the time such thoughts as these were revolving in her mind, that we made our first attempt to see Harriet Martineau. We too, with the rest, were drawn to meet her, whose way it had never been, as a family, to seek strangers of distinction, and who were now too busy with our antislavery conflict to have taken up an ordinary guest. But in this case our family elders encouraged us. Was she not of their own faith, — the “essential,” “unfolded,” “manifested” faith of the prize essays? Had she not established a claim on them, and so on us, by her letter to the deaf? Had she not created Cousin Marshall, and Letitia, and Ella of Garveloch, and Cassius of Demerara? And while the Tories had been taunting the English abolitionists, up to the very hour when dawn broke into the windows of Parliament upon their victory, with having done nothing all these forty years, was she not one of them? Her they encouraged us to seek, and her we determined to see. Chiefs of all parties and advocates of all schemes were thronging to her for sanction, and what should hinder us? They had enthroned her under the palm-tree (and even under the palmetto), and all our American Israel was trooping up to her for judgment, and why not we among the rest? Nay, I inwardly felt, why not we especially, of all the rest? for, being what her works proclaimed her to be, I knew our lives could not fail to be of one substance, nor our lot of being cast in together.

But the hearts of some misgave them on the way. “We are young,” we said, “and unknown.” “No matter,” we made answer to ourselves, with all the preoccupation of Sisera’s mother, “we understand her! and all these troops of homagers do not.” Here we were doubtless mistaken. We did but feel, in common with the rest, the lift and sway of the powerful nature Edition: current; Page: [267] that was passing by. We went, in the joy of our hearts, to meet it, forecasting the coming interview as we went.

“But the trumpet!” said one of the young girls of the band; “how shall we venture to speak to her through that?” And our ignorance and our imaginations of what we had never seen magnified it into an instrument of dreadful resonance, drawing every eye upon the speaker. But we were not in a state of mind to be daunted by trifles, and quickly gathered up our courage. “No matter how much noise it makes; we shall have altogether the advantage of others, for we have something to say. Only we have hold of the root of all American problems, — ‘we few, we happy few!’ Others will take the trumpet as she presents it, and in their confusion will fail to make themselves understood. (We had previously had minute accounts of the manner of her receptions, and how gray-headed statesmen lost their presence of mind as they took it from her hand.) ‘What did you observe?’ she will inquire. ‘I merely remarked that it was a very fine day.’ It will give no such uncertain sound when we take it in hand! ‘I said they are men-stealers!’ will bear repeating twice!”

Since the Vision of Alnaschar there had not been so clear a foreshadowing of what was not to come to pass. She was not at home: and Mrs. Tuckerman, her hostess for the day, told us that she would be able to see no more visitors till after her return from the South.

It was no freak of calling their elders names that, just before Harriet Martineau’s arrival, had unaccountably seized a set of well-bred young people of much hope and promise; no sudden fit of insanity, destroying their usefulness and blighting their prospects in life. A grander prospect was opening to them, and the most exalted uses. To a nation blindly wandering to no end, after blind guides, or deluded by deceivers, a leader had now arisen, — it was hoped in season to arouse the United States to a sense of their condition. They had been delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the service of slavery, and they neither knew nor felt the ruin and dishonour of submitting to such a tyranny. Under its corrupting influence the country had actually Edition: current; Page: [268] lost the sense of moral distinctions. The terms good and evil, right and wrong, sin and holiness, vice and virtue, no longer represented the original ideas when Garrison, the first to whom this fresh inspiration of freedom came, undertook to awaken in the people a feeling of guilt and danger. Now for the first time was heard, on the soil of the New World, an appeal to the higher and exclusively human instincts, — mightier than penalties and arms: —

“I determined to lift up, at every hazard, the standard of emancipation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty. That standard is now unfurled — till every chain be broken and every bondman set free! Let Southern oppressors tremble, — let their secret abettors tremble, — let their Northern apologists, — let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble!

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not a cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge not me to use moderation in a case like the present. I am in earnest, — I will not equivocate, — I will not excuse, — I will not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard.

“It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment, to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years, — not perniciously, but beneficially; not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that he enables me to disregard ‘the fear of man which bringeth a snare,’ and to speak his truth, in its simplicity and power.”

At first not more than a Spartan three hundred heard and heeded, — small force to battle for three millions, against the whole land on the other side, — but they did not shrink abashed in their insignificance from the magnitude of the undertaking, although its ultimate import loomed up brighter and Edition: current; Page: [269] broader every instant before their gaze, till it speedily took the grand proportions of the salvation of a world, — involved in the question of human freedom. All questions, all rights, all futurity, became visible in its radiance. These were strong hours in a land’s destiny, but not a doubt or fear perplexed them that came forward to give it shape. The intimate conviction of each one of them seemed to be,

“For this, amongst the rest, was I ordained!”

and they gave themselves to the work with a joyful disregard of the personal cost, which entirely took from their deed the character of sacrifice. They wrought their righteous will, and took the consequences. “One to a hundred thousand” (they were told), “you are mad to expect success.” “We should be worse than mad to doubt, for that one is in the right.” “Nobody else sees a chance of success for you.” “Nobody else knows what we are willing to pay for it.”

The work they had undertaken was to them not only an enterprise and an association: it was also a principle, a cause, a religion. Every heart and brain was under the charm of all the great thoughts and feelings that have ever stirred humanity. As they battled with the thousand shifty pretences men took to escape the truth and avoid doing justice to the slaves, it was to make an enemy and meet a calumny at every blow; and thus, amid church-craft and state-craft, and over all the crafty special defences of slavery, built up around it by a people it had utterly corrupted and subdued, the fight went on. France is logical, and England is compromising; but free, slaveholding America was both: and hence the keen scholastic strife, the energy of holy warfare, unknown in union in the day of Peter the Hermit, Abeillard and William de Champeaux. But it was no barren subtlety or mad crusade that occupied our minds. Though each was for himself in search of absolute truth and absolute right, yet all were as one in refusing longer to brook that broad gross insult to a Saviour-Christ, that outrage against the moral sense offered by the reigning public opinion of the land, — the justification of slaveholders as good Christians. They pronounced a Edition: current; Page: [270] slaveholder a blot upon Christianity, and condemning the American slave system as the vilest that ever saw the sun, they demanded that it should be immediately abolished. “But the nation is not ready.” “The slaves are ready. Every good man is ready.” “But the obstacles!” “There are none but your selfish injustice.” “But the preparation!” “The demand is the preparation; and the only preparation indispensable:” and they made it; — in every form of argument, appeal, entreaty, reproof, statistics, petition; through such a variety of instruments, all tuned to concert-pitch, as left nothing to be desired for the completeness of the harmony. They claimed for the slaves liberty and equality before the law. “You are amalgamationists.” They demanded the abolition, by the nation, of all slavery within its jurisdiction. “You are disunionists and incendiaries.” They demanded the withdrawal of all religious sanctions from the system. “You are infidels.” And the reverend and approved good masters of the South became furious and lawless, and the hollow hearts and cardinal sins of the North felt rebuked and outraged, and both took counsel together how they might destroy us out of the land, before we should succeed in implanting in it a hatred of slavery.

At this time it was that Harriet Martineau was telling her mother, and noting in her private journal, what she saw of the “theory and practice of society in America.” Among merchants speculating in Alabama lands, or involved by mortgages in the ownership of slaves; among planters, with their capital in cotton-raising and slave-breeding; among tender-spirited clergymen, enjoying the spaniel’s privileges in the midst of such; among politicians, gambling for the high offices which give the means to buy their tools with petty places; among manufacturers and land-owners, possessing wealth enough to make tools of rival sects by paying the heaviest proportion of the preaching-tax, — among these and such as these she was likely to find better theory than practice. The former can be learned in a day: the latter is less obvious. The rending antislavery battle then going on had for its object to show the world how the whole land was sown with invisible sharp instruments to wound whatever feet should press Edition: current; Page: [271] too near the political and religious machinery of despotism in America. It took years of severe conflict to carry these outworks and lay the springs of slavery bare.

Meanwhile, the very best men Harriet Martineau met, — whose natures should have instantly kindled at our call, — seized with misplaced modesty, were breathing a quieting sentimentalism over the country; while others, of hardier spirits, while they trampled down this true revival of religion, were setting in motion the idle machinery of sectarian “revivalism,” with strictest care to put nothing between its millstones to grind. The more compassionate, the more cunning, and the statistically given, were busy with that lie with circumstance, — the Colonization Society. It was difficult, indeed, to rouse such men to the burden and heat of so great a day. The curse of knowing better than they lived came upon them; and the few who laid the cause of liberty to heart were left to stand by it alone, and bide the brunt of every calumny that could be heaped on “ignorant and mischievous fanatics,” — “the vulgar and debased dregs of the land.”

And men who could have undeceived Harriet Martineau at every step, because they personally knew the honour and excellence of the persons thus maligned on account of their best qualities, — men who would themselves have been abolitionists but for the loss and glorious shame of the thing to which they were not equal, — were meanly mute when their silence endangered the lives of their best fellow-citizens: and when at length they spoke, it was to endanger them still more. The model statesman and scholar suggested their indictment at common law, and sold their rights of speech, and of the press, and of association, to his slaveholding dictators for a future senatorship and foreign embassy. The pattern saint authenticated the street calumny that the abolitionists were in favour of cruel vengeance on the part of the slaves. The leading jurist said law was not for the protection of abolitionists, — only for the safe guarding of slave-property. The model gentleman sneered at them as very low in the social scale, — “ancillary,” he thought, for he was too much a gentleman to call the ladies, his neighbours, servant-maids, Edition: current; Page: [272] — and he suffered himself to be driven stupidly with the rest into this disgrace, by infamous editors, hired to do the work of merchants whose Southern land-speculations and carrying-trade might be more or less productive as slavery was more or less firm in the market. And all the wealth, official station, literary prestige, religious authority, in short (to use a New England provincialism), “all the property and standing” of the country, rose up against the abolitionists. They thought of that strange, impressive utterance — satire at once and psalm — of David: “The mighty are gathered against me, — not for my transgression, nor for my sin.”

Harriet Martineau used to laugh at us Americans for our habit of beginning at the beginning in our talk. “I ask a question here,” she said, “and you begin at the creation and go on to the day of judgment.” But yet what we did in talk she always did in reality. She was, I think, the most whole-minded, large-minded, right-minded person I ever met in any country; the most capable of discerning the end from the beginning in human affairs; and hence her instinctive power — confiding and free from suspicion as her nature was — to discern halfness, untruth, and insufficiency in human character.

She had, I think, but one personal interview with Mr. Garrison (then unknown, except in an unfavourable manner, as a tenant of the Maryland state-prison, and as the “low criminal” on whose head a price of $5,000 had been set by the State of Georgia), while she was long the favoured guest and beloved friend of Dr. Channing, and the admired and honoured guest or associate of Mr. Clay and Judge Story, Mr. Webster and Mr. Everett and a hundred others, — the representative great men of America. But her mind carefully and surely discriminated between the good great man and the good men who were not great; between the grand, uncompromising spirit, working, giant-like, to turn the current of an evil age, and the bad great men of the hour, whether bold or timid, who did but float upon it to some selfish end.

Dr. Channing, between whom and Harriet Martineau a true friendship subsisted to the day of his death, was a good man, Edition: current; Page: [273] but not in any sense a great one. With benevolent intentions, he could not greatly help the nineteenth century, for he knew very little about it, — or indeed of any other. He had neither insight, courage, nor firmness. In his own church had sprung up a vigorous opposition to slavery, which he innocently, in so far as ignorantly, used the little strength he had to stay. He was touched by Brougham’s eloquent denial of the right of property in man, and he adopted the idea as a theme, but he dreaded any one who claimed, on behalf of the slaves, that their masters should instantly renounce that right of ownership; he was terror-stricken at the idea of calling on the whole American people to take counsel on so difficult and delicate a matter in antislavery associations; and above all he deprecated the admission of the coloured race to our ranks. He had been selected by a set of money-making men as their representative for piety, as Edward Everett was their representative gentleman and scholar, Judge Story their representative gentleman, jurist, and companion in social life, and Daniel Webster their representative statesman and advocate, looking after their business interests in Congress.

And herein lay the secret of these great American reputations. Not one of them was of power to have made his way against public opinion. The public acclamation that sustained them was not hero-worship, but self-adulation. “Surely” (it meant, being interpreted), “the vigorous money-making power is the greatest of all, and we ourselves as good as great preachers, orators, lawyers, and scholars; since they act according to our directions, and never transcend our convictions. These are our proxies; and while we drive them along before us in the sight of the world, we too are famous in their fame.”

Herein, too, lay the secret of the public rage when the fact appeared that the illustrious stranger — however drawn to one by a like conscientious piety, to another by similarity in social, scientific, or legislative powers, and to a third by appreciation of belles-lettres scholarship — had not found these men themselves illustrious; while she bore with the greatest composure to be laughed at for pointing out the despised youth Garrison as the great man of the age.

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It was a pleasure to see her honest, earnest abandonment of her mind to the power of evidence, and how patiently she would settle herself to listen to another side of a question of which she thought she had already seen enough to justify her conclusion; ready to go over again with the whole case as affected by the new element. You saw she had but one desire, — the fact: but one object, — the truth. “Is it so, or is it not so?” was the unmingled expression of her face while listening to the various testimony that came before her.

She possessed a singular mobility of countenance. It was simple, compound, or changeful, with the occasion, keeping exact pace with the movement of her thought. I recollect once reading to her a few verses I had written expressing the feelings of three hundred delegates of antislavery societies in the country towns of New England, for whose reception we could obtain no hall in Boston, their Mecca, their Jerusalem, “the city of their solemnities.” I have forgotten entirely the verses, but I remember the change of her face with each as I repeated them, as something extraordinary for sincerity and strength. But I was speaking of her impartiality. It was from experience that she wrote at that time her essay on Moral Independence — as one of them that “know what it is to rise in the morning with a strong persuasion of something, to be shaken before noon, to perceive a troublesome amount of evidence on the other side before night; . . . . who know what it is to mix alternately with the friends and foes of some institution, and have their sympathies engaged by each, till they begin to wonder if there are any bounds to the conflicting evidence which may be offered, any unity of principles in the case, or any power of judgment in themselves. They know that the only hope of rational and steadfast conviction lies in diligent study, patient thought, and a faithful comparison of new facts with old principles, — a process which few are able and fewer still are willing to carry out with perfect fidelity. . . . . If such be the weakness of the strongest, such the difficulties of the most resolute, what is authority? . . . . It is only by taking our stand on principle, keeping ourselves free to act untrammelled by authority, that we can Edition: current; Page: [275] retain any power of resolving and working as rational and responsible beings.

“Not only does individual peace depend on freedom from authority, but the very existence of society rests on individual rectitude.”*

In this essay she speaks of those who for various reasons forfeit their moral independence; “Those who are so overpowered by an idea of the greatness of man in the abstract that their own individuality shrinks, and they submit to authority under the idea of doing homage to humanity; . . . . those who relinquish it by moral perversion of some kind, whether called selfishness, timidity, or mistake as to the right objects of pursuit; . . . . those who fail for lack of nerve, taking pledges they know they shall forfeit, deny principles they know to be true, hide truths confided to them to be revealed, uphold institutions their Maker’s hand is pulling down, hold their peace when they should speak, and shut their eyes against the light, and all ‘because they cannot meet the questioning eye, or bear the pointing finger, or contemplate the petty instruments of man’s persecution’; . . . . those who uphold with clamor a barbarous institution, if it only keeps up a demand for their merchandise; . . . . the office-seekers who, in reptile degradation, prey upon the honours of society; . . . . those who act for fame, profaning with the breath of men the power that ought to be sanctified to the service of truth, putting their manhood up for sale, and actually begging a place in the great slave-market of society.”

Eloquent, beautiful, and true; capable of making the profoundest impression: but all this and more, covering their whole case, New England men could bear, at any time, of a writer or a preacher, and remain entirely unmoved, — nay, boast meanwhile, in virtue of having listened to it, that they were “as much antislavery as any body.”

Harriet Martineau was soon to learn what it was they would not bear.

Although it seemed to us at that time — what it really was — Edition: current; Page: [276] the greatest possible privilege to serve the antislavery cause, we should have shrunk as from dishonour from dragging any one unwittingly into its service; and in offering to Harriet Martineau every opportunity for observation and information, it never darkened my mind that it would bring her into the same position of danger and difficulty with ourselves, to make use of them. I thought her immense personal popularity would be her protection in obtaining personal knowledge of the crisis, even at an antislavery meeting. I wished her to see, that she might be able to say in England, after her return, that the abolitionists, though few in number, were a fair specimen of all classes and conditions of Americans; and I thought she might do so safely. I was mistaken. My country was even more corrupted by slavery than I had thought. I did not know what the paper contained that was given her to read at the antislavery meeting which she has described, at the house of Mr. Francis Jackson, but I never saw severer pain (with a touch of displeasure too) on any human countenance than was then expressed for a moment by hers; and once more I saw that there are two different hours of righteous witness for the truth: one glad and joyful like our own, and one like His who said, “If it be possible, let this cup pass.”

It was whispered round the room that this was a request on the part of Mr. Loring that Miss Martineau would address the meeting. I remembered words of hers to which I had listened in a previous conversation, — “The martyr’s real trial is the doubt whether he is right,” — and I rejoiced to see that hers was not that trial. It was but a moment, and she was ready, with no trace of pain or displeasure on her face. She spoke with unequalled simplicity and dignity; and the few words she uttered conveyed the grounds of that momentary look of reproach (which, if legitimate, she never afterwards felt or made), and marked the limitations of her testimony to the exact degree of her feeling and knowledge.

“I have been requested by a friend present to say something, if only a word, to express my sympathy in the objects of this meeting. I had supposed that my presence here would be understood as showing Edition: current; Page: [277] my sympathy with you. But, as I am requested to speak, I will say what I have said through the whole South, in every family where I have been, that I consider slavery as inconsistent with the law of God, and as incompatible with the course of his providence. I should certainly say no less at the North than at the South concerning this utter abomination; and I now declare that in your principles I fully agree.”

A sublimer act of self-renunciation for the sake of right it had never been my happiness to witness; for never have I seen, before or since, one who had so much to renounce. I had not thought to afford occasion for it, nor did I suppose my friend Mr. Loring to have acted in foreknowledge of the immediate consequences to herself. But this I know, that one circumstanced as Harriet Martineau then was may well bless the chance and thank the instrument that makes way for dealing so effectual and heroic a blow for a land’s redemption. She took her life in her hand and deliberately cast it from her into coming time, and the nobility of the deed will give light to all in need of the strength of a bright example forever!

The country was again in arms, and against her as an individual. Abuse was exhausted. The organ of the Boston self-styled aristocracy, the “Daily Advertiser,” “the respectable daily,” as it was then for distinction’s sake called, heading the vulgar pack. A harder thing to bear was the grief of the timid good at the immediate consequences of an action whose scope and nature they no more comprehended than the born blind the day; while the obtrusive and officious betrayed, by their anxiety to nullify her testimony, their own opposition to the cause.

Very few beyond the thin ranks of the abolitionists ventured to approve, and efforts were made to persuade her that they too were regretting the step she had taken. Of these few the excellent Stephen Clarendon Phillips, who had hung her portrait, painted for the place, at his home in Salem, when she bade that town farewell, wrote thus to her from Philadelphia, on his way from Washington, where he had left the question of slavery agitating Congress through all its ranks: —

Edition: current; Page: [278]

We shall have an agitating session, but what of that? Do you not already understand enough of our institutions to know that excitement is often salutary, and may always be rendered so? Let there be free discussion; give us the power of truth and moral courage, just as much as is wanted, and the more excitement the better. I have no fears from bringing the slavery question into Congress; my only fears are from its being kept out. The sooner the opposite opinions can meet each other the better. Till then, truth cannot vanquish error. But the question cannot be long kept out. The votes for laying upon the table, and for the previous question, will grow weaker and weaker. The project of rejecting petitions expired in its first attempt to breathe. Petitions will crowd in upon each other, knocking for admission, and presently they will be heard, discussed, and granted. I care not if it be the work of years. I rejoice that I have lived to see the work commenced. . . . .

I meant to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and to have told you what I thought about your speech. But it is of no consequence. I believe that you are fulfilling your mission. Is that enough? May I not hear from you very shortly? Believe me sincerely yours,

S. C. PHILLIPS.

The Rev. Ephraim Peabody, of whom at his death, twenty years after, it was told in the journals of the succeeding day, as his greatest distinction, that he was “the friend of Harriet Martineau,” wrote to her thus from his sick-bed in New Orleans, weighed down by thoughts of the opposition of his fellow-Christians every where: —

Ephraim Peabody

Peabody, Ephraim

February 17, 1834

New Orleans

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

New Orleans,

February 17, 1834

.

My dear Miss Martineau, —

I received your letter just as I was starting South, and I pray that sickness may never make you know the worth of such a letter, nor of your kind acts and words at Watertown. You warn me not to answer your letter. — It was kindly done; but the truth is, that in the feverish wakefulness of long nights and days too I have written in thought more than a hundred letters to you, and I wish (and shall I not?) to write one, on paper, to say how large a place you fill in my mind and in my heart; how much I would give for the sound of your voice, — and that not so much for the wisdom or beauty of what you might say, but for the same reason that in this city of strangers my wife’s voice or sister’s would be music from heaven, because I love them. I know you will Edition: current; Page: [279] pardon me for saying this, as it is very likely the last time I may speak or write to you. I wish to write also to say that the little and contemptible newspaper persecution you were subjected to for speaking your thoughts of abolition has made me think of the subject till all my sympathies, and to a very great extent my judgment, is with the abolitionists, — entirely so, if Dr. Channing is one. I know you acted from a good conscience, and conscience is “a strong-siding champion,” that needs not the aid of others; but if others have criticised what you did in attending an abolition meeting, I also may say that, though at that time* my opinions were very different from yours, I could not but from the bottom of my soul honour you for what you did. . . . . May God bless you and prosper you; it is the prayer of your friend,

EPHRAIM PEABODY.

Others there were who expressed, like Nicodemus, by night, the feelings it would have cost too much to proclaim by day.

I would here fain group together the words of glowing charactery from a hundred strong minds and hearts, each of so different a strain that their combination would show better than the best words of the most graphic description the impression this great heart made while it dwelt among them. A few, at least, I may preserve.

Of us, though not among us, he who had years before made himself first known to the world as of all things best judge of bravery and truth, — Emerson, — now approved himself a judge once more. “Joy,” he said, “that you exist. Honour to your spirit, which is so true and brave.”

Mary Ware, the last of that fine race of New England women that was true to New England’s noble old standard of womanly excellence before the proclamation of a nobler, wrote thus: —

“I know not how to be grateful enough that I have known you. That you have given us pleasure you cannot but know; but you cannot know how much good you have also done us.”

Dr. Follen, the patriot hero of Germany, the student, the poet, the philosopher, the victim of the Holy Alliance, the Christian teacher, the American abolitionist, and the victim of Edition: current; Page: [280] American despotism, had undergone an experience which enabled him to appreciate that of Harriet Martineau. He was one of those rare great spirits that find no alternative at the call of a great cause but obedience. He was the only European exile of that vintage who declined to prosper as an American by flattering the nation’s sin, — so rare is the virtue that can pour out its life-blood twice. While suffering proscription from the land of his birth, he identified himself with Garrison among the earliest, and suffered, with the rest, a fresh proscription from the land of his love and his adoption. When the venal journal of Boston corruption was used to persecute and insult Harriet Martineau as the friend of freedom and the friend of the slaves’ only advocates, as the practical defender of the imperilled right of speech and of association, he saw, though without help from the example of his friend, Dr. Channing, that it is no sin against the freedom of the press instantly to cease to support a tool of slavery. His charming American wife, no less devoted to the cause than himself, strove, like him, to turn the tide of malediction, but in vain.

Their friend’s popularity among the outraged ladies and gentlemen was gone.

This is Dr. Follen’s letter to her on that strange occasion, when the most highly bred nation on earth, in its treatment of women, rose up as one man to insult and injure the most distinguished woman of another land for an act that would have saved it from the curse of slavery if any one act could.

C. Follen

Follen, C.

November 30, 1835

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

EXTRACT OF LETTER FROM DR. FOLLEN TO H. MARTINEAU.

November 30, 1835

.

. . . . You are now experiencing what cannot be new to you, though you may not have met with it in this country: how little in times of trial we can rely on those whose affection for us is grounded on other things than our principles; who cannot bear to hear any evil spoken against us; who fear our influence may be impaired by an ill-timed assertion of unpopular truth, &c.! Those principles in which we live and move and have our being, though as old as the creation of man, are still a new doctrine, the elements of a new covenant, Edition: current; Page: [281] even in civilized, republican, Christian America. They are as the bread and wine of the altar, to which all are invited, but of which few partake, because they dread to sign in their own hearts the pledge of truth which may have to be redeemed by martyrdom. For is it not true that those who maintain that all men have an innate divine right to all the means of improvement and happiness within the reach of man, and that all have a corresponding divine obligation to claim that innate right for each human being, are either shunned with silent condemnation as abolitionists, democrats, agrarians, or hailed with the cries of “Crucify! Crucify!” as fanatics and incendiaries? But if the world separate itself from us, it leads us to find a world in ourselves and in each other; not to form a new aristocracy of a somewhat higher stamp, but to unite our strength to break down every wall of our partition that interferes with man and our fellowman.

Our meeting with you, dear Harriet, was a blessed recognition, rather than a new acquaintance; our friendship had a pre-existence in kindred principles. Were it otherwise, I should tenderly regret that your late conscientious “indiscretion” should have brought upon you censure, and acquainted you with the weight and measure of many professions and sentiments. But you have “settled your points and acted thereupon,” and that is sufficient to compensate you for all the world can give and take away. . . . .

Yours very truly,

C. FOLLEN.

We were never able to perceive a shadow of dissatisfaction or impatience under all this outcry and clamour; yet she was one who delighted in public sympathy, and desired approbation as much as she disliked flattery and the homage of selfishness. All the more serious inconvenience of the derangement of her travelling plans, by the risk of life incurred if after this she attempted to carry them out, with the continual disquiet of a threatening danger, — all were borne with a perfect composure.

Dr. Follen, her most intimate American friend of that time, who knew her by parity of greatness as none other could, said she was like Joan of Arc; and so indeed she was, by a thousand traits of resemblance. There was the same great public spirit, with the same strong domestic affections and skill in all domestic arts, yet unsustained by family appreciation. There was the Edition: current; Page: [282] same keen political sagacity, with the same infantine candour and simplicity that historians tell of, in every look and gesture. There was the same obedience to her “voices,” the dictates of her combined faculties personified by a reverential imagination, in conformity with the teachings of the time, with the same initiatory anguish in view of the consequences of obedience; and with a final sense of so great a joy in that obedience as in like manner to wish the interior monitor might never cease to speak. She was attended, too, in like manner, by the adoration of the many and the hatred of the few; and the sign she gave of her mission was the same, — always to raise the siege. There was in her nature the same sensitiveness to suffering, and the same inability to avoid it by unfaithfulness. There was the same bravery in conflict, the same avoidance of controversy,* the same tenderness to the vanquished. There was the same rare unconsciousness which can only accompany that genius in action which is an inspiration of the heart; and there was the same power of sacred companionship —

“Holy amid the knighthood of the land” —

with all, of whatever sect or sex or race or nation, to whom the welfare of mankind was dear. And while she was thus unconsciously informing, enlightening, and, so to speak, inspiring those to whom real interchange of thought and communion of heart was a new thing, — unconscious of mere feature, they felt a presence like that of the Maid of Orleans, radiant with joy and fame.

It fell often to my lot in those days to defend the right of woman to do whatever good she could; and I used, in speaking of woman as she should be, the words of Beattie when he characterizes Scotland, —

“Zealous yet modest, innocent though free,

Patient of toil, serene amidst alarms,

Inflexible in faith.”

Edition: current; Page: [283]

The words exactly described Harriet Martineau.

The time of her departure was now at hand, and the whole country awaited anxiously her next words from the other shore. For ourselves, our uncertainties were over. The mission of her life to the United States of America had begun; and with her, words are nothing distinct from life. The symphony predicts the coming strain.

With all the confidence we felt in knowing her so well, we yet knew her with so little personality that we could not, like others, follow her to the last with blessing and adieu. We could but say in our own hearts, as she departed, “Farewell, steadfast-hearted one, — so wise, so tender, so simple, grand, and true!”

And we turned to meet the coming battle with a loftier joy.

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CONSEQUENCES OF FOREIGN LIFE, — WITHOUT.

“But when one is attempting noble things, it is surely noble also to suffer whatever may befall us to suffer.”

— Phædrus.

Warned by her saying about beginning at the creation and going on to the day of judgment, I am not going to anticipate the final consequences of Harriet Martineau’s American life. The ultimate rehabilitation of a race and the redemption of a continent are events in which these after times are tracing distinctly her influence as one important link in the chain of causes still producing happy effects. I have only to relate the consequences to herself, and show the impression she made on her contemporaries.

It seldom happens that men reap precisely what they expect from any carefully planned course. Harriet Martineau’s American harvest was certainly to her an unexpected one. She had merely hoped to gather seed for English sowing, — to scatter in her own land those principles of justice and mercy to the least favoured classes which ours was thought to have discovered; and she found herself obliged, by her allegiance to all that is just and merciful, to put her hand to the breaking of our stubborn clods, for the implanting of the common principles of mercy and justice to a sixth part of our whole population, composing a class utterly overlooked except in the estimate of property, or in the scramble for office, when planters must be propitiated in proportion to the amount of their human stock.

Such an experience as hers in America, besides being incalculably blessed to our people, was influential on all her after life. Edition: current; Page: [286] In the first place, it could not but greatly modify all the opinions she at first formed, when she took our prominent Americans on trust, for what they seemed to be, as travellers always naturally do.

She said, in the frankness of her admiration of the American celebrities as she first saw them, — men of parts, standing tall upon the institutions placed for them, like pedestals, by their great fathers, — “It is such a substantial comfort to find that the American great men are great men.” But the same experience that deprived her of so comforting a persuasion gave her also to know that (to use the Hebrew Scripture, which is as the mother tongue of the American people) “the Lord did not lack a man to stand before him,” although those whom the land called its great ones were so manifestly unequal to the emergency. With the exception of the Rev. S. J. May, and those she has named in a previous volume, she was in like manner disappointed in the Unitarian ministry. The first year, her journal says of such: “They seem superior men.” “They all seem like fathers and brothers.” “They take such broad ground, not preaching against specific sins, but enunciating great principles!” Not the least of the great benefits of her life among us was to show by its contrast with theirs the unmeaning character of the inanities which these fathers and brothers were in the habit of uttering, with a tender, laborious emphasis which they called “earnestness,” at a moment when an earnest man’s conscience would have flown in his face at such a paltering with manly duty. But the observing world, translating these pulpit manœuvres into the language of the corrupt of old time, — “put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests’ offices, that I may have a piece of bread,” — never failed, while it left their few high-minded brethren to starve, to throw them the morsel they had so richly merited. They compelled Harriet Martineau to recognize in them at last, not the emulators of the mobbed and exiled Priestley, not the peers of the Synod of Ulster, who “loved the light of truth more than the praise of men,” not the Christians of the New Testament stock, whom the truth had made free, but, in the newer testamentary phrase of the Edition: current; Page: [287] South, “the slaves of the church and congregation.” The nobler Unitarians never ceased to feel the direct influences of her spirit of benevolence and activity. A Channing was informed and stirred by it to stay for a short time the enslavement of Texas: — the South mistakenly thought his wealthy townsmen and parishioners — their fellow-gamblers for place and profit — were crowding behind him. A Furness came far in advance of the cowardly ranks of American Unitarianism, into practical fellowship with the American abolitionists; but the vast majority of those she met she was obliged to leave as she found them, and their last state was worse than their first.

Harriet Martineau has been sometimes called dogmatic and opiniated by incompetent acquaintances and opposition politicians, in both countries; but I think it would be difficult to cite an instance where her preconceived opinions, however warmly cherished (as her high ideas of prominent Americans certainly were), did not immediately yield to facts. Pride of opinion she had not: it was clearness of sight and consequent strength of conviction. But till insight and experience came to justify the conclusions of sight, she held them subject to correction, with a readiness to renounce error that I have never seen equalled.

A clear vision of what is fatal to humanity, like a view of the fabled basilisk, is very dangerous to them that obtain it; but it is a sight worth all the risk as a preparation for future service.

Full of mingled hope and anxiety for the country whose interests she had so truly made her own, somewhat worn by all the risks, responsibilities, and fatigues of what she had undergone in this new stage of her progress, distressed by its many revelations and pained by its many partings, and, notwithstanding all, furnished with the humming-bird’s nest for the little Maria, she reached her family in safety before the end of the month of August, 1836.

As the scenes and sayings and doings and personages began to settle into their true perspective in her mind, and while she went over with her home friends the masses of information she had accumulated, separating what stood the two years’ experience from what had fallen, she began to feel herself competent to write the Edition: current; Page: [288] American book she had been so many times questioned about, and so often had doubted whether she should ever feel qualified to give to the world.

“Society in America” is not only by far the best book of travels in that country, in the judgment of the best qualified Americans and Englishmen, but it must needs remain of permanent value as a picture of the United States towards the middle of the nineteenth century. Painted at a moment when the land dared neither to see nor to know itself, and when ordinary travellers — whose knowledge and vision is of course limited by that of their surroundings — walked as blindly with the nation in the road to its destruction as the hosts of Sennacherib against Israel, it is the only existing “portrait of the times” of any sufficient degree of completeness, and must, as such, become more and more valuable with the passage of time. Her own recent valuation of it, in view of its American metaphysical foundation and its essay-like style, does not touch this estimate. Its fairness, its largeness and accuracy, the truth and beauty of its impartial reprehension of all that was bad and its sympathetic admiration of all that was good, are not only universally acknowledged among intellectual Americans at the present time, but they were so at the very period of publication, when moral opposition was at its hottest. Hostile as these critics were, and able as they will be seen, through their madness of the hour, to have been, there is scarcely one of them (except the mouthpieces of Philadelphia fashion and Boston trade and manufactures, collectively called “property and standing”) who did not afterwards, like Balaam rising on Zophim to curse, find himself constrained altogether to bless three times over.

Those old newspapers and reviews, yellow and dusty with years (records of a hot moral battle of which so many of the ranks are dead and so many more buried out of sight and past resurrection by their proslavery course at that time) bring to mind the melting away of the embattled foes of Israel before the invisible powers that stood across their path.

They are all gone, — the Websters, the Everetts, and the Clays; the mayors of cities that presided at such enormous gatherings as Edition: current; Page: [289] that in Faneuil Hall, convoked at the demand of the governors of Southern States by fifteen hundred of the leading gentlemen of Boston, to guarantee slavery against the abolitionists. It was to oblige the South that these outrages and those of the newspapers were perpetrated, which I find in the great folio collection now under my hand.

The following letter gives Harriet Martineau’s state of mind on the reception of her book in England: —

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

LETTER TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

“When I was just beginning my book some Quaker acquaintances of ours introduced George Thompson to my married elder sister, with the express design of having him and me brought together, in order that he might keep me up to my resolution on the slavery question. My sister very properly refused to introduce any disturbing influence into my mind on an occasion which she knew was considered by me as one of the most solemn of my life. She knew that my testimony would lose half its value if there was the least colour for supposing that I had given it under dictation or stimulus from without. So I have not seen Mr. Thompson. All alone and in the religious quiet of my study it has been written, and in it you have the reflection of my very soul; as for my expectations from it, I am ashamed of them already. I thought the book would ruin me; and this thought was confirmed by the importunity which has been used to prevail upon me to keep back some things which it was supposed I might say. I kept back nothing which it was in my heart to say. The book has been out only ten days, and its success seems to be quite complete. It has received the warmest welcome from those whom I think the most valuable part of our society, and a generous construction from the timid, second-rate people. All seem to trust me, and do me justice even when they most differ from me. My hopes are therefore strong that I have not been working for you in vain. I do not think I should have had one dark hour if I had failed to help you and had ruined myself; but I own that my heart is very light at this conclusion of the greatest affair I was ever engaged in. Not that it is yet concluded here, and I shall be some time yet in hearing from your side of the water. I know that the stings will come when the honey is all had; but whatever happens, dear friend, do not feel one moment’s concern for Edition: current; Page: [290] me. Let us work on, and trust each other for bearing as well as doing. — Thank you for all the interesting things you have sent me. I do not like to delay writing till I have read them, for I think you will consider the good reception of my book good news.”

Good news indeed! The book reached George Thompson as he was sealing a letter to America of this same date. The letter lay on the table while he read, and it reached the American friends with this exclamation written round the seal, “Well done, Harriet!”

We had none of us doubted that it would be so. In proportion to the satisfaction of the abolitionists was the discomfiture of her slaveholding friends. A storm of disapprobation came from that quarter quite sufficient to nullify any undue self-esteem which their previous enthusiasm of affection for her might well have excited.

It will be easier to learn how America received this true presentment, from the aforesaid heap of reviews and newspapers, than in any other way; and the colour of Philadelphia fashion may be first learned, by giving precedence to the “American Quarterly Review,” — whig in politics, orthodox in religion, — which reflected the opinions of its patrons in an article of some thirty pages. After asserting that Miss Martineau had declared in the most unequivocal terms that she did not mean to write, while a part of her book was actually ready for the publisher before she left the country, (!) the reviewer goes on thus: —

“No stranger since the days of Lafayette was more cordially entertained, — the more fools we for our easiness of access! — and Miss Martineau adds another to the list of her spiteful predecessors. This work of hers makes us quits, as the children say, and we shall therefore imitate her freedom of remark. The book has a ready sale in these dull times, — duller, perhaps, to booksellers than to any other class. They at least should thank her for this diversion in their favour. She will hear from us more than once; for she cuts right and left, sparing none but abolitionists and negroes.”

After several pages of extremely low abuse of Miss Martineau for being deaf, and for having spoken of the food of the country, Edition: current; Page: [291] the reviewer proceeds to speak of “that unwomanly act of hers, — the delivery of a speech at an abolition meeting.”

“The consequences of this made her put gall in her ink, and raised that unjust, imbecile, and untrue statement when speaking of Mr. Everett’s oration to the ‘handful,’ or small flock, in the field. As she could not by any possibility hear what he said, she must have been indebted to some of Mr. Everett’s malignant political opponents for the subject-matter of the discourse, who must have insinuated that ‘Mr. Everett was an anti-abolitionist and anti-amalgamationist, an anti-Malthusian, and an anti-half-and-half-woman-man.’ It was to this that Mr. Everett owes the honourable notice that this Malthusian lady took of him. The abuse has certainly rendered him more conspicuous, but in a way which Miss Martineau never conjectured nor intended; she would have consigned him to silence and oblivion rather than have added to his popularity. We have not many to look up to in cases of extremity, but when we find such a man as Everett expressing his opinions honestly, even to the discomfiture of a woman, — a circumstance which is more distasteful to an American gentleman than anything which could occur, — we know to whom we can resort if the evil theme of sudden emancipation should ever be gravely discussed.”

It is well to note, for the better comprehension of this, that those “opinions” Mr. Everett expressed in those times to the discomfiture of women were the ones which obliged them to send their children from their houses for safety when threatened with mob-violence; which subjected them to showers of stones in the streets of their own city; which filled those streets with a mob of his friends and supporters when women said slavery was a sin, while he declared from the Senate that he was ready to “buckle on his knapsack” to defend it, and suggested from the governor’s chair, to a community ready to lynch the abolitionists, a resort to indictment at common law as sufficient to convict them, while the Southern gentlemen were demanding special legislation by which to crush them, and the Philadelphia gentlemen pledging him their support for any appointment they could influence, as one trustworthy in his allegiance to Southern interests.

After going on to reproach Miss Martineau with her “robust Edition: current; Page: [292] health and tough nerves,” with “being able to race through the country with the frame of a moss-trooper for toughness of muscles and wiriness of frame, with being able to wade through a stream and sit in her wet clothes without fear of disastrous consequences, and overcoming difficulties which the stoutest male travellers considered almost insurmountable, the reviewer proceeds: —

“We do not object to Miss Martineau’s health. We wish every woman on earth could boast of such hardiness. But we do object to such scamperings over strange lands for the purpose of procuring materials for a book which is to vilify the very people who give her the freedom of the country.”

Then follows much reprobation of Miss Martineau’s “cruelty” and “disrespect.”

“She sneers at the metaphysics of the Boston women, and speaks disparagingly of their talent; shows her malignant feelings by saying that there exists a whine and a twang in the voices of American women, — and that in the very district where she happened to be on the most cordial and intimate footing with some of its inhabitants. . . . . How she vents her malignant and bitter feelings against all who have shown her hospitalities, and treated her with such marked respect and kindness! . . . . How could any but a heartless and cold-blooded being finish off her anecdote against duelling by saying of the young man of nineteen, whose family decided that he should accept a challenge, ‘that a lesson of low selfishness and moral cowardice was thus impressed upon him by the guardians of his youth, and the society in which he lives has seen the strongest testimony to false principles borne by two of its most respected members’! . . . . We protest against the hateful practice of duelling. It is not to extenuate that offence that we condemn this woman. It is to show how she vents her bitter and malignant feelings toward all who have shown her courtesies and hospitalities. She well knew that the eminent families of any one State are known to the whole Union. Every person in the United States who reads her book will know to whom she alludes; and to have an affair, now consigned to oblivion, ripped up with a harsh hand, for no earthly purpose but to inflict a sting upon the hearts of the parents, is so great an insult to civilized feelings, that all who read will shrink from the Edition: current; Page: [293] hand that penned it. She might deem herself called upon to reprobate duelling, and describe its horrible consequences; but to point out the parties almost by name, and to give such an offensive personal turn to her remarks, deserves the severest reprobation.”

This last paragraph illustrates the condition of American morals at that period. The reserve on the subject of slavery which mingled shame and good faith had compelled at the North on the adoption of the Constitution, and which a continually strengthening claim of self-interest more and more increased, ended in subverting the religious and political principles under which the country had existed previous to the Revolution; and men with the Bible in one hand and the Declaration of Independence in the other sold slaves to raise money to evangelize the Hindoos and to send standards to the Poles. Common-sense was considered madness when it noticed these inconsistencies which had almost reduced the nation to moral idiocy, and yet men had the instinct left to reckon with the difficulty under any name but the right one. The word slavery, through this whole Review article, is almost as carefully avoided as it was in the Constitution of the United States.

An immense effort was at this time being made to settle the case of slavery on general principles. Dr. Channing was triumphantly dragged into this field of ethical distinctions, and the work to be done in the slaveholders’ behalf was to separate the sinner from his act. Because no man can judge another’s heart or accurately proportion his punishment, it was claimed that, though slaveholding was a sin, the slaveholder was not necessarily a sinner. These were the most advanced moralists; for the bulk of the Northern money-making metaphysicians claimed that slavery was only an evil, while the Southern money-making theologians had already received the hint from statesmen to claim it as an unmingled good. The average of opinion stood thus: that though “slavery in the abstract” (as it was the fashion scrupulously to say) ought not to be justified, yet slavery in the actuality ought not to be condemned. It was a national calamity (to be borne as such with resignation), but not an individual sin, to be repented of and forsaken. This is the principle or Edition: current; Page: [294] problem the American Quarterly was dealing with under the name of duelling, being straitened by the times in its vocabulary.

The sight of moral methods that went straight through all these niceties, as through cobwebs, to the work of removing the evil by awakening to the nature of the wrong, always stimulated the Americans to frenzy.

It goes on to say: —

“Does a woman of circumscribed education and recluse habits feel herself competent to teach a whole nation, — a nation that did not think the wisest and the greatest in her land capable of giving them sound instruction? Did we not separate ourselves from them because we felt in advance of them? Did we not show ourselves superior, in physical strength and moral strength? And up to this moment have we not outstripped them in wholesome laws and in many of the arts? Until their demoralizing Malthusian and agrarian principles infected our land, introduced here by these itinerant lepers, were we not prosperous beyond example? Does this poor flimsy tool of a nest of poisonous radicals suppose we are to look upon the impertinences of her pen as a standard by which we are to regulate ourselves? . . . .

“We must pass to other portions of her precious patchwork, — for patchwork it may be called, — as every one will perceive at once that the arrangement of her work into chapters and sections is a mere sham. The theme she has chosen, to be sure, has a beginning, middle, and end; Aristotle himself could not have objected to it on this score. The beginning is agrarianism, abolition, amalgamation, Malthusianism, and radicalism, with a strong dash of egg-and-milk-ism; the middle, ditto, with a still stronger mixture of humbugism; and the end, ditto, with a compound of conceit and maudlinism which surpasses all that has gone before it.”

After a great deal of personality about her English friend Lord Durham, not only as a “deep, double-dyed radical,” but “to let her know about his temper, — his morose temper, — not so morose as exciting and uncomplying, nay, not so morose, exciting, and uncomplying as harsh and passionate,” and her American friend Dr. Follen, as “eating the bread of this people for seven years,” and yet not having disabused the “poor insolent foolish woman;” the Quarterly proceeds to call her many names on account of her visiting the prisons. “Conceit and impertinence,” “nauseous exposure,” “finding satisfaction in coming Edition: current; Page: [295] in contact with the most foul and detestable of criminals,” are its gentlest words. It goes on thus: —

“We do not believe that another woman could be found, who, out of mere curiosity, — which any man was as capable of exercising if she wanted information, — would choose to come in contact with such ruffians. If prisons were conducted as they used to be in the days of Howard or Mrs. Fry, a woman might be found who would step out of the sphere of her sex and administer relief to that ‘great amount of suffering’ which economists always talk about. But that a woman out of mere Malthusian curiosity should pollute her person and her trumpet by the breathings of the depraved of humanity, and merely for the purpose of asking a foolish question to which she might be sure of getting a lying answer, is one of the most outrageous insults her sex has ever received.”

To her suggestions about the care of the physical, moral, and mental health of the prisoners by instruction and sympathy the Review remarks: —

“It is in vain that we check our indignation at the revelations of such a crude and mischievous mind. It is in vain to say it is but idle dreaming and should pass unnoticed. We cannot do it; we must speak, and in the strongest terms that propriety will admit. We must warn our readers to consider this woman’s advice as mischievous and pernicious in the highest degree.”

She is reproached also with having given “their first lessons of rebellion to wholesome restraint to many a female servant and underling,” and with having stimulated young men who deprecated the tyranny of a moneyed mob by approbation when they “proposed to show a cold front to the insolent and powerful rich men of the country.” This is an allusion to Charles Sumner and others of his young contemporaries, — friends and admirers of Harriet Martineau.

“If there were really such a young man, we should say he would be very much ashamed of such whining cant when he comes to have a few dollars in his pocket. Poor young men, with a slender stock of sense, are very apt to hate the rich; but if it so chance that they ever get rich themselves, they are the first to assist in quieting such busybodies as Thompson and Martineau. It was by a hard struggle, Edition: current; Page: [296] pledging our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour, that we succeeded in binding the States to the close union which now exists, and the pledge remains in full force still; we are not about to sit quietly down and see a few turbulent, needy foreigners, — bad subjects at home and impertinent visitors abroad, — and a few of the discontented feeble-minded of our country, sow the seeds of disunion, without giving them a rough shake or two to bring them to their senses. But we should never have done, if we were to touch at every point on which this Malthusian butterfly, — no, dragon-fly, has alighted.”

This allusion to “rough shakes,” in order to account for past mobocratic violence, was a threat of it for the future.

How such an article as this could obtain publication awakens fresh astonishment after the passing away of the first amazement at the fact that such an article could have been written.

These are not things that a man would utter who had any thing else to say. They reveal the impeccability of Harriet Martineau’s work in its general scope and bearing and execution. They can only be accounted for by stating how near Philadelphia was to the slave States in space, and how identical in spirit. And this was a grave American review of forty years ago, which in its normal state, the year before, had expressed itself on the appearance of her two volumes of Miscellanies as follows: —

“A comprehension of the principle of social responsibility is the great and rare merit of Miss Martineau’s writings, reappearing everywhere in them, and always bringing with it an eloquence of humanity which rejoices the heart. It is this which gives the glowing spirit to the essays on Sir Walter Scott, at the commencement of the first volume. This also gives their beauty to the Sabbath Musings, which in their expression of this principle and feeling stand quite alone and peculiar among devotional papers.

“In no place in these volumes, however, does she do herself more justice than in the noble essay on Moral Independence.

“That the principle of social responsibility is struggling for expression in political events is evident from the revolutions in Europe and America; the reform of the English Parliament; the struggles of Ireland for equality with England; of the Greeks for independence of the Sultan; of the Poles for freedom from Russian tyranny. . . . .

“We do not happen to agree with Miss Martineau in all her principles of political economy: on one of them we would make open war. Edition: current; Page: [297] But we cannot be insensible to the wonderful talent she has shown in her series of Illustrations; to the glow of moral life and beauty she has shed over those sad tales which show the baneful effect of human errors in legislation; and to the strong-voiced and deeply breathing humanity which pervades them all.”

Glancing over the surpassing beauty of the Illustrations as works of art, and confirming Miss Martineau’s idea of the importance of political economy as a branch of moral science, the Review goes on to the importance of literature in awakening new life and purpose in the present age; and quotes Miss Martineau’s thought in the “Scott papers”: —

“ ‘The grandest manifestations of passion remain to be displayed; the finest elements of the poetry of human emotion are yet uncombined; the most various dramatic exhibition of events and characters is yet unwrought, for there has yet been no recorder of the poor.’

“In this new literature of the people Miss Martineau takes a high rank. Inspired with the finest affections of a woman, and taking her stand on all in human nature and the counsels of God which her affections reveal, her clear understanding gives her wide and true views of social relations and duties.”

Two of the essays — one on the agency of feelings in the formation of habits and one on the agency of habits in the regeneration of feelings — are particularly commended as the most valuable in the book for practical wisdom, and the Review commends them especially to young women, because the question between principle and feeling is very practically considered and satisfactorily settled in them.

Then follow the reviewer’s remarks on Miss Martineau as a metaphysician, or psychologist, or philosopher, expressing entire dissent with great comparative courtesy, and pointing out imperfections in the best temper and spirit.

“Thus much for the logic of a materialist who has the feelings of a Christian in her heart and that faith in immortality which she may not let go, even for her system: for she is a true and humane woman.

“We cannot leave these volumes without a tribute of respect to several articles that can come neither under the head of philosophical nor moral essays. We allude to the very interesting letter upon the Edition: current; Page: [298] Hanwell Lunatic Asylum, — the letter to the deaf, which inspires a profound veneration for the writer; to the article on Salem Witchcraft; to much of the articles on prison discipline, ‘Nature and Providence to communities,’ and ‘Romanism and Episcopacy,’ — practical subjects which call out her good sense and truly moral character.

“But we would repeat it, in the department of fiction alone is Miss Martineau great: we would willingly write as much again as we have done in setting forth the claims of her ‘Illustrations’ as works of art.

“It is this conviction of ours that has made us say what we have of her want of philosophic genius [meaning, as is clear from the context, metaphysical]; perhaps we have been vain enough to feel that, should her eye ever fall on these pages, an idea might be deposited in her mind (to use her own phraseology), that she had better devote herself exclusively to that department of writing in which she is unquestionably a genius, and realize the idea of a new class of novels, rivalling Scott’s in beauty and interest, and grounded on a more universal condition of humanity than the feudal system. As she herself says: —

“ ‘Why not now take the magnificent subject, the birth of political principle, whose advent has been heralded so long? What can afford finer moral scenery than the transition state in which society now is? Where are nobler heroes to be found than those who sustain society in the struggle, and what catastrophe so grand as the downfall of bad institutions and the issues of a process of renovation?’ ”

And the article winds up with the whole animated passage respecting the part which the same human passions swaying the same human hearts, and the same virtues working to higher ends, will have to play in the new order of things, in which love will be more than ever before lovely, and heroism more heroic.

Thus it was through all the showy front ranks of American literature, politics, and religion. Slavery had brought them to that degree of moral degradation that their normal condition was hypocrisy, when Harriet Martineau’s sincerity and reality compelled the casting away of the moral disguises, the ancestral habits of expression, so untrue to the lives of the existing generation.

The “North American Review” answered to the Quarterly’s abusive article in spirit, though it was far from being so amusing; for it wanted to see what the rest of the world would say, and the New England world was not in sufficient harmony with the Edition: current; Page: [299] Quarterly to warrant the same expenditure of epithets. In the “North American Review” the excess of caution forbade not only the mention of slavery, but of abolition too.

It was in the columns of the “Daily Advertiser,” hight “respectable,” that Boston answered to Philadelphia. There was the same inability to discriminate between a great public scandal before the world, — legitimate matter of publicity, — and private scandal of no importance to any one; and therefore while the temperance societies, the temperance advocates, and all the temperance physicians, including the most eminent in the country, were making strenuous efforts to stay an acknowledged national vice, which was creeping in among women even of the first classes, Miss Martineau was taken to task by both these publications, as if she had betrayed private confidence, for saying that she had witnessed examples of excess known to all the world about them. She was seeking for the cause, in order to find the cure, in such openings of various careers suited to women’s capacities and education as should furnish them with a truer stimulus than the hours of pernicious excitement which varied the dulness of their lives. She had fathomed the cause: American women were then educated, and had been for half a century, beyond the sphere of action permitted them; and while some of them were strenuously labouring for the temperance cause as a safeguard from the danger of such a life, others were yielding to its temptations. Society in America was then as distinctly though less violently divided on this question as on the question of slavery itself. All that Miss Martineau had said (and there was not the slightest personality in it) was matter of public notoriety. But the men of the wealthiest classes were, notwithstanding, opposers of the temperance cause, — less as bon vivans than as distillers and wholesale importers of wines and brandies, the mere advertisement of which was a revenue to the newspapers. Miss Martineau, meanwhile, was looking deeper than the temperance societies had then done into the necessity in human nature for occupations interesting to the mind and to the heart, if healthy action and development of the powers are to be secured, and intemperance banished from society.

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One cry of indignation rose from all the Whig political organs at Miss Martineau’s disappointment in Mr. Everett as an orator. But it always was shared, during his whole career, by all who were awake to the condition of the country, while hearing him speak on any but the purely classical and literary subjects which he so much loved and adorned. On these his speech was as the voice of a far-off Grecian past; but it never roused to march against the invading Philip of the day, nor was it like the low, soul-cleaving lyric harmony to which

“The Spartan from his sheath

Drew his devoted sword, and girt himself for death.”

There was no time in his political life when Mr. Everett did not necessarily seem like a mountebank, as he stood to talk of freedom and the great forefathers before a people whose liberties he had betrayed.

In excuse for the impeachment of her exactness as an observer by the editors who took exceptions at what she said about “the little flock of his auditors in a green field at Bloody Brook,” it should be remembered that none of them knew any thing about the size of the monster meetings in England, where her reform-song was sung, on which her ideas of a great crowd were formed.

To allay the pain of these remembrances, needful to the understanding of Harriet Martineau’s character and the impression it made, let the American patriot call to mind how nobly Mr. Everett acknowledged that his propitiatory course towards the South had been a mistaken one when the impending war with the South aroused him to the fact; and how many persecuting Sauls of this period became the self-sacrificing Pauls of a later one.

Harriet Martineau had been scoffed at by some of the baser sort in England. England rebuked and silenced them, and profited by her instructions, and covered her with renown. The press of the United States was wellnigh unanimous in taunting England with her goodness and greatness, which it called by every abusive name, and took the occasion to brand her personally Edition: current; Page: [301] with every ill epithet which she least deserved. She was a “hard,” “cold,” “pitiless,” “Amazonian,” “masculine,” “incendiary,” “radical” “amalgamationist,” and it went back to the defunct abuse of the “Illustrations,” combining the whole for daily use; and insinuating threats of mob-vengeance on future visitors from England, unless they avoided any disapproval of “our institutions,” meaning slavery. Future travellers were thus furnished with a ridiculous vade mecum, which they laughed at, but obeyed during the succeeding half-century.

But the American press was not quite unanimous. It would be doing injustice to the editors of that time in the towns of Plymouth, Lowell, Salem, Lynn, and Haverhill in Massachusetts, and Keene in New Hampshire, besides the antislavery journals, not to remember that they paid sensible and able tributes to Harriet Martineau as having “rightly divided the word of truth.” Her admiration and affection for their country, her appreciation of its sublime and beautiful scenery, her sense of the excellence of its institutions and the amiable and energetic character of its inhabitants, her perception of its advance before the Old World in all but arts, her appreciation of the grandeur of its struggle with wrong, the fervency of her trust in its ultimate success, her fidelity to right, and her love of human beings irrespective of any thing but their deserts, unmindful of any reproach it might subject her to of being the friend of little aristocracies or the friend of criminals or slaves, — all made in the New England towns a profound impression. Her mission to America had begun.

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CONSEQUENCES OF FOREIGN LIFE, — WITHIN.

“Crescit sub pondere Virtus.”

During the time that Harriet Martineau was at work upon her books of American experience, with two nations waiting for what she should say, and while she in her turn was listening for their reply, one cannot help desiring to know with what feelings she worked and waited.

Those six volumes of “Society in America” and “Retrospect of Western Travel” give her previous outward life and her opinions of men and things at that period with a fulness that neither this Memoir nor her Autobiography can find space for; but great effort was made on both sides of the Atlantic to fit those volumes to the spirit of the time.

All the kingdoms of literature and fashion and religious distinction in American cities, and in English complementary ones too, where, as in Liverpool, cotton was a bond of union, were proffered to her on these simple conditions; and “Vade retro” was her persistent reply. It was a costly, though so willing a sacrifice; for the slaveholders were not to her what Dr. Channing used to say they were to him, while he was striving to quiet the abolitionists of his own congregation, — “very much of an abstraction.”

“I was unworthy of our cause at that time,” she used afterwards to say, “but they were no abstractions to me. They were my dear friends; and I thought, as then I said, that they were disciples of Christ burdened with an inheritance of grief and crime; and I believed what I was told, that they were hindered from emancipating by the intermeddling of abolitionists.”

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Her valued friend Macready, whom she so highly esteemed because of his efforts to his own loss to make the British theatre what it ought to be, did not encourage her, as he himself tells us in his journal, to make her forthcoming books the transcript of her feelings and her knowledge: —

London, November 3, 1836. — Called on Miss Martineau, who told me of many friends she had seen in the United States, and of her intended book upon the country. She liked Clay the best of the American statesmen. She is a very zealous abolitionist, but, I think, has got some illusive notions on the actual state of opinion on that perplexing question.

There was a way to have avoided all perplexity, and to have made the American people as much her worshippers after their publication as before. It was the way urged upon her by the timid good and the timid who were not good, as well as by the ignorant and by the thoughtless. She need but have said, as they did, —

“I cannot but shrink from the denunciation of slaveholding as a private immorality. It is the misfortune of the individual, — the crime of the State.

“I am far from being satisfied that emancipation has any tendency to diminish the aggregate of guilt and evil of slavery.

“If I had tidings to-morrow of a bequest to me of an estate with fifty slaves on it, I am not sure that I should not regard it as a criminal evasion of responsibility to manumit them.”

“Channing himself says there are masters who see slavery as it is, who hold the slave chiefly if not wholly from disinterested considerations; and these deserve great praise.”

Happily not so thought John Gorham Palfrey, who gave his inheritance of sixty slaves their freedom, not considering his responsibility discharged till he had placed them all in suitable situations at the North for obtaining their own living; nor Angelina and Sarah Grimké, of South Carolina; nor James H. Thom of Kentucky; nor James G. Birney of Alabama; nor Mattie Griffith.

And, more happily still for after times, not so thought Harriet Edition: current; Page: [305] Martineau, who so steadily and meekly took her stand with Garrison and with them.

But full and unhampered as her American books are, a parallel record exists, to which one may have recourse, that tells of much besides, — not only what she saw and thought, but what she heard, resolved, and felt.

It is a series of small unlettered volumes, thick and closely written, — the diary of the years between 1836 and her retirement to Tynemouth and afterwards; in which the most interesting entries are of things she provides no place for elsewhere, and which was furnished with this motto by those who knew her so well, her intimate friends the Kers.

“All my mind was set,

Serious to learn and know, and thence to do

What might be public good.”

Her own prefatory sentence is as follows: —

“I have long been uneasy at the thought of how many valuable things I suffer to go out of my mind for want of energy to record them. I have dreaded beginning to keep a diary, for fear of increasing my great fault, — bondage to rules and habits. I will try whether I can reconcile journalizing with ease and freedom of mind.”

This journal bears on every page the fullest proof that it was kept for her own use and behoof exclusively; and she would then have been startled at the thought of its being seen by other eyes or after times; and, excepting only as given by the friend to whose judgment she intrusted it, this feeling was paramount as long as she lived.

Such a trust binds to the nicest reserve in selection, and indicates the thoughts and the little self-confidences as the portions rightfully at command, with such other occasional entries as betray the confidence of no one.

The date of the beginning is at a friend’s house in Hertfordshire, August 31, 1839. After many other foreign matters, is the following: —

“A friend [named] tells me that another friend [named] tells him, that I am now too great to notice her. I great! She might have Edition: current; Page: [306] taken the trouble to ascertain. Yet I believe she cares for me; but prejudice, — the prejudice of a coterie, comes in the way. Her coterie entertains the prejudice that people’s convictions alter with their circumstances. The radicals want faith, and will trust nobody from the moment of elevation to title, wealth, or fame. I do not feel myself altered in this way.

“We went to Haileybury, and dined with Mr. Empson. Two arguments: whether Lockhart is justifiable or not, in printing the letters which have lowered Scott’s fame. I say he is right in giving us all if any thing. Mr. — would keep back solitary discreditablenesses. The other argument, — whether or not things should be said before the deaf, or done before the blind, which it would be inconvenient for them to know. The point was afterwards yielded to me, that such things should not be done.

“Macaulay’s article on Bacon, good as to the life, but superficial and low as to the philosophy. But it seems to make a noise. Macaulay has no depth, but much glitter. He won’t come to any thing-Monday evening, to town. Mrs. — found her poor dog dead. A favourite dog is a loss. Brisk old Lady Cork, now ninety-three, complains to Rogers, ‘You never take me any where.’ Rogers replies, ‘O, I will take you every where, — and never bring you back again.’

“Letters from William Ware and the Follens about the reception of my book in America. They like it, but the whole newspaper press and public seem out against me. I do not care for this, — it is temporary, — nor for these friends’ objections to my having mentioned female intemperance, because I do not agree with them. But my having hurt C. Sedgwick is more pain to me than all the rest can compensate. I really thought I was right, and am not sure now but I was; but I will look into it. I must be brave about the consequences of my own mistakes as well as about undeserved blame. I have ordered the note to be cancelled (Vol. III. p. 261).* Dr. Follen says there is a split in the Democratic party between the self-seeking professors and the true lovers of freedom. This will seem to give an advantage to the Federalists; but it is very well. Took a sweet walk on Monday, and felt my spirit revived by the beauty and the exercise. I have been less joyous than usual this summer. It must be from some physical cause, for my lot is wholly bright. The last week, however, has been very cheery. Mr. Basil Montagu defends not only Bacon but Swift in morals, pleading that enlightened Edition: current; Page: [307] men must be judged by other rules in morals than common men. If by any other, surely it should be by higher.

Thursday, 31st. — Finished my first volume of “Retrospect of Western Travel.” Mr. Ker says it would not do to take duelling out of the murder class, in criminal law. A man asks his friend to go out with him, knowing that, if he is tried for murder, he will be acquitted. But no man could ask this if he expected his friend to be actually transported for life. What would be the consequence? Assassination, or a lonely duel (unfair fighting), or manly conduct of the true sort? Colonel Fox came to dinner. He brought me from Lord Holland, his father, a capital motto for my chapter on Mount Vernon.

When Mr. and Mrs. — travelled in Italy, they were attacked by banditti, who meant to carry Mr. — into the mountains for ransom. Mrs. — was bent on going with him; and rather than have her the banditti let him go. Rogers says he did not believe it till he saw her; when he no longer doubted. How like him!

Friday, September 1. Talk at breakfast about schools and governessing. One family has had seventeen governesses. — Lady imperious. Must put a governess into a novel, — a good one; and show how bad it is at best.

Wednesday, 6th. — Invitation to go out into the sun, but I must work first. Can’t enjoy at ease till work is done. I read Gibbon. It makes me dread a single literary life, so selfish, so vain and blind, as this great man grew to be! How like a bully and coward are his letters to Priestley, and how honourable the good man’s answers! . . . . In telling them how I am met and discouraged by ignorance and mistake at every turn, I went off into tears, which I could not stop for long. It is wonderful how much less unhappy one often is in tears than at some times when one is laughing and seeming gay! Since my memorable crying-fit in Chiswell Street, in December, 1831, I have cried only three times heartily, that I remember: at Cheshunt, at something Mr. Ker wrote (which I had quite forgotten till he put me in mind of it to-day); when I bade the Follens good by; and this morning. I wonder when the next will be. Finished “A Month at Sea.” Read Gibbon’s correspondence. Selfish, vain creature! — beyond almost all I ever read of. His intentions of adopting and subjugating Charlotte! Celibacy is very bad, especially for men. Walked out gathering blackberries in the field. I love a real field.

Friday, 8th. — Now going to write an account of the Shakers: had a pleasant walk in the lanes when my work was done. Rather nervous Edition: current; Page: [308] and tired over my work, — so resolved to rest for a day or two. Looked over frescos from the Niebelungen Lied, in penny magazine. Schnorr is painting them splendidly at Munich. Mr. Ker told me an idea which I mean to evolve: Eastlake opened it to him: what is fit for poetry is not for painting; painting must be form and colour, which does not do in poetry: poetry is motion and sound, which of course will not do in painting. Eastlake followed this out from all poetry, leaving only a thing or two in Ariosto which will serve for both, — Camilla’s running over the wavy corn, Eve’s every gesture dignity and love, and so on. This all came out of my mentioning St. Christopher in the Danube, which Mr. Ker says won’t paint. They call Hogarth delightful, but false; but this seems to me arbitrary. If, like the Exhibition artists, he had had to label his pictures, it would be false; but as his pictures tell themselves, surely the probability is that the division is arbitrary. Eastlake’s own pictures are full of action, and tell themselves; you see the very heaving of the chest in the Greek mother. We speculated on the past and future in art. The department of religion is closing, or being completely changed. The Virgin, Christ, and John have by their fixed general character become types, securing the beholder’s recognition and sympathy, and enabling the painter to bestow his care in conveying new and more complicated expressions under the advantage of the recognized form. This is over. There is no more worship of these beings, and the intellect is beginning to contradict and will by and by dissolve the old associations. A republication of Christianity will take place, — is taking place. A new school of poetry — the metaphysical — has begun; and mental acts are taken as illustrations of nature, instead of the reverse. Old poetry will remain, by virtue of its truth; but a new kind is rising up. Will it not be so in painting too? Because painting of the highest old kinds did not represent action, nor even, as Mr. Ker thinks, abstraction, is the art never to do so, though Hogarth has proved that it may? I remember telling Eastlake that he must be a metaphysician to have painted his Sciote picture, and he spurned the idea. Singular! — if he works out the disproof of his own theory. The K—s have always told me that I did not understand art. I see now what they mean. We have different pleasures in pictures. I love them as types of human feelings; they, as idealized outward (what they call real) beauty.

Saturday, 9th. — Talked of the bigotry of strong reasoners; of Johnson’s bigotry and charity, his cruelty and kindness mixed. Mr. — remarks how he elucidated prison discipline, imprisonment for debt, Edition: current; Page: [309] and other things which our reforming wise men and philanthropists have said poor things about since. How he would have stalked over Channing and every body about slavery, if he had been here now!

Two brothers, F. and E., have sat in the same office for three years, and never spoken to each other. What a waste of the fraternal relation! — Not F.’s fault. At a dinner about South American independence some years ago Wilberforce and Mackintosh spoke. Wilberforce carried all away by his impulse, — looking out at the setting sun, and alluding to the extinction of slavery in that part of the West, rejoicing that the freed thought first of freeing others. Mackintosh’s was elegant and complete, with a touch about the chairman, a touch about trade, &c., but a failure, and felt by him to be so. How precious are these glimpses! Mr. — says Brougham is the first great statesman who has brought philosophical questions relating to the general good into the House. Lord Chatham was much of a humbug, after all; Fox despised political economy and other philosophy; Pitt knew nothing of the sort. Brougham was the first who introduced the new, substantial kind of public speaking or action. If so, this will be his title to immortality. I see the Newcastle folks have raised £5,200 for baths in their town; — Bravo, Grainger! What a benefactor that man has been!

Sunday, 10th. — Read Gibbon. Selfish, vain, unhappy man! but then we know nothing of his happiest times, — his times of study. He must have enjoyed these, for no toil in getting facts was too hard for him, while his power of generalizing was at the same time great. He studied law a year, for the sake of writing one chapter. He was a good specimen of the human being as to its alternate power and weakness, — enjoyment from its involuntary excellences and suffering from its lowest tendencies. All Gibbon’s sufferings, almost, came from his selfishness and intense desire to be happy, — or rather fear of not being so. How he plagued Lord Sheffield about his money-matters when he had enough already! And as soon as all was settled to his mind, he died. He seems to have behaved well about his last illness; but then he liked life; and much might be owing to his being willing to persuade himself that little was the matter. — His neglect of writing to his old aunt was very bad. Happily he felt this. . . . . We three ladies talked over the situation of housemaids; and I am to be Mrs. —’s whenever I want bread. I stipulate that if she takes a second it shall be Lady Mary Fox. She talked as earnestly about it, obviating difficulties, &c., as if it were to take place to-morrow. Read to Mrs. — my last chapters of my first volume of “Retrospect.” She says the book will do.

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Thursday, 14th. — We went to town. A very pleasant drive. I told them of Lady Ann Coke’s (Countess of Leicester’s) child, who kept saying in the queen’s (Adelaide’s) presence, “Mamma, what an ugly woman the queen is!” and of Lady Stafford’s, who asked after dinner about a laced officer, “Mamma, can that silver thing talk?” They told me of a child, who, being shown some curiosities at a gentleman’s house, asked, “But where is the long bow papa says you shoot with?” Found my mother well and cheerful.

Letter from Dr. Channing. Dispassionate, — somewhat cold, — partly wise and partly mistaken, — like his letters usually. Very true and wise man, but wanting knowledge of actual life and sympathy with other people’s views.

Evening. — Read my mother all the letters I have had lately. Very pleasant. Quiet days on Friday and Saturday. On these days, when there is nothing to set down, how full is the life of the mind! Mine revolves the character of work done, and anticipates the fate of future doings. The faults of my work rise up and depress me, and my mind dwells far too much on myself. An alternation of work and society is, I think, best for me. When I am with the —’s I feel the most how small a space my labours really fill. I don’t get flattered with them.

Thursday. — I bustled among my books, making room for the Quarterly Review which is coming. It has such exquisite literary articles, I hope to improve by the study of it. We had company in the evening. Carlyle was in fine spirits. He made a great laugh at the scientific people. He calls them quacks and what not. I wish he had more sympathy and less cynicism. He has a terrible deal of the spirit of contempt. — — told of M. saying to Mrs. Austin that the five most ill-natured men in London were made criminal commissioners: of whom she named four, and could not remember the fifth. It was Mr. Austin. We had a charming evening with these friends round our table.

On Friday, Mr. Child* called. He says the Americans in Paris are frantic against me and my book. He agrees in the whole of it, except Dr. Follen being the greatest man I saw in the United States, yet he loves him much. He expects the admission of Texas will be the question on which the South will rise. He fears about the integrity and courage of the North.

Sunday, September 24. — Revelled in Lamb’s letters. What an exquisite specimen is that man of our noble, wonderful, frail humanity! Edition: current; Page: [311] These letters are somewhat unreal, also egotistical, but a harmless egotism; and the genius, the exquisite fancy, the human love, the clinging to the familiar and the dear, are delicious. What a lesson is the series! His disgust at work and regularity; and then his ennui when released. Let us be thankful for necessary toil. With what horror he speaks of a dependence on literature, and of the booksellers! I feel nothing of this, but mine is not a common case, I suppose; and women find it difficult to earn a subsistence in other ways. But it should be a hint to secure an independence as soon as I can. I am vexed at his humility towards Southey about his controversy, and at Southey’s acceptance of it, and at Talfourd’s letting it pass. Lamb was clearly right, and the letter is a rare beauty, — full of truth and gentleness.

Evening. — Read it over again to my mother, and also my Sedgwick article,* which she likes.

Monday, 25th. — These bright autumns, with pleasant work, and not too much company within doors and sunshine without, are delightful seasons. My spirits have come back again; that is, I suppose I am quite well; the influx and variety of work stimulate and do not oppress me.

Received a rousing note about our Woman’s Friend scheme, the success of which is thought to depend wholly on me; and I am asked to give the chief of my time and attention to it. This troubled me: thoughts of sacrificing my novel; of entering into new bondage, &c. But, meditating, I found that my conviction about the object requires me to make this sacrifice of money, ease, and purposes. If Mr. — is to be relied upon for his judgment, and all looks well, I hope not to fail in my part. Went to sleep resolving to do right about it, whatever that right might be.

Tuesday, 26th. — Wrote private note of inquiry about Mr. —’s character for judgment and steadiness. Wrote to Dr. Channing. To the Carlyles. John Sterling there. A young man next door to death, they say, but if he lives a few years sure to be eminent; so wise, so cheerful, so benignant! I wish Carlyle would learn somewhat of him, for his views are deplorably dismal, and very unreasonable in my eyes. He doubts not all being for the best, but believes in a preponderance, — a saturation of misery for the best of the race, and that the stupid and sensual only are happy. He does not pretend to care or presume to inquire whether there is another life to compensate. I asked him what was his idea of good, if he is sure all is well, but Edition: current; Page: [312] the best men miserable. He says he can give no clearer reply than that it is found in the New Testament, “The Worship of Sorrow.”

Received a silly tract against usury, based on the Mosaic law. Author would have my opinion, so I referred him to Calvin (in Dugald Stewart’s dissertation on the origin of political philosophy) for the destruction of the Mosaic part of his argument, and to Bentham for the rest. A Frenchwoman has lately petitioned the Chambers for a participation by women in the rights of citizenship. Women are not excluded, and must therefore be supposed to be included. Mr. Child says her positions are unanswerable, her logic the closest. Accordingly there was much “hilarity on the côte gauche.” They could only laugh, for she left them without a plea. On this quarter-day I find myself at liberty to go on with my book, as, indeed, it is high time. How I love life in my study, — all alone with my books and thoughts! Books are not sufficient companions if one only reads. If one adds writing, one does not want the world, though it is wholesome to have some of it.

September 30. — Mr. Madge came to tea, and brought some expensive American letters from Liverpool, — strips of abuse and vindication from newspapers, in whole blank sheets of paper. R. Sedgwick sends a paper with a vindication of his sister, — straightforward and unencumbered. She did alter, however, leaving out the sailing part, so I was not far mistaken. Discouraging account came in reply to my inquiry into character in the Woman’s Friend business. I am sorry, but when the drawing back is once done, cannot help being glad of having time for my novel. I shall write for it, if the scheme goes on, but not make myself responsible.

October 1. — Find myself utterly unaffected by blame of my book where I feel myself right; deeply wounded when I am suspicious of having been hasty and careless. I made up my mind to suffer retribution cheerfully, as well as insult, and so I will. But I have still much pride and some fear. I felt myself turn pale when I found what those American letters were last night; but I immediately recovered. This morning I read the antislavery documents. The women are doing bravely, and thereby coming at a conviction of their rights. Bless them! I don’t mind the bad taste of their orthodox mode of expression. In Angelina Grimké’s there is an interesting account of the intellectual achievements of the blacks. But are the Egyptians and Moors fair specimens? Sent Mr. Fox the women’s report.

Evening. — Read some of Pascal’s pensées. They show great knowledge Edition: current; Page: [313] of men, — of their weaknesses and faults: they are very gloomy; but I do love these speculative writers. It is strange that Voltaire, in his notes, cheers him up, — actually seems to have more faith and more benevolence. I don’t believe we do half justice to Voltaire. I was struck with the pensée on our hiding our sins, and not being able to bear the benign ordinance of confession, so that the Catholic religion is rejected on account of it. Could he not see that it is unnatural if faithful, and, where natural, sure to be unfaithful? No human virtue can survive the degradation of being perfectly known to another; or rather, laid open; for if your confessor knows of a bad thought of yours, he does not know how it came there, which is the chief thing.

October 2. — Wrote to engage our places at Covent Garden. I walked in the park and found it warm as June, and altogether delicious. A letter from Lissey, with a sweet account of Harry’s first wound from the wickedness of the world. Some boys stole his and Willie’s kites, and told lies. The kites were recovered. But Harry thought he never could be so happy again, from grief for the boys and dislike of them. Could not sleep, but cried in the night; but has recovered. Fine little fellow!

Mrs. — objects to “Maltravers” as immoral: says she cannot give it to her young people. But novels are not to be judged by their fitness for children. I object to no real subjects into which pure moral feelings of any kind can enter. Whether they are, when finished, moral or immoral, depends on the way in which they are treated; whether in a spirit of purity and benignity, with foul gusto, or with a mere view to delineation. Wrote a good day’s portion of my second volume of “Retrospect,” Mississippi voyage, which it is delicious to go over again.

Was surprised to find the mixture of error and truth in the opinions in natural philosophy attributed to Anaxagoras. Penny Cyclopædia. — Now tired. A bit of grave reading, and to bed.

Thursday, 5th. — To-day, while I was writing “Madison,” in came a glorious letter from the Follens, full of heart, of wisdom, and of news. Dr. F.’s criticisms on my book are mostly just; how honest, pure, and wise! It made me more sure of them than ever. The Union is in a great stir. The separation of Bank and State is confirmed by this time, I suppose. Then comes the tug of war. The South is silent, — the North growing more clear-sighted every day. Dr. Channing has put out a capital letter to Mr. Clay, on Texas, — sound and bold. Bravo! The Americans may always be trusted to do right in time.

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Mr. Fox has made a fine leading article of the report of the Women’s Convention: and I shall send it to America to be reprinted there.

Mr. Macready, who called on her about this time, mentions it thus in his journal: —

“Called on Miss Martineau: on the arrival of the carriage drove her home, talking the whole way. With the exception of one walk round the garden, talked away the whole evening. The only subject on which I did not cordially agree with this fine-minded woman, and on which I do not clearly understand her, is her advocacy of the restoration of the rights of women. I do not see what she would have in point of political power, nor for what.

“July 22, 1837. — Sent a note to Miss Martineau, informing her of her box for Monday, enclosing her a book of the ‘Bridal,’ and mentioning our purpose of naming our little babe after her.”

Friday, 6th. — Wrote to Robert Sedgwick to make my public atonement to Catherine. Evening to Covent Garden, and saw the “Bridal.” O, the beauty! Macready acted admirably. There was an air of hilarity about him which I like to see. Success to him! Home to supper and Spectator, where there is a shameful article against the abolitionists.

Sunday, 8th. — Woke with the idea of sending a letter to the Spectator. After breakfast did it. After dinner copied it. Showery day, and did not go ont.

Monday, 9th. — Letter from America which cost 3s. 2d.; only a blank sheet with a slip of newspaper, — an insulting copy of verses. Poor malice! A letter from a young man, consulting me whether to go to America. Simple, fervent, and interesting. He is obviously the darling child of parents from whom he will have money, kept at home without sufficient employment, and longs to be doing. A note from Macready, offering me my box at Covent Garden, whenever I like to go. Truly kind and gentlemanlike in the way in which it is done. Miss — made a long call, her place for Paris being taken for the afternoon. She has lived in Paris since she was five years old. She says we should not tolerate Napoleon if we had lived under him; if we had had to open our room door constantly to see that the servants were not listening, — half the servants in Paris being spies; if we had seen the youth of the noble families of Italy brought to France and placed in the military schools, — some too young, so that Edition: current; Page: [315] they pined and died. She says the great fault of the French is their disregard of truth; and that it is difficult to make other nations believe and feel that people have very good qualities with this one great vice. She likes the Germans. Says Guizot understands elevation of soul, though his own worldliness prevents his elevation. I read Felkin’s excellent report on the working-classes of Nottingham, showing clearly that there are resources enough for all necessary comfort if there were good management, but that fathers spend all their resources, almost, on themselves. Wrote fourteen pages with much ease and pleasure, — “Country life in the South.” What a blessing is this authorship! It is pleasanter than my gayest pleasures; and it helps me over indisposition and failure of spirits better than any holiday. The thing is, can I now live without it? This is always my doubt and dread; but I will dread nothing.

Tuesday, 10th. — A good day’s work done. Whately is the author of the “Utopia” edited by Lady Mary Fox. He wishes this to be known, though he could not, as archbishop, publish it himself. Who would be an archbishop? When I came in from my walk I found the first proof of my “Retrospect.” Pleasant, the beginning this sort of fruition again! Read some of Channing’s “Texas.” I wish I could write a review of my book, I see so many faults in it. There is no education like authorship, for ascertaining one’s knowledge and one’s ignorance. What light is thrown into my dark places by every thing I publish, — by the convictions of error that follow! What entirely new ideas are opened to me! It is the case with this last book. I dreaded it beforehand, but I enjoy it already. I do hope to grow wise by mistakes, — one way of being made perfect by sufferings.

Thursday, 12th. — A bustling day, and not a line of my book written. I am too anxious on this score. It is good for work, — this scrupulosity, — but bad for freedom of spirit. I wrote to Mrs. Macready, and to the young man who has made me his confidante. A note from the Review saying that my article is postponed. It is vexatious; but I try not to be troubled when my pride or my wishes are mortified. Yet I do prefer publishing myself to being at other people’s disposal. I wonder what ruling one’s spirit is. I never show mortification. Is this right or wrong? There is pride in these, my only concealments; yet they save my mother pain, and help me over things which would trouble me if dwelt upon in words. I really think I do acquiesce in both great and small troubles; and none sting, but where there is self-blame. Wrote at length to the Follens, which always does me good and makes me happy. Wrote to several friends with the prospectus Edition: current; Page: [316] on the rights of unmarried women. Channing’s “Texas” is very fine; bold, solemn, eloquent; and I fancy wiser in the-matter-of-fact parts than he usually is. It will do the nation great service, by raising them to see the truth. Now, as to Dr. Channing himself. I liked his letter to me about my book very well till I saw this. But he should not have spoken slightingly of my book as a mere book of travels, and urged me to get on to something higher, if he thinks as he does of the Texas question, and if my book roused him to write upon it. For his own sake (never mind mine) he should not. Is this a return to his old habit of being shy of what has moved him, and shrinking from acknowledgment where he has been most stimulated? I hope I am doing him no injustice, yet ought I not to hope that I am? Why is this the only occasion, since I knew him, when he has been wholly silent about what he was doing, and has not sent me his publication? Mr. Turnbull called with three letters of introduction. He was always hospitable to the English in Paris. He has seen but one American there who likes my book. The Spectator has my letter about the abolitionists, with a comment so weak that, though the facts are misstated, I think it best to leave it unanswered. The world may be trusted to judge between them. E. dined with us. Charming children. The change swept away all my trumpery little cares and anxieties, unworthy of one who really lives. Read some of Beaumont’s “Marie.” Sentimental and un-American. Little more like America than like China. Mrs. — praised a single life, so as to surprise me much. I have a very bad opinion of it for other people, though liking it for myself. Yet the chances for happiness are rare and feeble. The only way is not to care for one’s happiness. Mrs. — urged my answering the Spectator’s comments on my letter; or, rather, setting right their false facts. Did not like it, but found it my duty. I must uphold the right at the cost of trouble, time, and unpleasant feeling. May I never shrink!

Thursday, 19th. — Went to town with my mother, and answered the Spectator, avoiding all self-reference, and being as brief as I could. Corrected proof. At night, read some of “Archy Moore.” A terrible story, which stirred me deeply. I was ashamed of having any troubles when others are suffering so tremendously. I looked round upon my luxury, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, and wondered. I felt as if I could throw them all away for one solace to the negro. It is truer than any slave-story I ever read. Mr. H. C. Robinson came to dinner. I like his opinions of people; that is, his and my opinions agree. He never knew but one American gentleman to Edition: current; Page: [317] laugh! — the Americans cannot be known out of their own country, any more than any other people. Joanna Baillie is very unhappy about the revelation of the true Walter Scott in Lockhart’s Life. Scarcely any one seems to see what I think the true principle, — that it is better to have truth than any particular kind of opinion of great people. Truth, or silence. If great men fall below our expectation, let it be remembered that there is another point of view from which the matter should be looked at, — that we gain thus a new sense of the glory and beauty of virtue and incorruptibleness in the humble matter of every-day life. The Spectator has my letter, with comments which require no answer. This is over, for which I am very glad.

Monday, 23d. — Mr. Sheridan Knowles begs me, through Mr. Turnbull, to accept a stage-box to see his new comedy at the Haymarket, — with arrangements about dinner where we meet him at the Turnbull’s, next door to the theatre. Very kind in both, and very pleasant. I read Whately’s review of Miss Austen. Good, but not particularly striking. She was a glorious novelist. I think I could write a novel, though I see a thousand things in Scott and her which I could never do. My way of interesting must be a different one.

Saturday, 4th. — Resolved upon doing the Channing chapter in my book. The English ought not to be deprived of an account of the man they most care about, by any difficulties arising out of my friendship with Dr. Channing. Settled to work, and found it not at all difficult to do Channing.

Monday, 6th. — Finished Channing: hope I have done him and the subject justice; but it is difficult to write of one’s intimate friends.

Tuesday, 7th. — A note from William Ware, in which he says some pleasant and some very kind things, and one which convinces me by its effect how sensitive I am about my friends’ opinions of what I do. He observes that a thorough reading of my book convinces him of what he did not once think, — that I am greatest in the purely inventive; in other words, he does not like the book so well as he expected. It is astonishing how this stung me, and longer than for the moment. I was convinced, from the first, of the absurdity of the feeling, my motives and aims being what they were and are; but I think this kind of pain has no influence on my doings; and that the best way is to let it alone, as if it did not exist. Why should I object to pain? What harm will it do, if it does not affect action? Read Waldo Emerson’s oration. Though fanciful, it has much truth and beauty. Edition: current; Page: [318] It moved, roused, soothed, and consoled me. At all events, he is a free and courageous man, and I wish him God speed!

Friday, 10th. — Corrected proof and wrote notes. H. Crabb Robinson called. He gave me the good news of the American President having declared against the annexation of Texas. How much have Mr. Child and I and Dr. Channing, in succession, had to do with this? Never mind who did it, — it is done, thank God! H. Crabb Robinson wrote Goethe and Schiller in the Gallery of Portraits. Saw the aurora, in going to Carlyle’s. The others did not see it. Every one should look at the sky in the middle of November. It is a shame to miss these sky-sights.

Tuesday, 21st. — Mr. — called. A kind-hearted man, but dreadfully mean. He complains of poverty; which means that he is always increasing his real estate, so that he has not a guinea to spare. . . . . A busy life, and somewhat profitable, I trust, I am now living.

Saturday, 25th. — Was too busy, till to-day, to walk out. I must cure myself of being so busy as this. It is desirable to walk, I always feel in the middle of the night. I don’t want to be selfish about health, but I am selfish the other way, thinking my doings of too much importance. A most beautiful account of herself from —. I must secure time to answer such in the way they deserve. She says truly, that she thinks she never did study. I scarcely ever have. The gift of us all is more imparting than gaining from books. Saw Werner. It made me sick, and struck upon my very heart, and it got worse every moment. After all was over, Macready came to our box door, all glittering under his cloak. I could not sleep well. This morning, very heavy. . . . . The “Leave me,” and “I would not send you forth without protection,” haunted me so that I resolved to go out for a walk. Corrected proof first, and then went. Met Mr. C. Buller, who walked with me. The liberals are wholly taken by surprise by Lord John, who speaks warily, too; no sudden fit. C. Buller calls Macready a very great actor. Does not like his Othello, which certainly moved me least. Complains of literary people, that they give in to aristocratic doings, and are unworthy of their callings. This is too true when I come to think. May it never be so with me! What have I to gain thus? Letter from Mackintosh. Nice note from Talfourd. Letters from co-operatives, thanking me for my book, and account of the Shakers, and giving me books and papers. Very good, true, and hearty letter. Wrote thirteen pages in course of the morning; had an afternoon talk and half an hour’s reading. On Monday Crabb Robinson told me he did not care if he never saw Carlyle Edition: current; Page: [319] again, he talked so against antislavery and philanthropic exertions. Very withering to any young persons who might have heard him. That contempt of all open movement is a diseased part of Carlyle’s mind. Told by Robinson of the complaint in the North American of my insisting on the majority being in the right, which Robinson calls the great spot in my book. The answer fluttered me at first, but foolishly. Palfrey’s is the Federal version of the matter. The saying that the king can do no wrong is drawn from the monarchical function; but the saying that the majority are in the right is necessarily founded on the general truth, literally taken, or the function must be a wrong one.

Evening. — Robert and I went to Covent Garden to Macbeth.

Tuesday. — An immense letter from Margaret Fuller. Sad about herself, and very severe on my book; — righteously so, but with much mistake in it. The spirit is very noble. Do I improve in courage about learning the consequences of what I do? I commit myself boldly, but I suffer a good deal. But I do not think I go back. I suffered a good deal from her letter.

Evening. — A party at home; several Americans. I talked a great deal, — some with every body. I hope it went off well.

Thursday. — The books for the blind arrived, in fine order. I will do my utmost to get these introduced into the daily life of the blind here. It is surely a good work, worth trying for. Why was I so worried about getting my book done? The difficulty is in me, and would be about something else, if not that. I do struggle against it, but the true way is to put myself into the way of being convinced how small our doings are, and how we must have our affections and anxieties out of ourselves. This winter I will read, and see what a vast world it is that I have nothing to do with. Especially let me fill myself full of the gospel. How one thirsts for it, after a busy interval.

Friday. — Finished the composition of my book. Bustled and put away pamphlets, snatched a brief walk in the Park, and really felt my book was done; but did not feel much relief, because of the paper to be done for “The Christian Teacher” so very soon. Lord Durham still gives a high character to Nicholas, saying that he is coerced by his nobles. But what great or good man would not, instead of yielding to the circumstances, overcome them or die? If Nicholas were a good man, he would rather be strangled twenty times over than have signed that order about the six hundred Polish women. Mr. Brewster, one of the seven liberals of the kirk of Scotland, came. He is a Edition: current; Page: [320] delegate to the Exeter Hall meeting against the apprenticeship system. Revised the remainder of my book, and quite finished it. Read some of Brougham’s education speech, but not all; so have no judgment to give. Walked in the Park. Letter about a Paris review of me in contemplation, which makes me think I care less about praise than I did, — probably from satiety. Determined to say nothing about it to any one. Browning came to tea. I like Browning. I care little about this book of mine. I have not done it carelessly; I believe it is true: but it will fill no place in my mind and life; and I am glad it is done. Shall I despise myself hereafter, for my expectations from my novel?

Monday, 4th. — Mended linen with much gusto. It feels like leisure. Mrs. Opie called. A spice of dandyism yet in the demure peculiarity of her dress. She never interests me much, or makes me approve her highly. Richard Martineau called with bank-notes for £1,020 for me. Took the numbers of the notes and locked them up. Hope we shall have no burglars this week. Browning sent me “Robinson Crusoe,” an original copy, very venerable. Although I have read it, I am going to sit down to it and be a child again.

Tuesday, 5th. — Read the newspaper aloud. Mended black stockings. Now write to the Manchester co-operatives. Before I had well begun, came Mr. Saunders, with bad news;* but somehow I did not care about it. How much more fear of wrong-doing affects than any money loss or any provocation!

Wednesday, 6th. — Mr. Brewster brought his two sermons for me. He told me of his standing alone in the synod about church-rates. All were unwilling to give them up, fearing to lose tiends (tithes), next. He showed that church-rates were not property, while tiends were (national property). He declared that sooner than have dissenters burdened unjustly with church-rates, he had rather see the church come down. There was a cry, “Take down his words!” Also, “Give him time to explain.” He declared he had nothing to explain. He meant what he said, and would abide by it. A committee was appointed to confer with him (supposed previous to deposition), but he heard no more of it. Last October the minute was read at the General Assembly; but still no notice taken, though he was present. Sound man. Saunders sent a letter, showing means of getting the sheets of “The Retrospect” off to America by these packets, that I might get terms from a publisher there. But I know no American publisher whom I should like to ask, and I have declared that the book is written Edition: current; Page: [321] for England. So I think it better to forego my gains. It will not matter much if I keep my own counsel, so as not to make my own family vexed. I could not satisfy myself to do this with the present feelings of the Americans towards me, for any money. I think I cannot be deceiving myself. I think I must be right. Read some of Hall in afternoon, till time to dress for ball. — First to —’s, — a gay party, and very large. A New Zealand chief, tattooed, and gentlemanly looking, notwithstanding. Mr. — asserted that every thing in society is wrong. Mr. — showed him that there are degrees of superiority in all societies, from New Zealand to England. Is there any better than England? Are there not many worse? How then can all be wrong? Have we not co-operation in various ways already? Every insurance, turnpike, and social achievement is from so much co-operation: why then begin de novo, when we have so much ready to our hand? The rooms were beautifully dressed with evergreens and flowers. O, how tired I was! But I always think afterwards that I might keep it more to myself. . . . .

Monday, 11th. — How little do we foresee! I finished my last entry supposing the events of the day done with. Thought that nothing more was likely to happen, when a note from Mrs. W. came, telling me that her husband could no longer struggle against his conviction of the unlawfulness of oaths, and that he is going to resign his office. Such a testimony to the supremacy of conscience ought to make one rejoice; yet I cannot help grieving. Such a household broken up! My head was full of them all the evening and in the night.

Evening. — Read aloud Southey’s famous article in the Quarterly on British Monachism. Entertaining, but with a vain attempt to prop up Lady Isabella King’s institution. I should like to see the economy of association made use of by women; to see them living in a sort of club-house, enjoying comfort and luxury, rather than dispersed in poverty among boarding-houses and schools: but there must be no royal patronage, no distinction between rich and poor, no ostentation about schools attached. Simple, living without other restraints than as to hours and one or two other particulars. It strikes me to write on this.

Almost as soon as I had written this, Saunders came, and filled my head with what will continue to fill it for long. I had been darning stockings and brushing gown and cloak tails, not doubting in my easy mind that I was to have holiday for the whole winter, when he came. After some little talk about business, he said, “Did you not once say, Edition: current; Page: [322] ma’am, that you should like to edit a periodical?” Then he opened his scheme of an economical magazine, to strike into Knight’s circulation and that of my series. We talked over the details a good deal; I talked it over with my mother and aunt. It is an awful subject; such facilities for usefulness and activity of knowledge; such certain toil and bondage; such risk of failure and descent from my position! The realities of life press upon me now. If I do this, I must brace myself up to do and suffer like a man. No more waywardness, precipitation, and reliance upon allowance from others. Undertaking a man’s duty, I must brave a man’s fate. I must be prudent, indefatigable, serene, good-natured; earnest with cheerfulness. The possibility is open before me of showing what a periodical with a perfect temper may be: also of setting women forward at once into the rank of men of business. But the hazards are great. I wonder how this will end. Went to the —’s: they are serene, after their conscientious sacrifice about the oaths, as they deserve to be. I trust I diverted them from going to America. It would never suit them. The children are very merry, but Irma was concerned at the weeping of the servants, when warning was given them. She said the maids were crying very much, but she thought it was not naughtiness but sorryness. I found them so little engrossed with their own affairs, that, in the evening, when conversation paused, I told them mine. Two gave no opinion, — two said rather yes than no. Found notes and letters at home. One from Mr. —, with fine metaphors. If I can “get good collegians,” colleagues, I suppose, and “be their queenbee,” he will “enlist under my banners.”

Tuesday, 12th. — I thought I must give up this scheme in the night; but it was brighter in the morning. Went to consult Richard Martineau. He is rather in favour of it than not, but will consider of it and let me know. Wrote to James about it, and begged an answer in the course of the week. Mrs. — called. — This is a bad affair about the London University. Dr. Arnold proposed a sort of religious test: an examination in the Greek Testament. Otter* and Maltby,* as churchmen, thought they must support it. Dr. Roget did not like to be the only one to oppose it; and Empson thought he could not, because Arnold was his intimate friend! Lord John Russell is very angry, and Booth, Strutt,† and Romilly are trying to get it rescinded. — The distinctive principle of the University is violated. Shame! Joined the Macreadys at the theatre to hear the Edition: current; Page: [323] new opera. It is indeed exquisite. Some of the airs will soon be in every street in England. “Joan of Arc” followed. Scenery splendid above every thing. I never saw any thing like it before. I had the thought of this periodical heavy at my heart all the evening; but slept pretty well.

Wednesday, 13th. — Wrote a set of queries for Saunders. I find that in the morning I am pro and at night con the scheme. I see such an opening for things I want to say; I seem to be the person to undertake such a thing; I can toil very hard; I am persevering, and in the habit of keeping my troubles to myself. If suffering be the worst on the con side, let it come. It will be a fine discipline of taste, temper, thought, and spirits. But I don’t expect Saunders will accede to my stipulation for money for contributors. If so, there ’s an end. If he does, I think I shall plunge. Walked to Chelsea to dine with the Carlyles. Found her looking pretty, in a black velvet high dress and blond collar. She and I had a nice feminine gossip for two hours before dinner, about divers domestic doings of literary people, which really seem almost to justify the scandal with which literary life is assailed. The Carlyles are true sensible people, who know what domestic life ought to be. — I felt myself compelled to decline meeting the Sterlings.* They have just found out that I am not the sort of person the Times has been making me out to be, and wish to see me. But it would be mean in me to appear to like persons who have offered me a long course of public insults. I have no means of declining insult, but by declining to meet those who sanction it. Leigh Hunt and Horne came to tea.

Thursday, 14th. — Wrote notes, settled business, and am now going to darning and thinking. . . . . Darned, but did not do much sober thinking. I cannot really think without pen or pencil or book in hand. Delicious weather. Met Mrs. — in the Park. She and her husband like Mr. Harness’s tragedy exceedingly, and praise it for its finish. How very narrow these classical people seem to me to be! I do not find in them any sympathy with the high and true, but only regard to style and “finish.” After tea, sat down before my fire with pencil and papers, to make out a list of subjects, contributors, and books for my periodical. Presently came a letter from Saunders, which must much affect my fate in regard to the project. I distinctly felt that it could not hurt me either way, as the pros and cons seem so nearly balanced that I should be rather thankful to have the matter decided for me. Saunders and Otley grant all I have yet asked, and Edition: current; Page: [324] it looks much as if we were to proceed. So I went on with my pondering till past ten o’clock, by which time I had got a sheet full of subjects.

Saturday, 16th. — A busy day. Morning, read one of my own stories, — “Loom and Lugger.” Was quite disappointed in it. It has capital material, but is obscure, and not simple enough. Too much matter for the space, and not well wrought out. Could do better now, I hope. Mr. Finlaison came at one, and we went into the city about my annuity business. He told me by the way about the reports of the ecclesiastical commissioners. Said that the supposed average of souls to a parson is six hundred, and the income under £300, but that in Norfolk the average income is £800 and the souls to each cure seventy. In Norwich the average income is £800. This bears out the worst that has been said against the church. Took up my schedule at the national debt office, and walked to the bank. Never was there before. What a bewildering suite of large rooms, full of busy men! Glad to see a boy carrying pewter pots out. It looked some relief from business. Watched the carefulness of the transaction between Finlaison and the clerk. Finlaison thrust nearly a thousand pounds’ worth of notes into my hand, as if they had been waste-paper. I watched the process of weighing the gold and shovelling into bags, which were carried away by the porter. We then walked to Mr. Nobeare’s (or whatever his name is) to purchase the annuity for a term of twelve years; having already purchased the deferred annuity of £100, to commence at the end of that time. For £906 1s. 3d. I purchase a twelve years’ annuity of £95 7s. 6d., which being paid over yearly to the national debt office, purchases the annuity of £100 to begin in April, 1850. I have also made the first payment to the national debt office, so as to have spent £1001 8s. 9d. If I die before the twelve years are out, my heirs will receive the remains of the temporary annuity. I think this is good, and hope I have done right. Back to the bank, and signed the transfer of stock. Mended my satin gown and dressed to go to the Grotes’. Met a pleasant party, mostly M. P.’s. . . . . James is altogether against the periodical plan, and I think his reasons good. After getting off my things and settling, I wrote to Saunders to decline the enterprise. So this vision of an enterprise is over, and I am once more at liberty to spend my winter as I like. It feels very delicious at present. Rest, reading, thinking, and a new enterprise (a novel) when I like. Read Midsummer Night’s Dream in the evening. Surprised to find how completely I remembered it. How delightful to have time to read what one likes!

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Wednesday, 20th. Afternoon. — Read in the Pictorial Bible, which is to me very interesting.

Evening. — South’s sermon, — Adam in paradise. Very beautiful as a picture of perfect man, but how Adam came to fall if he was such an one South does not explain. Read “Katherme and Petruchio,” with the same effect that that play ever has; with wonder at its fun and cleverness, and much enjoyment thereof, but intolerable pain at the treatment of Katherine. Such a monstrous infringement of all rights, leading to such an abominable submission, makes one’s blood boil as much as if it were not a light comedy, but a piece of history. I have always found myself more sad at that comedy than at any tragedy. Robert Owen called. His delusion about the adoption of his plans is as great as ever. Metternich listened to him, and said he was right as to the present evils, and got his secretary to copy Owen’s documents. Owen takes wonder and sympathy at the moment, and an admission of grievances, for an adoption of his plans. Wrote five long letters. Wrote too much, and had slight sick-headache at night.

Saturday, 23d. — Read the news from Canada. My heart is with the Canadians. Letters from Dr. Channing, Mr. E. G. Loring, and Mrs. Child. Affairs in the United States seem most critical. Love-joy just murdered for abolitionism. Heaven aid the right! Browning called. “Sordello” will soon be done now. Denies himself preface and notes. He must choose between being historian or poet. Cannot split the interest. I advised him to let the poem tell its own tale. Why do long and full letters always make my heart heavy? Is it the dislike to new and grand ideas, that Watts talks of? The amount is oppressive.

Monday, 25th. — The Polish children dined here. They spent the afternoon with me in my study, I showing them the American views, and telling them about Niagara, and my going behind the sheet; and they telling me about their school and the little they remembered of Poland. At Warsaw the back of their house looked into a park, to which they had to go some distance by the street. They remember that when they spent the morning playing in the park their mamma used to let down a bottle by a piece of tape, for them to drink when they were thirsty. I love these traits. After tea I found up some little presents for them, and gave them each a chain of my own making, and some odds and ends for them to make knick-knacks of. They were clever at the pictures, and examined American coins with much interest. They are fine children. Heaven protect them! A Polish gentleman came for them. Reading. . . . . A pleasant, quiet Christmas-day; blest enough, if the children were happy.

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Tuesday, 26th. — Our breakfast gladdened by good accounts from my aunt. Talk of people going through life without being understood. I don’t believe they ever do, except by their own fault. There is always, I think, some fault of temper or some deficiency in frankness and simplicity in such cases, — if, indeed, they are more than imaginary. But the unselfish never seem to fancy themselves misunderstood. It is the jealous who make the complaint.

Wednesday, 27th. — Dined with the Kers; met there Colonel Fox, Captain Beautort, Eastlake, and Mr. Pettit. Colonel Fox told me of poor Mr. Barrington having been in great grief at seven years old, at the loss of a younger brother. His nurse comforted him with saying that his brother was happy in heaven. The boy said, “If he is happy in heaven, God Almighty must have made him forget me.” Mrs. Ker’s little niece asks if Adam is not the man who was in a pigeonhouse and let out a pigeon. Curious exhibition of the “pride of life” in Mr. —’s servants and his next-door neighbours’. They laugh at his odd pair of horses, and his men stand on the steps when there is a party next door, crying out the number of the cabs, — “No. 249, cab!” “Nice party! plenty of cabs.”

Thursday, 28th. — Mr. Ker begs me to write “How to Observe,” but I recoil from it. I don’t think I can or ought. I want rest, and to keep out of the public view till my novel is ready. Urges me to read Smollett for his force; but I cannot, it disgusts me so utterly. Read Defoe’s “Plague.” Was somewhat disappointed. Robinson Crusoe has all the matter-of-fact-ness, with a world of beauty beside. The best part is where he describes the reception of the news of the decrease in the bills of mortality. Settled the accounts of the year. Went to bed very tired.

Evening. — Company. A pleasant evening of talk. The Vicar of Leeds, brother of Theodore Hook, has come out against town missions on account of difference of religious opinion. O, this Church of England! What a stumbling-block it is now! What is there of the gospel in the religious world! The Archbishop of Canterbury’s answer to Dr. Hampden in to-day’s paper is cool, cowardly, and church-like altogether.

Sunday, 31st. — I have just shut out the last daylight of the year. What a last day! With a September breeze and a May sun. In the park, how gay the children looked, and the water-birds splashing in the blue and gleamy waters. How busy the ripple looks, when the wind sweeps over! What a busy year it has been! On many accounts a happy one: but not so much as the last. Every one is kind, Edition: current; Page: [327] and I love my lot. But there is nothing here like the character of some American friends, or the sympathy of others [Follens and Furnesses named]. Surely, if we meet hereafter, we shall not be subject to these impracticable separations. I have had a good deal of discipline this year about opinion, — from the publication of my book; but have not had to suffer nearly so much as I expected. Praise seems to have lost its power of giving me pleasure, which is well. I sadly fear growing selfish, — fond, not of money, nor even of fame, but of ease and my own favourite pursuits. May I keep before me the single desire to do what is right, without longing or repining! I may soon have need of this. People with aged parents have. May I balance my duties without thought of self!

Thus passed the first year after Harriet Martineau’s return from America. Except the omission of what was in its nature unsuited for publication, I have passed over nothing but repetitions of the same incidents of daily recurrence, and the record of domestic occupations which overloaded each day, and thus occasioned a constant difficulty and anxiety in getting through with the daily authorship. This journal, with that of the succeeding year, marks the time while the English public was finding out the real character of its favourite writer. The world had learned already that she was not born for its amusement. It was now learning that she was not born to serve and save it in its own inefficient ways. Take up any small scheme of doing individual good, — carefully following in footsteps that have previously broken the path, and you will receive applause and support, from the throne to the poorest dwelling; but follow the indications of the times, with the large principles of statesmanship which settle all questions and remove all abuses, and men’s ignorance, self-interest, and wounded pride take the alarm. If there has been so much prudence in the course, power in the intellect, and charm in the character of the person whose views run counter to the public ones, as to make fault-finding manifestly absurd, there will nevertheless have been a check given to applause. Harriet Martineau had long entertained the thought that persecution and opposition might be as much the fault of the reformer as of the times. “Why should not a perfect being go through the world to serve and save it honoured Edition: current; Page: [328] and beloved in the exercise of those functions?” “What hinders each one of us from being such an one?”* She was indeed that being, and it could not be hindered. But she formed no exception to the general rule, that the greater the knowledge and goodness that is brought into contact with wrongs and abuses, the greater the momentary misapprehension and misliking. Hence the book that made Americans foam at the mouth only made the corresponding classes of Englishmen shake their heads. Time sets all right, — time for a little change in individual hearts, and a great consequent change in public circumstances, and the person who feels the chill of a public terror is soon warmly visited again by the approbation of those who through the same selfish impulse seek their share in whatever good may result from whatever risk has been taken. This book suggested by America did not make its author less popular in England, but it changed the basis of her popularity, the general view of her character, and the course of her after life. The effort of writing it, with the experience that qualified her for the work, set her above and beyond the world, and necessitated the moulding and directing it, with a single eye to its benefit. Henceforth she instinctively sought its contact where it is most plastic, — at the point of confluence of private with public life, before the materials have hardened into act of parliament. “Society,” technically so called, was neither contemned nor renounced; but being outgrown, her relation to it was changed.

Let us know what men worship, and we may know also what they will become; and the world could foresee in Harriet Martineau the consequences of a worship exceedingly unlike the popular one. We have in the “Miscellanies” (Vol. I. p. 190, American edition) a vision of her ideal. Multitudes of minds felt that she was herself the realization of her own ideal and they sought her guidance, and were influenced by her life. The thinking mind of that time was perhaps more profoundly exercised by her chapters on property and on woman than on the rest of the book, which had so violently agitated the shallower currents: and while her personal popularity was for a time unthought Edition: current; Page: [329] of in the conflict of principles the book excited, and her personal admirers were less conscious of her personal impress, in the very change their minds were undergoing from the workings of her great thoughts, she was writing thus in her journal, on observing that with all the success of her book, the manner of it was very different: “If my book does not succeed, I am not so popular as we thought I was; that is all.”

I find at the end of this year’s journal the following page, which throws light on the domestic economy of the popular political economist: —

ACCOUNTS OF THE YEAR 1837.

RECEIVED.

| £ | s. | d |
Interest from Harriet Martineau | 8 | 0 | 2 |
From Fox, for sale of series | 21 | 6 | 7 |
From London and Westminster Review | 18 | 0 | 0 |
Own funds | 224 | 2 | 0 |
|  |  |  | £ 271 8s. 9d.

SPENT

| £ | s. | d |
For board | 150 | 0 | 0 |
Dress and conveniences | 35 | 2 | 7½ |
Postage and coach-hire | 18 | 2 | 10 |
Books and stationery | 14 | 3 | 2½ |
Travelling | 9 | 15 | 6 |
Given away | 22 | 3 | 8 |
Sundries | 11 | 13 | 5 |
|  |  |  | £ 261 1s. 3d.
Balance |  |  |  | £ 10 7s. 6d.

Many portions of her journal of the next year, 1838, show the tone and temper to which the sharp changes of English praise and American blame, worldly success and unworldly aspirations, had brought her mind. The reader will not need to have them pointed out.

This diary, which is contained in one of Letts’s volumes of four hundred pages, is accompanied by lists of books read in each month, remarkable events of the year in relation to herself, and, like all her years, with a statement of receipts and expenditures.

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Monday, January 1st, 1838. — A fine bright morning to begin the year with. I had read in bed last night, to watch the year in, and thought of my beloved Follens, to whom I think this hour of the year will be ever consecrated. I am making myself anxious already about my novel. I must learn to trust the laws of suggestion, having had good reason to know how well they serve me. My plot will grow as I proceed. Wrote the rest of my paper on the Catholics in America. Was sorry to leave it for a call, yet enjoyed the call. Heard it said “If Macready’s enterprise* is not a high Christian enterprise, it is something better.” Bravo! Heard of a lady’s marriage with a young Irishman of half her age, and with no practice. What follies women of forty-eight do!

Afternoon. — Finished my paper with great joy. Now going to read for the evening. O, what leisure I am going to have, I hope!

Tuesday, 2d. — Mr. Roebuck called early and gave me facts about Canada, which I wrote down as soon as he was gone. They are very strong in favor of Canada. Finished the tables of last year’s diary, and went out to walk. How summer-like did all look! Count Krazinski called, and dear Miss Mitchell, whom I had not seen for above six years. She is unchanged. Carlyle called; says he has peace of mind now he has no writing to do. Very kind. Looks finely, and it is worth while watching his entrance into a room full of company. So modest, so gentlemanly! The Polish children dined with us. I wrote notes, dressed, coffee, and off to the theatre. A fine row of children in the next box. Our children were well pleased, drumming with their fingers to the music. The pantomime was admirable, and I was surprised to find how I enjoyed it. We all got pretty well tired before it was over, and it was past twelve when we got home. Found a paper, sent me by Robert Sedgwick, with my letter to him about “Home.”

Wednesday, 3d. — I certainly have great sympathy with shy people. Such odd fits of shyness come over me now and then. People can’t see it, I think, except from my face. Mrs. Booth called, Rev. Mr. Hunter, and Browning.

Friday, 5th. — The meeting held yesterday in favor of Canada was very striking, and must awaken the people and the ministers surely. A letter from the Follens, very loving, but conveying news of ridiculous charges against me in America; among the rest, of my being insane. I don’t mind pure calumnies. A mixture of the truth is what infuses the sting. Wrote to Dr. Channing. Mr. Porter called, Edition: current; Page: [331] and we went to his house. Had a very pleasant day. Mr. and Mrs. Ricardo were there, and I liked them very much. Mr. Urquhart, late ambassador or something to Turkey. He is one of the great fearers of Russia. When all were gone we talked till eleven. I like such visits as this. They are the true pleasure of society.

Saturday, 8th. — Talked over low morals in novels. — fully agrees with me about Miss Edgeworth’s. Read, in Blackwood, article on Mademoiselle Gautier, a devotee, — much like other devotees, whose tales are, however, very instructive.

Sunday, 7th. — Carlyle sends me a full list of his writings for Mr. Loring. How much may happen to American minds, from this one sheet which lies beside me! Heaven’s blessing on it! Read Life of Scott, Vol. VI. It is far more interesting than the former ones; and here his pride takes the form of despising money, which is far better than grasping at it. But this pride was a great snare. While his diary tells of sleepless nights, so many that he fears becoming unfitted for work, he writes to Lady Davy that his troubles have not broken and will not break his rest. It amuses me to see how his diary reveals a state of mind and way of working like mine. The pride, too, is like me, and the insouciance about things which cannot be helped.

Monday, 8th. — Lazy, in bed; partly from Scott’s eulogium on thoughts before rising. They are very ingenious and clear then, certainly. Mended and quilted till noon, very much enjoying my quiet over my own fire. Then Mr. and Mrs. Macready called, very full of Drury Lane. The Examiner, I hear, has gone against the Canadians altogether, bidding them be patient, like the Irish. How can Fonblanque? Read Scott till I finished. Very interesting. It seems as if one might trust to a novel growing out as it proceeds, instead of having the whole cut and dry before the beginning. Scott speaks of writing out the plot, and carefully weaving the story, if it should prove necessary to try something new. How he reveres Miss Austen! He never knew what poverty really was. He always had carriage, house, grounds, pictures, butler, &c. Only restriction, never privation. I have all to-day and all to-morrow disengaged, which is exceedingly pleasant. It must be good for me to be idle, and I’m sure it is very pleasant. I do not find just now, as formerly, that all unpleasant thoughts come back to plague my leisure, — thoughts of angry, backbiting Americans, and of all the wrong and awkward things I have ever done.

Tuesday, 9th. — Read “Pride and Prejudice” again last night. I think it as clever as before. Cold night. Read the Follens’ letter Edition: current; Page: [332] and answered it, on account of the calumnies against me. These scarcely trouble me at all; I suppose because they are so wholly false. I think praise and blame at a distance scarcely matter at all. It is a good lesson, though, to see how the same people who so greatly flattered me when there are abusing me now. I bound and mended two pair of shoes, and darned a handkerchief. Finished Judges, in Pictorial Bible, which is a great treat to me. Finished “Pride and Prejudice.” It is wonderfully clever, and Miss Austen seems much afraid of pathos. I long to try. Brushed my hair by the fire, for it is very cold, and slept badly from cold. But how do the poor live through such weather? I cannot forget them in their brick-paved cellars, without fire. I know that the human lot is more equalized than we are apt to think; but yet I fear sometimes lest my faith should give way, — such an abode of various misery, much of which might be obviated, does the world seem.

Wednesday, 10th. — Cold! cold! Walked in the Park. Thick snow drove me home. Put lace in my satin gown. Nobody came, it snowed so. Read “Les précieuses Ridicules,” which did not amuse me very much; though acted I can fancy it capital. Dressed and went down to tea. Put pretty books in the drawing-room. Delightful party, — Milmans, Lyells, Beauforts, Montagues, Procters, and Babbage. Osgood asked Procter to tell him which was Barry Cornwall. Miss Beaufort agrees with me about Miss Sedgwick making opinion too strong a sanction. No hope of her coming here at present. She is active, but not very strong. Lent the Milmans Miss Sedgwick’s “Home.” Several of us had a great bout of praising Mrs. Barbauld.

Thursday, 11th. — While we were sleeping some folks were hot and busy enough. The Royal Exchange was burned down. There is no telling the extent of the damage. My first thoughts were for the Fishers. I shall soon know how it affects them. The fine bells chimed their last while the framework on which they were hung was catching fire. The clock showed twenty-five minutes past one when the dial-plate was red hot. The stock-brokers’ offices are burnt, with their contents, — all the books and papers at Lloyd’s. The kings and queens all tumbled into the court, — all lost. The Gresham committee must rebuild. Mr. Lyell* called. Told me of absent geological gentleman who never knows how the world is going; who stared about him when told of the throwing out of the Reform Bill: “What decision?” “What bill?” “What reform?” So he scarcely Edition: current; Page: [333] seemed to know this morning what the Royal Exchange was. Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise sold off six thousand immediately, and the second edition of five thousand is far gone now. How much greater sale than novels! There is some great mistake about the public being so fond of fiction. But Buckland united the religious and scientific world, probably. Read “Northanger Abbey.” Capital: found two touches of pathos.

Saturday, 13th. — Bright morning. After mending several things walked in the park. It was a busy scene, with skating and sliding. Never saw cheeks so red as some of the bairns’. My mother’s manner on hearing of an invitation to her set me thinking on the question which occupies her a good deal, — the quality of our acquaintance. She is surely right about some; and why should not I make acquaintance, too, among those of middle rank? Surely I am right in thinking that if I enlarge my acquaintance at all, it shall be among those below rather than those above me. I want insight into the middle classes, and to communicate with the best of them can surely do one nothing but good. If, as my mother says, the high quit me on that account, let them. They will not be worth the keeping. But I don’t believe it. I must keep my mission in view, and not my worldly dignity. Miss Mitchell dined and slept here. She and I had a nice talk over our fire at night. She told me how people insist that I am helped with my books. A bad compliment enough to the sex. — How is it that I do not get into perfect peace about my communicativeness? I ought either not to communicate so much, or not to fear my mother’s opinions and remarks about it.

Sunday, 14th. — Kept up too much talk about the Pictorial Bible and prayer-book with my mother. I should have let her prejudice pass with a simple protest. I often think I ought to do this, yet it would be really paying less respect to do so. How different, in such a case, to reconcile truth, respect, and peace! Read Channing’s “Texas,” and found it nobler than ever before. Was animated and shamed to-day to think I should have spent a thought on what people are thinking of me, however unjustly, in Boston, when my book and my position bear the relation they do to the great subjects Dr. Channing grows warm on. What matters it what is done to me, if I can give the faintest impulse to what is right, true, and permanent? Let me place myself above these things. Read aloud Southey’s article in the Quarterly on cemeteries; much learning, but little interest. How little I guessed what might come of my selecting that particular volume of the Quarterly!

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Monday, 15th. — We little know, indeed, what a day may bring forth! Probably this is the greatest day of my year. While I was reading one article in the twenty-first volume of the Quarterly, on Grecian philosophy, there being an article in the same number on Hayti, it flashed across me that my novel must be on the Haytian revolution, and Toussaint my hero. Was ever any subject more splendid, more fit than this for me and my purposes? One generally knows when the right idea, the true inspiration, comes, and I have a strong persuasion that this will prove my first great work of fiction. It admits of romance, it furnishes me with story, it will do a world of good to the slave question, it is heroic in its character, and it leaves me English domestic life for a change hereafter. I spent the morning busily looking out materials, which abound. Dined out, — evening party. At my mother’s earnest desire, told her my Haytian project. This extreme cold puts one out of all one’s habits; but it is not for us to complain, but rather to consider the poor.

Tuesday, 16th. — Lord Eldon dead, — obliged to leave his honours and his fears and his money! Poor soul! how will the next world look to one so narrow? And yet, when we come to think of narrowness, there is but little difference as regards the whole of truth between the wisest and the foolishest of us. Went to call on Miss Beaufort. Then dear Erasmus came, and was delightful. Wrote notes and letters, then sat down to read Smedley. What a tale of privation and suffering! total deafness first, — then gradual incapacity of every sort, all most meekly and strongly borne. Here lay his strength, — in his piety and constitutional cheerfulness, for his intellect was nothing remarkable. He was a hack writer and small poet. His powers of style were much impaired by his deafness, I think; a consequence which had never occurred to me. But between the open and the shut eye, great difference.

Wednesday, 17th. — Met at dinner Mr. H. C. Robinson. I was silly at dinner in offering some sort of answer to Mr. Robinson’s question about the Seigneurial rights of the French Canadians, when I knew next to nothing about them. I dare say I talked nonsense, but I declared I did not understand. Mr. Booth does not care much about the grievances, but thinks the question whether Canada is capable of self-government or not. If the majority think they are, let them try. Then came the question, what majority? I say the majority of the electors who have chosen so wise a set of legislators as the Assembly.

The Searles came to tea. Mr. Searle says he remembers Dr. Channing, Edition: current; Page: [335] a young man, morose, low-spirited, repulsive. Long may he live, growing more genial every day.

Thursday, 18th. — . . . . Letter from an unknown lady remonstrating against the preference I have given to Christianity over natural religion in my book. It is a clever, frank, moderate, and ladylike epistle, which I must answer. The unbelief must surely be of a reasonable character: read much of “Emma” this evening, and looked out for information about Hayti. I love this leisure, but still feel as if I did not sit down to think enough. Heard of another unwise engagement. Surely women ought to love and marry early; if they do not, how many make fools of themselves after forty! — I suppose as they grow older and friends drop off and they feel the want of protection and companionship, and, above all, of affection. With what an air did Crompton pronounce against the Pictorial Bible, not having seen it! Do we not all do likewise — I, especially? Called on the —s; found a most affectionate welcome, — such a one as makes me think of the importance of human beings to each other. How were these stimulated and moved by me, ignorant and almost utterly weak as I feel myself to be, and as dependent upon the wise whom I meet! But these are meek and affectionate, not ignorant and weak. Read “Emma,” — most admirable. The little complexities of the story are beyond my comprehension, and wonderfully beautiful. Corrected proof of my “Letter to the Deaf.” I would not alter it, even where the expression seems to me poor. It was written in the full flow of feeling, and so let it stand. May it bring some comfort to some who have suffered as I have! But where is all the suffering gone?

Saturday, 20th. — The sun shone. Dressed and set off for Chelsea. Walked it within three quarters of an hour. Mrs. Carlyle looked like a lady abbess; black velvet cap with lappets, white scarf, and rosary. Very elegant creature.

Sunday, 21st. — Dusted my study furniture, and brushed and rubbed for near an hour. Sarah is hard pressed in her work this severe weather, so I bestirred myself to make things nice. Then read Toussaint in the “Biographie Universelle,” making notes as I went. Leigh Hunt tells Carlyle that his troubles will cease at five-and-forty; that men reconcile themselves, and grow quiet at that age. Let me not wait for forty-five, but reconcile myself daily and hourly to all but my own curable faults.

Monday, 22d. — The “Morning Chronicle” says Roebuck will be heard at the bar of the House to-day, but cautions people against Edition: current; Page: [336] believing his statements. Shameful! — to prejudge. I think it likely the matter will end in all his suggestions being adopted, while he is allowed none of the credit. Mr. Ker called and took me to his house, and I had a delicious day there. We talked over every species of novel. Rogers observes that in Scott’s the story stands still during the dialogue, while in Miss Austen’s, as in a play, the story proceeds by means of the dialogue. Mr. Ker says Scott’s characters are not true to nature, — only the vestments of nature. Miss Austen’s, you know every one. Told me of Brougham’s promise to Lady Jersey to let her know just the contents of the Reform Bill. Had a messenger to bring word when Lord John Russell was on his legs, and then sent in a letter to Lady Jersey, next door, with an outline of the bill. She had a large dinner-party, and read it at the head of the table. Every one believed it a joke, except the Duke of Wellington, who pronounced, — “’T is damned true.” We sat over the fire, talking of my novel, till half past twelve — objects wholly to Toussaint. Victor Hugo has a story of St. Domingo. Mrs. — thinks such a story hazardous, to begin with. Talked over Joe Miller at breakfast with much admiration and affection.

Saturday, January 28. — I think the prison chapter will prove the most interesting of my book. I do not think it is waste of time to look over one’s own works thus. It is necessary, to see how they appear.

February 6. — Note from Carlyle, most hearty, about my book, and advising me to keep clear of theory, and cling to giving pictures of facts. What a true heart he has, with an insane horror of moral and political science! I want to find out how near he comes to wishing men to live without any mutual agreement whatever.

Mr. Wedgwood called. Is busy trying to get a law to exempt scrupulous persons from judicial oaths Showed how, after all, you depend on a man’s affirmation that he believes in a God, &c.; as Mr. W. says, like the Hindoo belief that the world rests on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on nothing. Read and lunched, and read again and dressed till just seven, and then off for Captain Beaufort’s. Met a host of naval officers and travellers. Also C. Darwin, Mr. F. Edgeworth, and Mr. Hamilton, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, who had been reading my book up to dinnertime, and took a good gaze at me. Mr. Edgeworth’s belief that diaries are always written to be read, and does not like Scott’s. Surely this is for my own future eye and not for others, for my own future instruction, and for suggestion.

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Sunday, February 18. — Read beautiful speeches at the Lovejoy meeting in Boston, in the “Liberator.” Edmund Quincy’s is fine. His father must have been touched with his hope of speedy departure, if departure might aid cause, rather than living in loss of freedom. What a different aspiration from the ordinary run of young republican citizens, with the world before them? Mr. Loring told of Arnold von Winkelried, at the battle of Sempach, who clasped an armful of Austrian lances, which transfixed him. He cried, “I will make a lane for you! — faithful, dear companions! remember my family.” The Swiss rushed in over his body, and conquered; and his death is commemorated to this day, — nearly five hundred years.

Finished Toussaint with a great relish. How I have enjoyed doing this, and how infinitely do these emotions transcend all pleasures of sense and all gratifications of vanity!

Wednesday, April 11. — Erasmus Darwin and Browning called, who is just departing for Venice to get a view of the localities of Sordello. He is right.

Afternoon. — I dozed for an hour, and then went out into the Park, and saw the yellow sunset, and the troops of shouting children at play on the fresh grass. The policeman seemed sorry to give them notice that the gates were going to be shut. Home to tea. Gave orders for framing Follen and Garrison. Dressed for the Bullers’, and walked there through the Park. Roebuck was there, — long talk with him; the Gaskells, Carlyle, and Lady Harriet Baring, who came to see me again. Buller thinks her superior to —. He can sympathize with all in turn. I told him I could with Voltaire, Fénelon, &c., seeing that the truth is that all of us are right and all are wrong. Does it follow that there is no truth? Surely not.

Thursday, April 12. — Finished my “Maid of all Work.” Walked in the afternoon to library for the Edinburgh review of me. Poor and stupid, except a good passage or two, — such as a clever woman getting at the minds of foreigners better than men.

June 26. — The Duke of Wellington wrote repeatedly to Croker and Lockhart to get the article on Soult suppressed. They would not. He said, “That is the way with these literary people. They are so pig-headed they will have their own way.” A pretty large generalization. When introduced to Soult, he said he was happy to meet him, and had not seen him before except through a telescope.

June 30. — Wrote ten pages of “Lady’s Maid,” though — — Edition: current; Page: [338] and — — called and sat some time. I love them both. Then a long list of others. My cold nearly gone to-day. How much less I think of illness than I used to do! I used to make the most of it, from vanity and want of objects; now I make the least of it, for fear of being hindered in my business. I suffer much less for this. But I am not near so happy as I was. I want inner life. I must take to heart the “Ode to Duty,” and such things, and do without the sympathy I fancy I want. If I am not happy, what matters it? But I am happy, only less so than I have been.

June 30. — Wrote to the antislavery ladies, who have made me one of their sisterhood. Read the Gospel of John in Porteusian Bible. Happy day, on the whole.

The idea of still further serving the antislavery cause in America never left her. It went with her through her Scotch tour, and is filtered through the whole year amid fêtes by the way and mountain scenes and continual attentions from distinguished persons, in a way that shows how it came between her and rest.

“Very happy,” she journalizes on August 26, “in reading American newspapers. Lovejoy’s speech a few days before his murder was sublime; it sets me above every thing, to read of these people. It is the grandest affair now transacting on earth.”

Again, on the 30th of November: —

“Sat down in earnest to finish my article, which I did with a glowing heart an hour after midnight. I am glad I have told this noble story. O, may no mishap befall it!”

“Deerbrook,” a fruit of 1838, was republished in America immediately, and is to this day highly esteemed, and seems likely to live. Mrs. Gaskell in an especial manner was moved by it, and thanked her for it as a personal benefit. John Sterling wrote thus of it to Mrs. Fox: —

“By the way, do you ever read a novel? If you ever mean to do so hereafter, let it be Miss Martineau’s ‘Deerbrook.’ It is really very striking, and parts of it are very true and very beautiful. It is not so true or so thoroughly clear and harmonious among delineations of English middle-class gentility as Miss Austen’s books, especially as ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ which I think exquisite.”

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This remark of Sterling is just. Harriet Martineau’s writings are true to no class. Though so true to humanity they overleap its subdivisions, and, like oaks planted in flower-pots, are sure to outgrow their limitations.

Long afterwards, on the appearance of Mr. Macmillan’s edition, Sir Arthur Helps writes to him thus: —

Yes, my dear Macmillan, I shall have much pleasure and much honour in being the medium of presenting to the queen anything written by Miss Martineau. She is a great writer. I have lately reread “Deerbrook” with exceeding delight. I certainly should care to have a copy of Miss Martineau’s book for myself.

In great haste, yours always,

A. HELPS.

In the journal of 1839 is this entry: —

Wednesday, June 12, 1839. — My birthday. This day twelve months I began “Deerbrook,” and I shall not forget what I have done to-day. Who would have thought then that I should spend my next in Venice? Am much better, and enjoy it. J. and I out between six and seven walking about St. Mark’s, and over the bridge below the Bridge of Sighs, examining the marbles and looking about us. People do not seem to be very early here, and the Piazza was quiet. The three red pillars are of wood, with cords for raising the ensigns, of Cyprus, Candia, and the Morea. Remember the Lion’s Mouth at the Ducal Palace; and the two red marble pillars amid the white in the little piazza, whence criminal sentences were read. Beautiful canal laving the walls under the Bridge of Sighs. Breakfast, and then off to the Campanile, which we found mighty easy to climb, an ascending path round the four sides. Spent above an hour on the top, most charmingly. Heard the quarters strike four times and the chimes play, so melodious as to make the noise tolerable. How the great green bells swung! Looked down with infinite pleasure into the shady, dim court-yards of many a noble house, — upon the Ducal Palace, upon the royal gardens; upon the myriads of pigeons; upon the bronze horses; upon the domes of St. Mark, with their melon-branches for weather-cocks; upon the folk in the piazza, — the water-carriers, the people walking in the shadow of the Campanile, or sketching in the niches of the church; upon the brilliant mosaics in the porches; and upon the many isles. Saw the Lido, where Byron rode; the Arsenal; traced the Grand Canal, and Edition: current; Page: [340] the Campo di Rialto. The mountains were delicious, afar off. The city from above looks vast, sun-dried, and old. The old man and another live at the top all the year round, and ring the quarters and hours. . . . . To the Ducal Palace again. Sat on the Golden Staircase while the keys and permission were sent for. Remember the well, round and of bronze, — the birds came to it, and the men and women to draw. . . . . Stood on the Bridge of Sighs. Did not go to the common prisons, but back to those of the Inquisition. One floor, contaming eight cells, belonged to the Council of Ten. Horrible dungeons! . . . . Saw the vestibule and council-chamber, — nothing remarkable. Council-chamber empty of furniture; marble floor, all cubes and painted ceiling. Went through many rooms in the palace, — very splendid. Saw the Titian, — liked St. Mark and a boy on guard, but not the woman angel. Stucco figures in ceiling very fine. Paul Veronese’s four pictures exquisite, especially Mercury with the Graces, which J. fell in love with. Ceiling of Collegio very fine, — an artist on a high stage copying one compartment well. Have not seen the senate-chamber yet. Home at twelve. What a morning!

She expressed as follows her gratification on receiving the certificate of membership in the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, in a letter to Abby Kelly,* through whose hands it came.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

June 20, 1838

Westminster

Abby Kelly

Kelly, Abby

Fludyer Street,

Westminster,

June 20, 1838

.

My dear Madam, —

On my return from the country I find the certificate of membership of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, which the members of the Lynn Society have had the kindness to forward to me. I accept the valued gift with feelings of high gratification. The generous interpretation which my American sisters put upon the small efforts of those who have done less than themselves shows that the spirit of disinterestedness is strong among them; and my great pleasure in this mark of kindness arises, not from a consciousness of merit in myself, but from an appreciation of the generosity of my correspondents. I do not wish to enlarge on the subject of myself and my doings; but I must just remind you that, in bearing my testimony in print against slavery, I have incurred no risk and no discredit. Here public sentiment is wholly with me on this subject. The only sacrifice I had to make was of the good opinion of Edition: current; Page: [341] some of my friends in America; and I cannot but trust that the time is not far distant when they will forgive and agree with me.

You and your sisters, my dear madam, have a far harder battle to wage, in which I beg to assure you that you have all my sympathy, and, I believe, the sympathy of this whole nation. Not one of your efforts is lost upon us. You are strengthening us for the conflicts we have to enter upon. We have a population in our manufacturing towns almost as oppressed, and in our secluded rural districts almost as ignorant, as your negroes. These must be redeemed. We have also negroes in our dominions, who, though about to be entirely surrendered as property, will yet, we fear, be long oppressed as citizens, if the vigilance which has freed them be not as active as ever. I regard the work of vindicating the civil standing of negroes as more arduous and dangerous than freeing them from the chain and the whip. Both you and I have a long and hard task before us there, when the first great step is, as in our colonies, safely accomplished. But this is a kind of labour which renews strength instead of causing fatigue; the reason of which is, that a sure and steadfast hope is before us. May this hope sustain you! I think it surely will; for nothing was ever to my mind more sure than that there is no delusion connected with your objects; that they are sanctioned by the calmest reason and the loftiest religion, and that in the highest condition of wisdom in which you may find yourselves in the better world to which you are tending, you will never despise your present action in your great cause.

We have heard with mingled feelings of the outrages at Philadelphia. Upon the whole, we hope for great good from them; but, till I hear more particulars, I shall not cease to wonder at the extent and intensity of the bigotry still existing in that city. I should have supposed that your enemies had seen enough, by this time, of the fruits of persecution. While earnestly desiring that God will advance the cause in his own best way, we cannot but hope that no more struggles of this nature, involving so much guilt, may be in store for you. It is a severe pain to witness so cruel a worship of Mammon, however strong may be our faith in the persecuted. By whatever means, however, the cause is destined to advance, God’s will be done!

It gives me heartfelt pleasure to remember that I am now one of your sisterhood, in outward as well as inward relation. If I should ever be so blessed as to be able to assist you, you may count upon me. At least, you will always have my testimony, my sympathy, and my Edition: current; Page: [342] prayers. I fear there is no prospect of visiting your country again. I have both domestic and public duties here which I cannot decline; but my thoughts and hopes will be with your people, though I must continue to live among my own.

Believe me, dear madam, with high respect for the body in whose name you have addressed me,

Gratefully and affectionately theirs and yours,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

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CONSEQUENCES,—TO LIFE PASSIVE.

“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose, to a life beyond time.”

— Milton.

Sorrow, suffering, fame, foreign travel, danger, had always, up to the time of her return from America, kept Harriet Martineau’s health below the degree she might otherwise have enjoyed.

Now, added to all these, was the preparation and putting through the press of so many important volumes.

Though she was not then fully aware of the too great exertion, she did afterwards make efforts for rest and refreshment. But a tour among the lakes and a journey with an invalid cousin to Switzerland were so filled up with various work and thoughtful planning for more work, that she returned to London in a state of health that, perforce, put a stop to further exertion until she should have consulted with her brother-in-law, the physician at Newcastle. The result of a month’s visit in his family, and under his care, was to confirm the need of rest and quietness, and she went thence to the lodgings at Tynemouth, which she did not leave till long years afterwards.

It seems on a mere glance at the outward facts a very strange life; — but it is accounted for. There was for her at this period, as ever previously, the heaviest family grief and responsibility, mingled with real family affection and care; a life of thought and industry in the midst of patient suffering; a life of loneliness, yet of much solace from the friendship of many.

These six years of enforced retreat she always called the passive period of her life. And one desirous to follow this passive Edition: current; Page: [344] period in all its suffering and solace, should fill in the preceding Autobiography from such journals and letters as are permitted.

The literary works will be found recorded in the first, but the work that told upon the world will be better shown from the two latter sources.

After the Swiss journey there related, the breaking down of health, the return to Fludyer Street, Westminster, and the visit to Newcastle, the journal begins: —

December 15, 1839. — Strange but pleasant to begin again after five months’ interval. I shall not have much to put down at present, but it may be useful and pleasant hereafter to see how it was with me when thus confined, with a near future wholly dark and uncertain.

For the better understanding of this journal, let it be noted that the “Oberlin,” as Harriet Martineau always called it, is the college founded for the Western States of America, when it was found that “Lane Seminary” would not allow its students to be abolitionists. Eyes of farther reach into futurity than those of any of the presidents of American colleges at that time, saw the pressing need of immediate effort to place education on a better basis; and we sent two of our number to England to raise funds there for the purpose of founding a new institution, which should afford instruction irrespective of colour and of sex. It was to this effort that she gave herself till the object was accomplished; all the while revolving in her mind the practicability of coming to live in America, to share the life of the abolitionists. In her journal at Tynemouth is the following record: —

Am much disposed to live for the great enterprise. I opened it to-day to — —. Must consult. At present it seems much like an inspiration. God grant it, through whatever suffering. . . . .

I wrote the “Dress-Maker” during this and the next month, a little at a time, with slowness and uncertainty. At the time thought it hardly worth the pains, — the doing it so painfully. But when done glad to have undertaken. Great satisfaction in a finished thing. This one much approved. Health much the same. No suffering worth speaking of from being laid by, which my distant friends conclude to Edition: current; Page: [345] be a very hard trial. My future will be provided for somehow, and the present is full of comforts. Bodily suffering not great just now, and kindness of friends most cheering. Out of doors once this month, and do not mean to try again at present. Lord Durham asked me over to Lambton to meet the Duke of Sussex. Could not go, of course. Much enjoyed some talk on politics with Mr. Hawes and Charles Buller, who came over from Lambton. Striking review of Carlyle by Sterling in the London and Westminster. Carlyle writes to me that it is like the Brocken Spectre, — a very large likeness and not very correct.

December 15. — The Mayor, Mr. Carr, called and got interested about the Oberlin.

December 16. — Mr. McAlister spent the evening to hear all about Oberlin and the abolition. I hope a sermon may come out of it.

January 17. — Miss F. came to bring me a contribution of £10, and to tell me of Dr. Winterbottom’s delight at the “Martyr Age.” Madame Goethe is charmed with my America. I rejoice thereat. Letter from Lord Murray about the Oberlin. The article will be reprinted, I trust. Letter from Wicksted. Will do what he can for the Oberlin. Letters from Milnes, Mrs. Reid, and a lump besides. Also letters from Mr. Keep, the American delegate. There was a burst of tearful joy at the Oberlin, when they received the first instalment (£600) of our contributions. Mr. Dawes called, — an Ohio man, good-looking and hearty: says the corporation of London were unanimous, and proposed giving £1,000, first and last, but they were tampered with, he suspects, by the American Minister, Stevenson, and made to believe that helping the Oberlin would be flying in the face of the American government. When Dawes came in I was practising quadrilles for the children’s dance in the evening. It is curious to middle-aged persons to see little boys and girls dancing quadrilles perfectly and gracefully, and out in a country-dance. The gallopade step in a country-dance is a great improvement on the old jigging step. Our frivolity in comparison with the interests of the Oberlin struck me much, yet it is right enough in its way. Merry dance in the evening.

December 27. — Mr. Dawes called, and gave charming view of the Oberlin. The mischief-maker in the London corporation has lost his election in consequence, and they hope for a good vote from the reaction. The American Antislavery Society ask to reprint my article as a cheap tract. I am very glad of this. A dweller in Ohio, eleven miles from Oberlin, took in some seventy of the students and boarded Edition: current; Page: [346] them for a year. Another, many miles off, took in thirty. In like manner a farmer drove a cow a long way to present her to them. Some students are sons and brothers of slaveholders, and lose all their resources in going to Oberlin. So much for slavery being charming on the spot. One of the professors was offered $2,000 to preside at the proposed hall for free inquiry in Boston, but, as Dawes says, they might as well have tried to get one of the great Western oaks up by the roots. He went back to toil and poverty. Bad headache. Mr. Dawes, with capital facts and papers. His simplicity is very moving.

December 30. — Set about the Oberlin business after breakfast, when Mr. Dawes came in. He melted us all presently. It gives me great pleasure to recognize the fine American qualities which I used to admire there, — the glorious faith and piety, together with the shrewdness and business-like character of mind, sublime when applied to philanthropic instead of selfish affairs. Wrote some pages for them. — — came in. Thinks the Misses Grimké go a great deal too far in self-denial. So people thought in the days of the early Christians, no doubt. — — came in. Very solemn about the “Times” having taken up its song with Captain Marryatt against me; is earnest with me to answer. Shall not. Wrote a valentine for the boys.

December 31. — Wrote for the Oberlin as long as duty would allow. That subject warms one’s whole heart. Mr. Frederic Hill called to know if I could point out a person fit to be governor of the new prison at Perth. (He is Inspector of Prisons.)

December 31, 1839. — The year is within an hour of its close, — a year of little work, yet of some value, though I doubt having voluntarily improved. I have neglected some of my best means and encouraged my selfishness. An invalid state will not improve me in this. How long will it last? Who of us will depart this next year? There is a strange list at each year’s end. Now for joining heart with the Follens over the sea. They are thinking of me this midnight, I know.

On the next page, headed “Miscellaneous Observations,” I find this description: —

Château de Joux lies in the Jura, on the French side. Toussaint must have approached through the defile, winding round a rocky hill, and disclosing the tiny valley, — the little basin of fertile fields, with the clear stream winding through it, which was the last bit of green earth he ever saw. He must have walked or gone on horseback up Edition: current; Page: [347] the winding path to the fort. Dreary rock, crested by the fort. Grand rock opposite, and four roads meeting beneath. Perpendicular rock on the back side, part of which he might see from his window. Dark firs above, and a snowy summit behind knolls, with firs sprinkled about, and glimpses into two valleys; patches of enclosure; ditto of pasture in a recess, with a few cows and children. Cow-bells; — boys; — singing; — church-bell. A bird or two. A flock of goats. Small running stream beside the road.

Two drawbridges and portcullis. Great well, court-yard, long staircase, on the right; past the wheel, door to the left: damp and dark by vault and passage, and then Toussaint’s room on left hand. Is vaulted, low, with charcoal drawings on the ceiling, about twenty-eight feet long and thirteen wide, window breast-high, deep and grated, with some view of the court-yard and the perpendicular rock opposite. Floor planked, very much decayed, and quite wet. Dripping of water heard all round, and wet clay in the passages, and flakes of ice from the roof and walls lying about. Door by one corner; window opposite; fireplace in middle of left side; and formerly (they say) a stove opposite. Toussaint was found dead, lying by his fire, — they said on some straw alone; but the woman gave another account. Fire burning when he was found. High up, not under ground (but not the less damp for that. Dim light, but no sunshine ever).

Woman’s account seems to me not to be true. She was clearly opposed to other testimony in most of her story; but here it is. She never saw him; but her first husband was in St. Domingo, and died there. She says Toussaint was caught by being banqueted by Le Clerc, on board a ship (at the farther end of two hundred men), which sailed away while he was at table: that his servant remained with him to the last. (The old man in the village says the porter waited on him.) She says the commandant Rubeau, or Rubaut, had orders from government to treat him well, supplied him with books, and had him daily to his house because he saw that “il avait du chagrin”: that Toussaint went, daily; and the last night excused himself as being unwell. It was proposed to have his servant with him, — he refused it, — was left with fire, flambeaux, book, and fauteuil, and was found dead in the morning: that physicians examined him and declared it to be rupture of a blood-vessel in the heart. He had liberty to walk about within the drawbridge, — need be in his room only at night; was small, had “du génie,” spoke negro language as well as French, and had a ceremonious funeral. She showed us Edition: current; Page: [348] where he is buried. It was in the church, but alterations have lately been made.

This story is much what might be expected to be put forth, in the case of a murdered or neglected prisoner. How came he to be in such a vile dungeon? This is irreconcilable with the rest.

Toussaint lived among “the skeletons of the earth,” — the rocks (as Julia says): contrast with the warm and living scenery of the tropics. What time of year did he arrive? How much snow?

Make him speculate on how Napoleon would like to be fixed on a rock.

January 1, 1840. — Read Examiner and tried to write for the Oberlin, but could not write at all. Made a cap, therefore. C— T— came in to wish me good wishes. How charmingly she looked! My grandmother very ill, but likely to be better. Read Rahel (Varnhagen). Unsatisfactory. Went on with the Oberlin appeal. Writing fatigues me much. But what a cause it is! How it warms one as one proceeds! In Wilberforce I meet with a few facts about Toussaint. Curious, when it seems a dead subject, — one left for me to revive. — — to dinner. She became anxious to read about the Oberlin the moment she heard that Lords Brougham and Morpeth were interested in it. — — called. Odd, sometimes, to see thoroughly vulgar people. It enlarges one’s ideas.

January 3. — Wrote for the Oberlin. Mr. Dawes called, and all were charmed with him. He listened, deeply affected, to my additions, with moist eyes, as if the story were new to him which I had learned from himself. “You have had great assistance,” was his characteristic way of approving what I have done.

Evening. — Read Wilberforce, and looked over Dr. Crowther’s book. All envious of Sir William Ellis. Says I wrote on Hanwell at their dictation: whereas I had never seen them but once, and they knew nothing about it. Read an account of a case like my own. While every body seems to conclude that I shall get well perfectly in time, I feel far from sure of ever being well again, and that this complaint, mild as it is now, will not be my death. If so, it will probably be a few (very few) years of increasing ailment, ending with my sinking. There is nothing agitating in this thought, — much owing to my insensibility to some immense realities, partly to long experience of great events and change, and partly to habitual confidence that all is ordered well.

January 4. — Finished appeal for the Oberlin. Felt raised and joyful, as this subject always makes me. Quiet day, very happy. Edition: current; Page: [349] Charming letter from my mother, and from Lady Coltman telling me of £20 more for the Oberlin.

Read Mr. Thom’s account of the Oxford theology, drawn from their own writings: good. The irrevocable concessions, — concessions they have made for the sake of their plea of authority, which must fail, so the good will remain when the fallacy is overthrown. I feel a strong sympathy with them. Saving their premises, I go with them. Have been reading Wilberforce: grows twaddling in his old age, through want of cultivation of mind. Very noble, however, — his keeping back Brougham’s pledge about the queen, and silently suffering universal censure.

January 5. — C— T— and I had a sweet, long talk. Some chance through her of good to the class of unhappy women. If I live, this too must be my work. If not, some one else will do it, I doubt not.

January 13. — Mr. Dawes came on business about the Oberlin tract, which completely tired me, and made a bad day of it. Mr. Dawes is gloriously business-like.

The following letter shows that the antislavery problem was not the only one she bore in mind.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

April 24, 1840

Tynemouth, Northumberland

Henry G. Chapman

Chapman, Henry G.

TO MRS. HENRY G. CHAPMAN.

Tynemouth, Northumberland,

April 24, 1840

.

My dear Friend, —

I must send you a word of love, thanks, and blessing. You know, I dare say, that I have been very ill for nearly this year past, and that it is very doubtful when I shall be better, or whether ever. Instead of writing to you, I have been writing for the Oberlin, — doing the little I could, — and not in vain. Messrs. Keep and Dawes hope and believe that the institution is safe. But for our national immoralities, which have brought on, as a part of their retribution, visitations of poverty almost amounting to famine, we should have sent you more ample aid. If, however, the Oberlin is safe, we are humbly thankful. Mr. Dawes has endeared himself to us, and I thank you for introducing him to me. I have not yet seen Mr. Keep, but I hear that he is much beloved. . . . .

Living and dying I shall be in spirit with you and your cause. If I can do any thing, however little, for your work, ask me, and while I have breath in my body, I will work for you. I am now about a book which I hope may do some good if I am permitted to finish it. The barest hope of this would cheer my days if they wanted cheering, Edition: current; Page: [350] — which, however, they do not. You need feel no sorrow for me, my dear friend. How often am I full of joy for you, and yet I am sensible of your trials. They are very great, but they bear their own death-warrant, while the strength you oppose to them is immortal.

My kindest regards to Mr. Chapman. I should like to think that Mr. Garrison remembered me with regard.

Farewell, my dear friend. Many prayers rise for you and yours, from this land as well as your own.

Ever your affectionate

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

How goes your mind about a community of goods, and yet an inviolate personal freedom? . . . . When you see light, give it me.

July, 1840, Harriet Martineau writes to America thus: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

Dear Friend, —

I have seen Garrison; and among all the pleasures of this meeting I seem to have been brought nearer to you. If I were well, and had health, and if my mother’s life were not so fast bound to mine as it is, I think I could not help coming to live beside you. Great ifs, and many of them. But I dream of a life devoted to you and your cause, and the very dream is cheering. I have not been out of these two rooms for months, and now I begin to doubt whether I shall ever again step across their threshold. I may go on just as I am, for years, and it may end any day; yet I am not worse than when I last wrote.

We had a happy day, we four, when Garrison was here. I am sure he was happy. How gay he is! He left us with a new life in us.

Garrison was quite right, I think, to sit in the gallery at Convention. I conclude you think so. It has done much for the woman question, I am persuaded. You will live to see a great enlargement of our scope, I trust; but, what with the vices of some women and the fears of others, it is hard work for us to assert our liberty. I will, however, till I die, and so will you; and so make it easier for some few to follow us than it was for poor Mary Wollstonecraft to begin.

I must not begin upon Convention subjects. I am so tired; and there would be no end. You know what I should say, no doubt. The information brought out will do good, but the obvious deficiencies Edition: current; Page: [351] of the members in the very principles they came to advocate will surely do more.

Garrison brings you £2 from me, which I have earned by my needle for your society, being fond of fancy-work, and fit only for it, in this my invalid state. I feel in my soul the honour of the appointment of delegate. You know that I could not have discharged its duties, even if the others had been admitted. But there is in me no lack of willingness to serve our cause in any capacity.

Believe me ever your faithful and affectionate

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Again she writes to America, to the same friend: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

We are fighting many battles here, — great and important. We are doing away with the punishment of death. Yesterday morning I told a government man that Parliament and people are forwarder than he (who is a commissioner on the question) had any idea of; and last night he got his gradualism assented to in Parliament, by a majority of only one! All the best men, almost, came out against capital punishment altogether.

Well, my dear friend, live long as we may, there is no prospect of a want of work for us. We have a scope and a call such as few women have. What can there be in the world’s gift to tempt either men or women aside from such a destiny?

My kind regards to Mr. Chapman. He is always sure of my love and sympathy.

Ever your affectionate

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

In a letter to Mr. Empson, dated December, 1840, friendly and familiar, and which he had no idea would ever reach her eyes, Lord Jeffrey writes 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. I do not at all believe that the worthy people (or any of them) ever spoke or acted as she has so gracefully represented them, and must confess that in all the striking scenes I entirely forgot their complexion, and drove the notion of it from me as often as it occurred. But this does Edition: current; Page: [352] not at all diminish, but rather increases the merit of her creations. Toussaint himself, I suppose, really was an extraordinary person; though I cannot believe that he actually was such a combination of Scipio and Cato and Fénelon and Washington as she seems to have made him out. Is the Henri Christophe of her story the royal correspondent of Wilberforce in 1818? His letters, though amiable, are twaddly enough. The book, however, is calculated to make its readers better, and does great honour 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 honour; 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.”

Miss Edgeworth also sent a fervent and enthusiastic assurance of her admiration of “The Hour and the Man.” The title of the book was chosen as the one best calculated to conceal the hero’s colour, as this complexional prejudice was running high in the United States, and she hoped the work might tell in favour of her cause there. It was republished there immediately, and has since been republished at different intervals, in different forms; and our most admired and impressive orator, Wendell Phillips, seizing the subject for lecturing-tours on behalf of the cause, bore it through the whole land, deep into the prejudiced hearts of the people.

The next year Harriet Martineau addressed, from her sickroom at Tynemouth, the subjoined letter to her friend Elizabeth Pease of Darlington,* on the occasion of what were at that time called by careless observers “the divisions among the abolitionists”: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

February 27, 1841

Tynemouth, Northumberland

Elizabeth Pease Nichol

Nichol, Elizabeth Pease

Tynemouth, Northumberland,

February 27, 1841

.

My dear Friend, —

I have read the statements in “Right and Wrong among the Abolitionists of the United States,” with respect to the differences between the two antislavery societies in America, with a strong and painful interest. I wish I could adequately express Edition: current; Page: [353] my sense of the duty of every one interested in the cause of the negro, — of human freedom at large, — to read and deeply meditate this piece of history. I am not more firmly persuaded of any thing, than that those who, on the present occasion, listen to one side only, or refuse to hear either, are doing the deepest injury in their power to the antislavery cause, and sowing the seeds of a bitter future repentance.

I am aware how distasteful are the details of a strife. I know but too well, from my own experience, how natural it is to turn away, with a faint and sickening heart, from the exposure of the enmities of those whose first friendship sprang up in the field of benevolent labours. I fully understand the feelings of offended delicacy which would close the ears and seal the lips of those who have been fellow-workers with both the parties now alienated. Among all these causes of recoil, I see how it is but too probable that the antislavery parties on the other side of the Atlantic may be left by many of their British brethren to “settle their own affairs,” to “fight their own battles.” But if I had a voice which would penetrate wherever I wished, I would ask in the depths of every heart that feels for the slave whether it should be so; whether such indifference and recoil may not be as criminal in us as dissension in them; whether in declining to do justice to the true friends of the slave (on whichever side they may appear to be), we may not be guilty of treachery as fatal as compromising with his enemies.

Those who devote themselves to the redemption of an oppressed class or race do, by their act of self-devotion, pledge themselves to the discharge of the lowest and most irksome offices of protection, as much as to that of the most cordial and animating. We are bound, not only to fight against foes whom we never saw, and upon whom our sympathies never rested; not only to work for millions of poor creatures, so grateful for our care that they are ready to kiss the hem of our garments, — this kind of service, however lavish it may require us to be of our labour, our time, our money, is easy enough in comparison with one which is equally binding upon us; — it is also our duty to withdraw our sympathy and countenance from our fellow-labourers (however great their former merits and our love), when they compromise the cause. It is our duty to expose their guilt when, by their act of compromise, they oppress and betray those brethren whose nobleness is a rebuke to themselves. This painful duty may every friend of the negro in this country now find himself called upon to discharge, if he gives due attention to the state of antislavery Edition: current; Page: [354] affairs in America. If he does not give this attention, it would be better for him that he never named the negro and his cause; for it is surely better to stand aloof from a philanthropic enterprise than to mix up injustice with it.

The first movers in the antislavery cause in America, those who have stood firm through the fierce persecutions of many years, who have maintained their broad platform of catholic principles, who have guarded their original Constitution from innovation and circumscription, — Garrison, and his corps of devout, devoted, and catholic fellow-labourers, with the Bible in their heart of hearts and its spirit in all their ways, — are now in a condition in which they need our support. They have been oppressed, betrayed, pillaged, and slandered. Not they, but their foes, are the innovators, the bigots, the unscrupulous proselyters, the preachers of a new doctrine, modified to propitiate the proslavery spirit of the country in which they live. No one will call my words too strong, my accusations exaggerated, who will read the evidence relating to the transfer of the “Emancipator” (for one instance), or, casting an eye upon the statement of accounts of the American Antislavery Society, will perceive who voted into their own pockets the money by which the “Emancipator” might have been sustained, under whose commission the assailants of the Old Organization crossed the Atlantic and at whose expense they travelled throughout our country, sowing calumnies against Garrison and his faithful companions through the length and breadth of our land. When the friends of the slave here are told of treachery, pillage, and slander, will they hazard being a party to the guilt, for want of inquiry, even though the London Antislavery Committee, and their organ, the “Reporter,” at present appear to stand in that predicament? If they would avoid such a liability, let them read and consider the statement by which the case is placed fully before them.

No one is more ready than I to make allowance for lapse in the friends of the negro in America. I have seen too much of the suffering (not conceivable here) consequent upon a profession of antislavery principles, to wonder that there are but few who can endure, from year to year, the infliction from without, the probing of the soul within, which visits the apostles of freedom in a land which maintains slavery on its soil. From my heart I pity those who, having gone into the enterprise, find that they have not strength for it, and that they are drawn by their weakness into acts of injustice towards such as are stronger than themselves; for those who are not with the thoroughgoing are necessarily against them. We must regard Edition: current; Page: [355] with even respectful compassion the first misgivings, before they have become lapse. But what then must we feel, — what ought we to do — for those who have strength, for those who can suffer to the end, for those who are, after the pelting of a ten years’ pitiless storm, as firm, as resolved, as full of vital warmth as ever, as prepared still to abide the tempest, till the deluge of universal conviction shall sweep away the iniquity of slavery from the earth? Shall we refuse to hear the tale of their injuries, of their justification, because others have refused, or because the story is painful? May we dare to call ourselves workers in the antislavery cause while thus deserting the chief of its apostles now living in the world?

All believe that the truth will finally prevail; and you and I, dear friend, have a firm faith that therefore the Old Organization, with Garrison at its head, will prevail, at length, over the base enmity of the seceders. But we ought not to be satisfied with their prevailing at length, till we see whether they cannot be enabled to stand their ground now. Not a moment is to be lost. Not for a moment should their noble hearts be left uncheered; not for a moment should the slaveholder be permitted to fan his embers of hope; not for a moment should the American slave be compelled to tremble at the adversity of his earliest and stanchest friends, if we can, by any effort, obtain a hearing for the cause. Let us urge and rouse all who are about us, — not to receive our mere assertions, — not to take our convictions upon trust, — but to read, search out, and weigh the evidence, and judge for themselves.

This is all that is needed; for I believe there is not a friend of the slave, in any part of the world, who, knowing the facts, would not make haste to offer his right hand to Garrison and his company, and his voice and purse to their cause.

I am yours very truly,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

In a brief review of the year at the end of this volume of journal is the following: —

Two things occurred at the beginning of December which cheered me greatly. Lady Byron, being pleased with my refusal of a pension, placed £100 at my disposal for the relief of cases of desert and distress. It was done in the most delicate way, and the plenitude of my charity-purse will long be a comfort to me.

R. Monckton Milnes, the poet, I had felt to be on cordial terms with me, though a Puseyite and a Tory M. P. I had no idea, however, Edition: current; Page: [356] of what he could do for me. He heard of me through mutual friends, sent me his “one tract more,” and a beautiful letter, and those most truthful lines, ‘Christian Endurance,’ ” which have since supported me much and often. They will bear pondering, and well have I pondered them. It was a good deed of a young man to sit down to speak to the soul of one like me.

September 24. — Sir C. Clarke came. I could not but admire the frankness with which he told me that my illness is incurable; and I can never again feel health, if his judgment be true.

It is strange that this did not move me in the least, and does not now. I have long disbelieved that I should ever be in health again, and I have no wish that it were otherwise. How my mother will grieve! I never spoke to her of the hope of relief, but others have. That was too low a hope for me, though I am far from saying that I may not some time sink for want of it. At present I fear only the intellectual and moral consequences of a life of confinement. If they cannot be obviated, I must meekly bear them too.

Mr. Macready visited her about this time, and thus records in his journal the impression she left upon his mind: —

“March 28, 1841. — Intended to post to South Shields and cross the ferry to Tynemouth, but stopped and turned the postboy, and made him go to Newcastle, from thence to take the railway. Was half an hour before the train started; lunched; wrote a note for Miss Martineau. Went by railway to North Shields. Walked to Tynemouth, and inquiring at the post-office Miss Martineau’s address, called on her, sending up my note; she was very glad to see me. We talked over many things and persons. She is a heroine, or, to speak more truly, her fine sense and her lofty principles, with the sincerest religion, give her a fortitude that is noble to the best height of heroism.”

Writing in 1842 to console her friend under severe bereavement, she says: —

“I know that you will endure, — you are experienced in death. What would it be to you in this hour, that he had gained wealth, and lived in the praises of the vulgar part of society? What comfort is there not now, in the truth that he has sacrificed his wealth and his repose, and put his reputation to hazard, from love to the helpless! We are of one mind, dear friend, about these things. You do not Edition: current; Page: [357] perplex yourself with repining at the loss of your dearest friends, and I am satisfied to be confined to two rooms for a long time or a short, — and there the matter ends. We can smile an understanding to each other, and proceed to our business. When you hear me inquired for, just state the main truth, that I am not likely to die yet, but can never recover if the physicians are right. I am so unfit now for authorship, that I close with the fourth volume of the ‘Playfellow.’ I thank you for what you tell me of the first volume, — The Settlers at Home. It rejoices me always to hear of children being moved by any thing I write. You hear of the awful position of our public affairs. How are our starving multitudes to be fed?”

Writing again a letter of consolation for the loss of Henry Grafton Chapman, who sent his love to her from his death-bed, she says, —

“How kind, how beautiful in him it was to leave me those words.”

Dr. Channing too, who died at the same date, spoke of her frequently to his family with much affectionate admiration during the time previous to his death.

These lines, sent to her on learning her hopeless condition, are by Lord Houghton.

CHRISTIAN ENDURANCE.

Mortal! that standest on a point of time

With an eternity on either hand,

Thou hast one duty above all sublime;

Where thou art placed, serenely there to stand.

To stand, undaunted by the threatening death,

Or harder circumstance of living doom;

Nor less untempted by the odorous breath

Of hope, that issues even from the tomb.

For hope will never dull the present pain,

Nor fear will ever keep thee safe from fall,

Unless thou hast in thee a mind, to reign

Over thyself, as God is over all.

Edition: current; Page: [358]

’T is well in deeds of good, though small, to thrive;

’T is well some part of ill, though small, to cure;

’T is well with onward, upward hope to strive;

Yet better and diviner to endure.

What but this virtue’s solitary power,

Through all the lusts and dreams of Greece and Rome,

Bore the selected spirits of the hour

Safe to a distant immaterial home?

But in that patience was the seed of scorn, —

Scorn of the world, and brotherhood of man;

Not patience such as, in the manger born,

Up to the cross endured its earthly span.

Thou must endure, yet loving all the while;

Above, yet never separate from thy kind:

Meet every frailty with a tender smile,

Though to no possible depth of evil blind.

This is the riddle thou hast life to solve;

And in the task thou shalt not work alone;

For while the worlds about the sun revolve,

God’s heart and mind are ever with his own.

These are the lines that Dr. Channing so much admired, and after reading which he bade her be glad that she was the inciter of such holy thoughts and generous sympathies. His letters were a solace during her long exile from active life, and their friendship was constant to his latest hour. Their opinions on the doctrine of necessity and other philosophical subjects were unlike. “I am less and less troubled,” he said, “about theories which I disapprove when adopted by the good and true,” and his affection for her was undiminished by opinions which he could not abide. “You can hold them,” he said, “and hold your moral judgment and sensibilities too. You are unharmed by what would be death to me.” Of “Toussaint” he said, “I thank you for ‘The Hour and the Man.’ You have given a magnificent picture, and I know not where the heroic character is more grandly conceived.”

Edition: current; Page: [359]

The annexed letter to Mrs. Chapman, dated March 29, 1842, gives the mind of Harriet Martineau on the American political leaders of that time.

“One way or another I learn all the important features of your enterprise, and keep up with the history of your country. Just now, the best lovers of your country here are covered with shame. Webster’s instructions to Everett about the Creole have arrived, and the ludicrousness of the transaction is as remarkable as the shamefulness. . . . .

“For many years your writers and ours have exhibited Webster as your cheval de bataille, and have thrust him forward as the great American, so that his disgrace covers your whole country in English eyes. I am glad now that I bore my testimony against him in print so long ago. Those who believe in me and my book will want to see whether there is not yet something better than Webster on your continent. I hope he will be stung to the quick by the papers on his instructions. The Spectator, such a sinner generally against us abolitionists, is capital on that head. But I should wish him a more solemn retribution and a more corrective one, than wounded vanity for the tremendous sin of treason against reason; of laying aside such logical faculties as he has, to put false cases, out of the insincerity of his heart. . . . .

“I feel it much to gain time before our inevitable revolution comes. If it could only be put off to another generation, our educational plans expanding, our aristocratic institutions relaxing meanwhile, there might be an immense diminution of the guilt and misery which must more or less attend such a bouleversement as must take place.”

Tynemouth, March 30. — The majestic unchanged posture of the faithful is impressive and cheering, but what an uprooting of the poison-tree there must be which is ramifying under the walls of the Supreme Court, and exhaling its venom into the eyes and brains of the Judiciary!

On the 15th of September, 1843, stands this entry in her journal: —

“A new imperative idea occurred to me, — Essays from a Sick-Room.”

Of this book her friend Henry Crabb Robinson said, that no praise could be too strong for the integrity of the work, as of some earlier ones; that a very few lines or phrases inserted, Edition: current; Page: [360] with a reserved sense of her own, a very trifling amount of concession, would have gained her the praises and the custom of “the religious world,” so that she would have been comforted and made much of, and have made her £ 30,000, like Hannah More. This grated upon her temper, and she almost felt as if she had been praised for honour in not reading an open letter if left alone with it, or with a purse of gold without stealing. She “shuddered at the idea of the religious world laying its paws upon me.”

“The new and imperative idea” came to her on the 15th. The entry in the journal on the 19th is, “Wrote first of the essays on ‘Becoming Inured.’ ”

So it was ever in her life. Thought and action were simultaneous, and the sound followed the flash to the beholders.

“Life in a Sick-Room” was republished in America, and called a blessing to humanity in all English-speaking lands; and it was said that all who read it found their thoughts and their hearts visiting her sick-room with grateful love. Great numbers of persons prefer it to any of her works. Philosophers are less impressed by it.

Again the poet, and by this time the friend, sends consolation.

TO HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Because the few with signal virtue crowned,

The heights and pinnacles of human mind,

Sadder and wearier than the rest are found,

Wish not thyself less wise nor less refined.

True that the small delights that day by day

Cheer and distract our being are not theirs;

True that when vowed to virtue’s nobler sway,

A loftier being brings severer cares:

Yet have they special pleasures, — even mirth,

By those undreamt of who have only trod

Life’s valley smooth; and if the rolling earth

To their nice ear have many a painful tone,

They know man does not live by joy alone,

But by the presence of the power of God.

R. MONCKTON MILNES.

Edition: current; Page: [361]

But at length endurance reached its bounds; and after her recovery she writes thus: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

March 15, 1845

Birmingham

Henry G. Chapman

Chapman, Henry G.

TO MRS. HENRY G. CHAPMAN.

Birmingham,

March 15, 1845

.

My dear Friend,—

Once again I write to you from the midst of life, — from a house full of busy, gay young people, where there is no check upon occupations, talk, or mirth for my sake. It feels very strange, but very delightful. I am glad you have had some personal knowledge of mesmeric effects. I like that those whom I love should know something of the wonderful influence whereby I have been restored, and by which my present duties are marked out. My case has made a great sensation; and similar cases are being told, and the knowers are comparing notes, and consulting how best to concentrate and use the powers put into our hands by our knowledge. And the sick and their doctors write to me, — a multitude of them; and my business is thus put under my hand very clearly. In addition to this, I have now to write a tale, — a little book for our great League Bazaar, — being too well and busy to do the fancy-work I had intended to send. It is all I can do “to keep my stockings mended.” [An allusion to the popular proslavery charges to American women: “Go spin, you jade, go spin!” and “Better be mending your stockings!”] To finish about myself, I am, as far as all kinds of evidence can show, perfectly well. I now doubt whether I was ever well before. I have a very unusual degree of strength, shown not only in my daily long walks, but in my going through daily business, and much odious persecution from the doctors, with entire ease and composure. It is, however, a clear duty to take care that this good state is confirmed, before entering on the hurry and fatigue of my old life in London; and I have agreed to a charming plan suggested by some friends at the Lakes, that I shall settle among them for some months, and lead an open-air and holiday life (as far as mine can be) for the whole summer and autumn. The Arnolds, Wordsworths, Gregs, and Fletchers will be my neighbours and companions. From the first of June my address will be, “Ambleside, Westmoreland.” Till then, “Robert Martineau, Esq., Birmingham.” To whom shall I give this direction about the “Standard”?* I value it highly, and I should like still to have it come as hitherto. It was a delightful surprise to me last week to see what Edition: current; Page: [362] had been done about my table-cover. No such destination had ever occurred to me, but I will now own I did feel a little sorry on sending it off, as the thought that that which held inwrought so many of my deepest ideas and feelings would probably go into the hands of some entire stranger, who would be wholly unconscious of the real value of the work to a friend. I say this just to indicate to you what must have been my gratification when I saw what had been done. How amusing it is, in face of such facts, to remember the contemptuous charge of ordinary folk against you, that you are “people of one idea!” You seem to have a good many feelings, at all events.

I do long to see what is to happen next among you. While your well-wishers here are mournful, and think your condition low and your prospects dark beyond repair (I mean those of your country), I cannot help recurring to my old ground of hope and cheer for you, — that your people (never beginning to do their best till they are at their worst) do rise up in moral might when the danger is pressing, and discharge their duty better than any other people when once they set about it. I cannot conceive that the North will succumb to the South in such times as all men see you are now entering upon. I have such faith in your countrymen as to expect from them that they will surrender their false pride, and give up their idolatry of the existing form of the Union, — now become a malignant and obscene idol, — in order to apprehend and do homage to the true spirit of which it was once the representative. If you (in or out of the “Standard”) can justify this hope by your testimony, it will make me very happy. I have, myself, no doubt that the whole matter is in the hands of the North. Without calling the South a bully or a coward, or other hard names, I suppose it is an indisputable fact, that the South is actually powerless, if the North do but think so, and act accordingly. Its not acting accordingly is the impediment I find on every hand, when I try to make your case understood here as well as my small knowledge permits. Another difficulty that I meet with is from your (the abolitionists) being, as a matter of course, mixed up with our Antislavery Society here, which is now disgraced almost to the lowest point; your true alliance is with our League, as you all know through George Thompson. And there is now the most absurd and shocking virtual alliance between the antislavery folk and the West India interest. I protest, with all my might, against your being classed with your namesakes here, showing the while how different your work is, even if they were in the way of their duty. But argument and explanation do little with people who do not know your country. The only Edition: current; Page: [363] effectual evidence will be your enforcing a clear demand for a renovated and purified Act of Union. But I am always vexed with myself when I write in this way to you, my ignorance may so easily make it all a waste of your precious time; yet, even so, you may like to see where those who love your cause want enlightening. We are doing well in our public affairs, — morally better, I think, than ever before within my memory. The prosperity is pleasant, but the awakened spirit of society is good. The sugar question is all wrong, but must erelong be better treated. In other matters, fiscal and moral, I do think we are pretty rapidly improving. The Anti-Corn-Law League is, I do think, a noble body, with a glorious function.

And now, my dear friend, for this time farewell. I bless you for all your acts of love towards me. I need not tell you that my heart is with you.

Yours affectionately,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

This brother, whose address she gives in the foregoing letter, is he whom Harriet Martineau always spoke of as “my good brother.” He died in 1870, leaving a name so much respected in Birmingham as to need no eulogy, whether as chief magistrate or as a public benefactor.

Besides the immense amount of writing done at Tynemouth, during those years of pain which she called her passive period, she used to fill in the chinks of time with fancy-work. She made pretty baskets of braid and wire-ribbon, which sold for a sum sufficient to found a library for the Barracks. She sent them also to the National Antislavery Bazaar in Boston, United States. But a really remarkable piece of work, both for its great beauty and the amount of time bestowed upon it, was a table-cover, “the four seasons,” of Berlin wool wrought into fruits and flowers, which was bought by subscription by her antislavery friends, and presented to Mrs. Follen. Thus it was the means of raising one hundred dollars for the cause, and gave those friends the occasion for expressing what they felt of affectionate gratitude for all her works and her labours and her patience.

This residence at Tynemouth during her long severe illness she always called her “passive period,” — but with small show Edition: current; Page: [364] of reason, seeing that head, heart, and hands were so full of activity. Much has been told of what she did, but more must remain untold. For example, in her journal this note frequently occurs: “Wrote Grainger paper,” “Grainger came,” “Wonderful man.” From after writings of hers it appears that his great public works in Newcastle bear witness to him. He had Harriet Martineau’s best help in carrying on his enterprises.

With the money placed at her disposition by Lady Byron she caused a drain to be laid the length of Tynemouth Street, and ordered a well to be dug in the garden of her lodgings, that served the whole row of houses and “kept the maids from bad company.”

It was after many years of suffering from illness that Harriet Martineau’s mind was exercised a second time by the proposal of a pension. It was then a period of public distress, and her means of livelihood were failing with her power to write. She however preferred to share their privations with the people to being supported by ministerial patronage.

Her decision was appreciated by the people, and they held a public meeting in London, Colonel Perronet Thompson in the chair, by which it was resolved unanimously, —

1. That this meeting fully appreciates the moral and political honesty which led Miss Martineau to refuse the pension offered by the late Whig administration; though they think there has rarely occurred an instance in which the royal bounty would have been so well bestowed.

2. That it is the opinion of this meeting that the answer of Miss Martineau involves a great principle, since if the people were fully represented, the act of the executive would be the act of the people.

3. That this meeting holds Miss Martineau to have pre-eminently deserved well of her country, and that it respectfully and cordially recommends and urges upon the public at large meetings like the present, to show to her, in an unequivocal form, public appreciation of her conduct and character.

4. That a copy of the foregoing resolution be transmitted by the chairman to Miss Martineau.

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The thanks of the meeting were then given to the chairman for his conduct in the chair, and to the proprietors of the hall for the gratuitous use thereof, for the purposes of the meeting.

P. PERRONET THOMPSON, Chairman.

I received a long time since from Mrs. Henry Turner of Nottingham, a friend and relative of Harriet Martineau, a letter containing an interesting narrative of the circumstances attending her restoration to health; but as it does not differ from her own in a preceding volume, except in incidentally giving the names of many witnesses, I need not here repeat it.

Now came her removal from Tynemouth to the neighbourhood of Windermere, where she first saw Mr. Atkinson, a gentleman who devoted his fortune and life to philosophical pursuits and studies, and who afterwards became her coadjutor in the publication of the philosophical work called, for brevity’s sake, “The Letters.”

When she afterwards made an inquiry about him of Dr. Samuel Brown, a deep student of philosophy, whose name is always associated with his “Atomic Theory,” his reply was as follows: —

“I think him the noblest man I have known. If his attainments in positive knowledge and his culture in the art of expression were equal to the nobleness and magnitude of his proper genius, he would be the foremost man of the age. His acquirements are not small, — his gift of speech is excellent and even admirable of its kind. But a soul of such capacity and fineness should know as much as Humboldt and Comte, and be able to write itself out with as much strength and delicacy as Carlyle and Tennyson. But I ask wondrous things of him.”

This unexpected acquaintance between Miss Martineau and Mr. Atkinson became a firm and lasting friendship. Being so much younger than herself, — brother at once and son in years and in reverential and sincere devotedness, he received and gave furtherance in their scientific studies; and was induced by her to give the world the benefit of those studies in the work they published in concert, — the “Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development.”

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Harriet Martineau’s works during this “passive period” were, “Deerbrook,” “The Hour and the Man,” “Settlers at Home,” “Peasant and Prince,” “Feats on the Fiord,” “Crofton Boys,” “Guide to Service,” “The Dressmaker,” “The Maid of all Work,” “The Housemaid,” “Life in the Sick-Room,” “Letters on Mesmerism,” or sixteen volumes by English publication estimate.

This was what Dr. Walter Channing presented to the American faculty in a medical publication, in warning against pampered idleness, as a bedridden case.

The opinions of the readers of “Deerbrook” have been as various as possible; one thinking it a proof of the inferiority to themselves to which great writers sometimes sink, and another declaring it to be “one of the eight great novels of the world,” while the reading world delights in it up to the present time.

As one good deed or thought helps another, so her home deeds were strengthened by her foreign aspirations. Witness the following letter to an American friend at this time.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Our greatest achievement, of late, has been the obtaining of the penny postage. I question whether there be now time left for the working of beneficent measures to save us from violent revolution; but if there be, none will work better than this. It will do more for the circulation of ideas, for the fostering of domestic affections, for the humanizing of the mass generally, than any other single measure that our national wit can devise. Have you read the evidence before the Bankers’ and Merchants’ Committee? Did you see, for one instance, the proof that the morals of a regiment depend mainly on the readiness of the commanding officer in franking the soldiers’ family letters? We are all putting up our letter-boxes on our hall doors with great glee, anticipating the hearing from brothers and sisters, — a line or two almost every day. The slips in the doors are to save the postmen’s time, — the great point being how many letters may be delivered within a given time, the postage being paid in the price of the envelopes or paper. So all who wish well to the plan are having slips in their doors. It is proved that poor people do write, or get letters written, wherever a franking privilege exists. When January comes round, do give your sympathy to all the poor Edition: current; Page: [367] pastors’ and tradesmen’s and artisans’ families, who can at last write to one another as if they were all M. Ps. The stimulus to trade, too, will be prodigious. Rowland Hill is very quiet in the midst of his triumph; but he must be very happy. He has never been known to lose his temper, or be in any way at fault, since he first revealed his scheme.

In consequence of words like these from her in a letter to himself, Mr. Hill, the prime mover and conductor of this great achievement, replied thus: “An expression of approbation from you more than repays me for whatever I have done.”

It was just after the publication of “The Hour and the Man” that Garrison wrote thus of Harriet Martineau in remembrance of all her great devotedness: —

SONNET.

England! I grant that thou dost justly boast

Of splendid geniuses beyond compare;

Men great and gallant, — women good and fair, —

Skilled in all arts, and filling every post

Of learning, science, fame, — a mighty host!

Poets divine, and benefactors rare, —

Statesmen, — philosophers, — and they who dare

Boldly to explore heaven’s vast and boundless coast.

To one alone I dedicate this rhyme,

Whose virtues with a starry lustre glow;

Whose heart is large, whose spirit is sublime,

The friend of liberty, of wrong the foe:

Long be inscribed upon the roll of Time

The name, the worth, the works of Harriet Martineau!

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FOREIGN LIFE, — EASTERN.

“I felt my brow strike against the stairway, and in an instant my feet were on the steps. . . . . I perceived that each successive step, as my foot left it, broke away from beneath me. . . . . And thus did I for a few seconds continue to ascend. . . . . Till, happy as a shipwrecked mariner at the first touch of land, I found my feet on firm ground.”

— Moore.

Harriet Martineau’s health restored, and with it her restoration to what was always so precious to her, — the society of her family and friends, — her mesmeric mission accomplished, her house built and time taken to confirm her cure, the way then opened for the best use of her renovated powers.

She had lived the life of her time, in sympathy with its every variety of human being, and she was now, by sympathy, to enter into the life of all time; passing successively, by means of modern travel, through the fourfold life of Eastern antiquity. The book she subsequently wrote, combining as it does the deepest studies, thoughts, and feelings with the interests and acts of daily life in the lands called “blest” and “cursed” and “holy,” — the lands of the pyramids and of the desert, her thoughts meanwhile sweeping through all time from Menes to Moses, and from Nazareth to Mecca, — fully merits the title of “Eastern Life, Present and Past.”

It harmonizes what is perdurable in the four faiths of Egypt, Sinai, Palestine, and Syria; and shows how the main ideas of moral obligation, strict retribution, the supreme desire of moral good, and the everlasting beauty of holiness are ever passing through all systems from age to age, gathering to themselves all with which they are in agreement, and finally annihilating all besides, and crowning with blessings the whole human race.

As Harriet Martineau’s life was a continual progress, it might Edition: current; Page: [370] be expected that, after such far-reaching thoughts as she has recorded, she should begin to cast back a depreciatory glance upon what was transient in her life in America and her life in a sick-room, — as, for example, upon the metaphysical disquisitions and the traditional forms, — while seizing with an ever-strengthening grasp on what is everlasting. Philosophy was superseding metaphysics.

Besides being a standing benefit to Eastern travellers, the book keeps its place as a way-mark and stands as a philosophical stepping-stone in the public mind. On its first appearance, thirty years ago, it was warmly praised, with a reservation. Now, its reappearance is hailed with unreserved satisfaction. One of her latest acts was to write a preface for the new edition. Of course there are never wanting those who stigmatize this work of a good heart seeking and appropriating its own through the past, as an unpardonable deviation from the present; but the book is generally felt to be one of those things which survive their day, to light the path of those about to enter upon a serious search for truth. It is a preparation of heart, and the mind soon follows the heart’s lead.

To know the impression it made on its first appearance on minds qualified by literary cultivation to appreciate it in part, one should turn back to the “Edinburgh Review” of 1848, where one of the representatives of literature spoke thus warmly of it, selecting for commendation the description of the temples of Philœ.

“A work giving fresh interest to the beaten track of Egyptian travel and researches was put into our hands, — Miss Martineau’s ‘Eastern Life,’ of which the first volume and part of the second relate to ‘Egypt and its Faith.’ Excellent as a book of travels, it is equally excellent as an adjunct to history. Miss Martineau unites the observant with the learned traveller, sees for herself, even after Eothen; and has put spirit into the dry bones of Champollion, Wilkinson, and Lane. The bustle of Cairo and the solitude of Thebes are sketched with equal power and truth; even the desert has its gorgeous hues, and the silence of centuries becomes eloquent in her pages. A single extract is all we can afford at present. Were we looking out for a merely descriptive or a merely reflective passage, or for one startling Edition: current; Page: [371] from its speculative boldness, we should be at a loss where to begin and where to end. But as we must begin and end with a single extract, we have selected the following observations, as not only true in themselves, when properly limited and understood, but of general application to all researches which have for their object the practical moral and intellectual life of antiquity. The tendency of Europe, at the revival of classical learning, was to idolize the past. We now incline to desecrate and depose it. The earlier propensity was that of the bookworm; the latter is that of the sciolist. Surely there is a medium in which scepticism may acquiesce and faith repose; in which research and reverence may be reconciled, and the present illustrate without disfiguring the past. Detur hœc venia antiquitati ut, miscendo humana divinis, primordia augustiora faciat.”

In order to possess at first hand the vivid descriptions and penetrative thoughts from which the book on Eastern Life was made, one must search the voluminous Eastern Journal. It is filled not only with wayside adventures and interviews with persons of all nations, but also with citations from past writers in comparison with present conditions, accompanied by pencil-drawings illustrating the temples and architecture, the rocks and various changes of scenery through which the little party passed, amid the bustle of Cairo and the solitude of Thebes, — and so onward. One should travel in imagination in company with these closely written pages in Nile boats and on camels’ backs to the journey’s end; for it is but here and there a glance that can in this place be afforded, whether at things or thoughts. But these are not countries, as she herself says of Egypt, to go to for recreation.

“All is too suggestive and too confounding to be met but in the spirit of study. One’s powers of observation sink under the perpetual exercise of thought; and the light-hearted voyager who sets forth from Cairo eager for new scenes and days of frolic, comes back an antique, a citizen of the world of six thousand years ago.”

EASTERN JOURNAL.

. . . . I used to be surprised to find how much less preternatural Shakspere appeared after I became acquainted with some of the elder dramatists; and for a long time I have been becoming aware Edition: current; Page: [372] how much Judaism owes to Egyptian predecession, and Christianity to both; and to heathen wisdom mingled with it, — not by Christianity, but by the recorders of the Gospel. And I see much less advance upon the wisdom of heathendom than I used to suppose; the chief wonder to me now being in the comprehensiveness of mind which existed in a Jew, and in the popular purport of his mission and instructions. And the farther I go in an Eastern country the more natural and accountable seems the whole matter, — the more easily supposable in the ordinary course of human thought and action. And to me it is much more animating and encouraging to see that, in natural course, and by ordinary operation of universal faculties, prophets and saviours arise, and will doubtless continue to arise, than to believe that by a special intervention one Redeemer was once sent, whose influence has certainly, thus far, not been adequate to so singular an occasion and office. What I already see and learn of Oriental life and modes of thought takes as much from the marvellousness of the Bible as it enhances the hopefulness of its purposes and of the destiny of universal man. It does not follow from this that the best prepared and exercised imagination will not on the spot see the deepest and the most clearly, — even as Lord Byron could see more of the beauties of Lake Leman than a dolt, though he found it impossible to write poetry in the actual scene, and had to wait till he got within four walls, as all writers have to do who write any thing worth reading, unless they have power of abstraction enough to enable them to abolish their surroundings. Surely the destiny of man is secure and clear enough under these great conditions, — that he shall be for ever living in the presence of and in general allegiance to great ideas as historical facts, till he can entertain them fitly for their own sake, and that by the natural structure of the human mind such great ideas must for ever be arising in the succession needed; the order being, Need, Appliance, Superstition, Philosophy, Wisdom, — a new Need having meantime arisen to animate, a new Gain through the same process.

Then follows a rapid wayside story of interviews with Selim Pasha; and the description that gives local colour to her book: —

Yellow beaches, shady palms, rugged Libyan Hills, glowing red and orange sunsets with green and lilac shed between upon the waters, the young moon meanwhile so bright behind the branches of trees that any one would have noted it, notwithstanding the surrounding brightness, as a hazy heavenly body. Moored to an island for Edition: current; Page: [373] the night. The country fertile and much tilled; the people in good condition. Many water-draughts. The men work only two hours at a time. A voice along the banks proclaims the resting-time. They are mostly small proprietors. Much tobacco and millet. Mr. Yates gathered what seems to be cotton. The yellow flower beautiful. Castor-oil plant beautiful too. I suppose the dogs of the peasantry are really formidable, from the warnings given to me of them. But I never remember to be afraid of them. The excitement about Thebes now began. We were looking towards the Libyan Hills which contained the tombs of the kings. We got into a wind which carried us nimbly on towards the great point of our voyage. To the east spread a wide, level country, backed by peaked mountains, quite unlike the massive Arabian rocks with which we had become so familiar.

Alee pointed out some of the heavy Karnac ruins behind the wood on the eastern bank. Very large and massive they looked. But the chief interest, as yet, was on the other shore. There we saw through glasses, and pretty clearly with the naked eye, traces every where of mighty works, which seem to show that, if one could blow away the sand, a whole realm of architectural grandeur would appear. Long rows of square apertures indicated the vast burying-places. Straggling remains of buildings wandered down the declivities of sand. And then the Memnonium appeared, and I could see its pillars of colossal statues; and next we saw — and never shall I lose the impression — The Two! — the Memnon and his brother, — sitting alone and serene, the most majestic pair ever, perhaps, conceived of by the imagination of art. No description of this scene can ever avail; it cannot convey the vastness of the surroundings, the expanses of sand, the rear-guard of mountains, the spread and flow of the river, the sparse character of the remains and the extent which they claim for themselves. The lines of the scenery seem to enhance the vastness; the almost uniformity of land-colouring, of the natural and artificial features, with the vivid green of the intermediate shores, where Arabs and camels and buffaloes were busy (the modern world obtruding itself before the ancient), the blue or gray river, reach behind reach where divided by green promontories, — the softness of all this is not to be conveyed to a European conception. I like the old name for this part of Thebes, — “The Libyan Suburb.” I first stepped ashore at Luxor. Alee had to buy a sheep and some bread; so we took a guide who could speak English, and set off for the ruins. First were conspicuous the fourteen pillars which front the river in Edition: current; Page: [374] a double row. But we went first to the great entrance of the temple. No preconception can be formed of these places. It was not the vastness of the buildings which strikes one here, but their being dimly covered with sculptures, so old, so spirited, so multitudinous! The stones are in many places parting, for the cement is gone, and the figures of men and horses extend over the cracks, as full of life as if painted. But the guardian colossi! What mighty creatures they are! The massive shoulders, and bend of the arm, and serene air of fixity, how they make one long to see the whole! A third helmet is visible, and a fourth among the Arab huts elsewhere, — those miserable round patches which destroy all unity of impression about this awful building. I was much struck with the nearly buried columns, with the melon or lotus (or what?) shaped capitals, which are hardly seen from the river. What vast stones rest on them! One of these architrave stones of the other range (the fourteen) has fallen upon the rims of the cup composing the capital without breaking it. Yet the stone is not granite. These last capitals were all painted, and the blossoms, buds, and leaves which adorned the flower-like capitals were very distinct.

The one sensation, after all, was the sight of the Memnon pair on the Gournon side. To conceive of the avenue of sphinxes from the main entrance here at Karnac, and then to look from another face over the river to these sitting statues, and think of them as the outposts of the great temple there, — what a chain of magnificence was this! Certainly no work of human hands ever before impressed me with any sense of the sublime like these statues. There is an air of human vigilance about them, amidst their desert and the vastness of the scene, which is truly awe-striking. And one wonders that works so primitive should reach the sense of the soul more effectually than those which are the result of centuries of experience and experiment. These and many wondrous detached portions of the temple, dispersed among Arab ovens, stables, and dwellings, were all we now saw. The rest, on our return.

The people looked well, intelligent, and sleek, for the most part. They crowded around us. . . . .

The rank held by the women in old Egypt is a most striking consideration. Are there any other instances? The Germans were distinguished for this, but in quite a different way. There seems to have been a real equality among the old Egyptians which indicates a degree of enlightenment which may make their lofty mythology not a single marvel.

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Then Philœ in descriptive fulness, with ground-plan and all its special temples, courts, corridors, and avenues, omitting only the lateral chambers; “but this,” she says, “is from memory only; and quite untrustworthy.”

Doubtless since she asserts it, so it is; but her memory, as a general thing, was wellnigh unexampled. Those who knew her best say she outrivalled Macaulay. “She never forgot any thing.” She goes on, with an expression of satisfaction at what she has done: —

“The satisfaction of the clearing up of my mind about the contents of Philœ is greater than I could have supposed; and it has left imagery, and old processions by water to the sacred isle, such as I could not have had by any meaner experience than that of this day.”

Here she met Mr. Findlay and Prince Czartoryski, between whom and herself there was the bond of deep interest in Poland.

Evening. — Settled myself; saw the Creykes, relations of Wilberforce, and received Count Zamoyski. I omitted to mention an inscription in French, in the side of the large propylon, relating the arrival here of the republican army under Dessaix in 1799; and over it is a line printed, — “La page de l’histoire ne doit pas être délié.”

For a delightful chapter of Eastern life one has only to turn to the preceding volume. Sufficient in addition to say, that after Harriet Martineau’s return, her “dear aunt Margaret Rankin” did not wait in vain for the story of wonders which she had bespoken; — “from your own lips,” “with bottles of water from the Jordan and from the Nile; for I cannot expect you to purloin a step of four feet long from the great Pyramid.”

This book was the occasion of some comical experiences. A lady whom she had mentioned with reproof, though not by name, for having purloined specimens of Egyptian antiquity from some cave or temple, accused her in the “Times” of false witness, the lady having never been at the place mentioned. Miss Martineau promptly replied that, having become aware of that fact, she had already ordered a correction to be made in the next edition. For the rest, as the spoliation remained a fact, Edition: current; Page: [376] no correction was needed. The lady responded at much length, awaiting a reply. Miss Martineau repeated her assurance of a correction as to the locality, reaffirming the fact. The lady threatened a libel suit, and there the matter ended.

A second experience was no laughing matter, for it concerned the feelings of a young churchman, who feared to lose the approbation of his bishop if he should become involved in her account of “a young clergyman of the church of England carrying candles in a procession” during some ceremony at Jerusalem. In this instance she was fortunately able to obviate all mischief; but unforeseen risks, it seems, beset the path of Eastern as well as Western travellers. In compensation, however, she had often been able to do individual good by the way. “You have probably heard,” says Mr. Edward W. Lane, the author and Oriental scholar whom she met at Cairo, “of the patronage accorded me by our government. It is most highly gratifying to me; and for it I feel that my thanks are due to you as well as to others.”

She entered her newly built house, that was to be for years the home of health and happy industry, of study and of strenuously active benevolence, of which we have her own description, on the 7th of April, 1846.

The mental field that had as she thought been lying fallow during the passive period at Tynemouth now showed the germs it had been unconsciously cherishing; and, while scattering into the field of the world such seed-growths as “Eastern Life, Past and Present,” and “The Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development,” she was busy with her great works, “The History of the Thirty Years’ Peace,” “Comte” (Philosophie Positive), and constant leading articles for the “Daily News.”

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HOME.

“Hands full of hearty labours: pains that pay

And prize themselves, — do much that more they may

No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep

Crowned woe awake, as things too wise for sleep:

But reverent discipline, religious fear,

And soft obedience find sweet biding here.

Silence and sacred rest, peace and pure joys, —

Kind loves keep house, lie close, and make no noise;

And room enough for monarchs, while none swells

Beyond the limits of contentful cells

The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers

Her kindred with the stars: not basely hovers

Below, — but meditates the immortal way,

Home to the source of light, and intellectual day.”

Crashaw

How many travellers from all lands have visited this dwelling among the Westmoreland mountains, as a shrine! Yet varied and beautiful in its grandeur as the surrounding region is, one was always too much absorbed in listening to the genius of the place to be able to observe the scene without or the surroundings within. For the first, I need only indicate her “Guide” to the land she loved so well, and her papers in “Sartain’s Philadelphia Magazine,” where are to be found incomparably accurate and beautiful pictures of the Lake country. But she has not mentioned “The Knoll,” restrained by that same sentiment that made her refuse to gratify the friends who entreated her to allow her initials to be drilled into the stone above her door: “I think such things savour of vanity.” On entering it, guests were merely aware of being in a dwelling of the utmost convenience and comfort; in a home pervaded with the subtle influence of well-ordered and elegant hospitality. And although Edition: current; Page: [378] one could not then, at first, have told the cause, it is made clear by that passage of her Autobiography which tells of the purchase of the land and the building of the house, why the whole seemed so worthy of her: she had fashioned it after her own likeness. And one desiring to gratify many feels bound of course to note the particulars by which the general effect is produced, as observed in the leisure of an after day. The house is perfectly planned for all her purposes, being roomy and convenient. It is built of the dark gray Westmoreland stone, in the fashion of the houses in Elizabeth’s time, with large bay-windows, gables, and clustering chimneys, and overgrown to the very eaves with ivy, jasmine, the snowberry plant, passion-flowers, and climbing roses, which make a harbourage for the birds. Scores of them fly out of it at sunset, if you do but open the door, returning instantly to their perch among the leaves; so safe and quiet are their lives here. The house is built on a little knoll, — and hence its name, — in the valley of the Rotha, nearest to the village of Ambleside, a mile beyond Lake Windermere.

On approaching from the village, no part of the building can be seen from the road; and you pass in between massive lozenge-built gate-posts by a drive well planted with larches, beeches, holly, and a thicket of hawthorn, laurel, and laurustinus, — incredulous and uncertain where it may be. But following the gravelled sweep, a few steps bring you suddenly upon the terrace before the house, which fronts upon the valley; and thence you look down upon the parterres bright with a thousand flowers between. The greater part of the little domain — “our farm of two acres” — is flanked to right and left by an oak-copse, and enclosed by a cross-pole fence of larch-wood entangled with rose-bushes, — a luxury to see. Almost concealed by the copse, at the foot of the steps to the left, below the terrace, is the farm-servants’ cottage and the cow-house; while the little root-house, farther down, by the lower gate, with its young pine-tree and pollard willow, makes a pretty accident in the sketch.

Standing before the charming woodbine-covered porch, on your left, in the middle distance, lies the village of Ambleside, at the foot of Wansfell. Farther on, beyond the church-spire, Edition: current; Page: [379] in the valley, rise the more distant Furness Fells, and through the near wide-branching oak-tree of a thousand years, which helps to draw the boundary of the property, you catch a gleam of Windermere. Thence the eye climbs the steep, well-wooded end of Loughrigg; and, following the high horizon line in front, notes the charming variety of heath and shrubbery, and green fields and forest-trees, along its side as far as Wordsworth’s house in the Rydal pass, through which in early spring a gush of wintry sunshine comes down towards evening, flooding it with beauty and splendour. All along on Loughrigg side are the sheep and cattle pastures; and it is a pretty sight to see these white and dark moving spots, that seem placed there merely for beauty, while they constitute so important a part of the wealth of the country. On a mild, breezy day there rises a most soothing sound of the wind on its way through the clumps of trees in the valley, mingled with the rushing of the mountain streams. The continual strengthening or fading of the hills as the mists grew denser or were swept away, and all the changes of their colour from dawn to sunset, none but herself could describe.

The low stone-wall around the terrace is marked by a hedge of eglantine; and I know not whether its flowers in summer or its hips in winter make the prettiest effect. The large bay-windows, still more embayed without in ivy, subjected the proprietor to a tax of five guineas a year at the time they were planned. But Harriet Martineau knew she had not laboured in vain for the abolition of the window-tax, and she built in the secure determination that her successors, at least, should enjoy the mountain landscape and the play of clouds, the sunlight and the air, which she had so zealously laboured to make the heritage of every cottager. Her faith was justified. The window-tax was long since commuted for a very moderate house-tax.

On the right of the terrace, a flight of some thirty or forty stone steps takes you easily down to the orchard-slope below, where stands the costly sun-dial, of light gray granite, the gift of her friend, Miss Sturch of London. It is fashioned like a Gothic font, affording seats on its octagonal base; and catches the eye like a gleaming speck from the opposite side of the Edition: current; Page: [380] valley, whence you see The Knoll relieved against Fairfield, and instantly distinguished by its dial from the other dwellings. And surely the apostrophe to intellectual illumination, her own device, inscribed upon the base, — “Light! come visit me!” — has not been made by her in vain.

On the same level is the stone-pine planted by Wordsworth; and before you reach the swarded field, from which you are separated by the iron fence, is a little nook or grotto quarried into the knoll itself, and furnished with comfortable rustic seats, — the gift of her sister; and having taken sanctuary there you may feel safe though all Westmoreland were in pursuit of you, and listen undisturbed to the cawing of the distant rooks.

In view from the terrace of this “well-neighboured house,” as Emerson in those old times called it, curls the smoke of Fox How, the residence of Dr. Arnold’s family; and farther on lived Mr. Quillinan, the son-in-law of Wordsworth. Thus there were strong human interests and a strong local glory around the Rocky Knoll when she made it her own, for Wordsworth and many another well-known name still dwelt there.

But not only was Harriet Martineau’s house well-neighboured: by the most important principle of decoration it was well-furnished too; for of every thing within it one might affirm that, for the best possible reasons that thing should be there and no other, — almost every picture, object, and piece of furniture uniting elegant convenience and adornment with some family remembrance or token of friendship. The drawing-room was especially enriched by them. There was placed the collection of lighter and contemporary literature, mostly the homage of the authors. The beautiful carpet, of the time I am telling of, was the gift of her friend Jacob Bright, who procured the dimensions and had it placed in her absence, to give her a pleasant surprise. The whole furniture of the room illustrated the points of Harriet Martineau’s character by bringing to the thoughts of beholders the persons, so numerous and so various, who, separately and strangers to each other, had this one experience in common, — that they were each drawn into sympathy by one of the many sides of her powerful nature. At the entrance, on the right, stands Edition: current; Page: [381] the marble-mounted sideboard, sent by her friend H. Crabb Robinson, the eminent English and German student, the philosopher of the Unitarians, the admired and cherished friend of so many distinguished persons of the last century, that he modestly said of himself, “Some men are famous on their own account: I am famous for my friends.” The little silver almanac was a present from her friend Mr. Darwin. The stone jardinière was given by the proprietors of a neighboring slate-quarry, on the occasion of her visit to them described in her little volume of Letters on Ireland. Richmond’s fine crayon-drawing of Harriet Martineau, of nearly life-size, the engraving from which adorns so many dwellings, placed nearly opposite the door of entrance, was a homage from himself. What touching stories ought to be told of so many another useful and ornamental object, all brought together from different nations and kindred and tongues and people; but a few more must suffice as illustrating parts of her own experience. On the sideboard stands her brother Robert’s gift, — the household lamp that lighted her evenings. On a little table is an ebony papeterie, the gift of Florence Nightingale. The gold inkstand on another was the expression of her friend Lord Durham’s grateful appreciation of the restraining power she exercised over a riotous population. The tea-caddy was bought of a poor and suffering neighbour at its full price the day before a sale at which the rest of the furniture was sacrificed. The pretty French clock, on the centre bookcase (which covered one side of the room, filled with works principally of belles-lettres given by the authors of the day), marks the sense her family entertained of her generosity in influencing her mother to omit all mention of Harriet in her will. The Prie-Dieu of Berlin tapestry-work, begun by herself at Tynemouth, was finished and presented to her by her nieces, her brother Robert’s daughters. The statuettes, Aristides and Niobe, were placed there by her sister and her aunt; and the square, Egyptian-modelled oaken pedestals were a part of her furniture at Tynemouth. The engraving of Scheffer’s “Christus Consolator,” which she enjoyed and understood so thoroughly, was the consolation of her sick-room at Tynemouth, through the Edition: current; Page: [382] kind thoughtfulness of Miss Adelaide Kemble.* Between the engraved portraits of her friends, Lord and Lady Durham, hung a pastel of one of the Norwegian Fiords (described in “The Playfellow”), sent her by Lady Byron; and above it, Eastlake’s gift of his “Byron’s Dream.” The full-length engraving of Mrs. Fry was there, presented by Richmond, whose work it is. The engraving after Raphael was a token of regard from Mrs. Carlyle. In her own room hung Miss Stephen’s gift, — a water-colour by herself, — “Woodland.” The other souvenirs in the drawing-room are “Mrs. Calmady’s Children,” from her friend Evans, the artist; Goethe’s “Mignon,” from her friend Mr. Knight. The “Pet Antelopes” is from Mrs. Mackintosh; the portrait of Admiral Beaufort, a present from the Beaufort family. “Corwen Inn,” a charming oil-painting by Baker, was presented by Mr. Vincent Thompson; an engraving of Sir William Napier is from Lord Aberdere, his son-in-law; “Christ and the Tribute-Money,” from Mrs. Jameson; “A Heathery Moor in Yorkshire” is by sister artists, the Misses Gittings; the Prie-Dieu is from her early friend and sister-in-law, Mrs. Robert Martineau. The solid reading-desk is from Mrs. Richard Martineau; the work-box, from her dear and early friend, Mrs. Ker.

The flowers and plants with which the room was always filled were also offerings from far and near.

The large photograph of Colonel Shaw, first white colonel of the first black regiment raised during the civil war in America, was sent to Harriet Martineau by his mother, Mrs. Francis George Shaw of Staten Island, N. Y. It was placed conspicuously; “and it always melts my heart,” she said, “to look at it, and think of that great deed that proved two races worthy of each other, and helped to save your land for both!”

Across the hall, to the left as one enters the house, is the study, two sides of which accommodate the more voluminous and useful of her books; probably the best woman’s library extant, — certainly the best I have ever seen, consisting of between two and three thousand volumes. They are books of art, biograraphy, education, general literature, geography, voyages and Edition: current; Page: [383] travels, history, morals and politics, political economy, theology, and works of reference. This last department was peculiarly well chosen. There were all sorts of annuaries: and first the annual register, of a hundred volumes; American ditto and American Almanac, a present from Judge Story; the various American constitutions of nation and States; reports of the poor-law commissions, annuaries of astronomical observatories, Almanach de Gotha, annual reports of the antislavery societies, Gorton’s Biographical Dictionary, Biographie Universelle in eighty-three volumes, census returns of the British Empire, all the concordances and dictionaries, — Bayle’s, Johnson’s, Lemprière’s, — dictionaries of all the classic and modern European languages. Then there were encyclopædias of agriculture and essays on all subjects; books of jurisprudence and prison discipline; school-inspectors’ and sanitary books, and all possible hand-books; with Hone’s popular works, and all the useful works of reference on Ireland. The Mémoires of the French Institute were a present from Ampère. Then there were the reports of all sorts of commissioners, — on education, mining, criminal law, poor law, idiocy, and pauperism; juvenile books; and catalogues of public libraries. The purchase of these valuable works, necessary for a political writer who would fain make known what the world has been, the better to make it what it ought to be, was a great but satisfactory item of her occasional expenditure. There were all manner of books on woman’s duties and rights. Knight’s weekly volumes which she had planned with the Countess of Elgin, Biographical History of Philosophy. Hardly an eminent name of her time that is not affixed to some presentation copy. A guest deeply interested in education took pains, with her consent, to obtain a catalogue in order to be enabled to aid socialscience efforts in the formation of town libraries.

On the walls hung two views of Lambton Castle, from the Countess of Elgin. In each of the twelve panels of red pine round the bay window was a cartoon of Raphael in wood-engraving, from her friend Mr. Ker. “I’ll tell you how to treat this red pine for doors and wainscoting,” she said to one who was admiring it: “varnish when new, — leave it two years, — then Edition: current; Page: [384] another coat, and you have it as you see.” The colour of the carpet and curtains, the hangings being then in red velvet with a touch of gold, were in harmony with the tint of the woodwork.

Imagine, — between globes and little stands for precious objects, with here and there casts of Clytie and the Huntress Diana, — the bay-window, filled with geraniums, and the library-table with her chaise-longue behind it, and you have a general idea of this room, which seemed less a library than an oratory, consecrated as it was by a devotedness to the world’s welfare so instinctive as to have become unconscious; but visitors were always conscious of it, and stepped softly and spoke low, as if the place were holy.

“Voila ses saints!” said one of them, standing before the chimney, where was placed a bust of Mr. Atkinson and over it the bas-relief of a friend which Harriet Martineau had procured to be executed by Foley. On each side were the engravings of Dr. Follen and Mr. Garrison. Over these was the proof before the letter of the engraving of himself sent her by Mr. Macready.

Here stood the library-table, and I must confess to have shared the general feeling in no ordinary degree as the drawers of this table were opened for me: the records of a lifetime — and such a lifetime! — placed in my hands and at my discretion.

There, sitting in the seat which illness had obliged her to quit, I begin with the drawer at the right hand. There are three on each side. These are the labels on each great package of papers: —

1. Accounts and correspondence with booksellers.

2. Letters of pecuniary business.

3. Letters of moral business.

4. Letters from strangers or otherwise curious.

5. Letters from deceased persons.

6. Letters to be returned unopened.

7. Correspondence with reviews and newspapers.

8. Letters of literary business.

9. Letters of family business.

10. Letters of Testimony and American Intercourses.

Edition: current; Page: [385]

No. 11 was two cardboards tied together with tape, inscribed “Unpaid Bills.” But there were no papers between them, and, as I learned, there never had been.

Beneath the table was a stack of tin boxes containing years of journals, diaries, jotting note-books, sketch-books, and accounts. “Take away with you every thing you want when you go!” And that dear friend of mine who “was unto her as a daughter,” her niece, Maria Martineau, aided me in the selection.

In every other part of the house tokens of love and reverence and family affection were as abundant. Of the more general “Testimonial,” that the preceding Autobiography tells of, £120 were expended by the subscribers in a tea and dinner service, the principal piece of which was inscribed thus: —

Memorial OF A Testimonial. H.M.

I find allusion in her journal to the first use of it, on the happy day when the Ladies Lambton came to Tynemouth, and “it was a testimonial fête.”

Harriet Martineau’s life in this little paradise was manifold. As mistress of a family and as a domestic economist, one may know some of the particulars by referring to her little book, “Our Farm of Two Acres,” which is so constantly in circulation, and reprinted in America, “in the conviction,” say the publishers, “that the local character of the experiences will not affect their value to American readers.” This agricultural experiment of hers was so successful as to attract a great deal of notice, and influenced some proceedings in the neighbourhood. A heavy package of letters under my hand proves the burden of correspondence that the accidental publication of her letters on cow-keeping in the “Times” occasioned her. Her papers in “Sartain’s Magazine” (Philadelphia) show her passionate enjoyment of the glorious nature by which she was surrounded. It made her strong and happy in her influential political work, to Edition: current; Page: [386] the eventual extent of which more than sixteen hundred leading articles in the “London Daily News” bear witness. The subjects of them are as various as the interests of the world, of which she watched the fluctuations with the same calmness of deep emotion that shone in her eyes while enjoying the cloud-shadows chasing each other across the valley.

We know how she looked in childhood and youth. There was a remarkable change in her appearance in mature age. Every one noticed it. “How handsome she looks!” “One of the handsomest old ladies I have ever seen!” “Does n’t she look like a sovereign princess!” and such like notes of admiration were continually heard; and, indeed, as she sat in thought at her daily hour of rest, with her Berlin embroidery by her side, and her beautiful hands (“hands that the rod of empire might have swayed!”) folded across the newspaper on her knee, her whole presence instinct with high thinking and goodwill, her whole expression so full of restful activity, it would have been difficult to find so impressive yet fascinating a presence. When comes such another! Happily a trace — necessarily a faint one — yet remains in Holl’s excellent engraving of Richmond’s admirable portrait.

One great secret of this new beauty was the joy of mental progress. She had ceased to make her God in human image; and, following the path that stretched before her from childhood, had thought and felt her way to a more satisfactory worship.

Her celebrity had always been a tax in many ways, and the difficult problem was how to bear it aright.

It was about this time that she was so overwhelmed with the ever-increasing amount of correspondence drawn to her by a general sense of boundless sympathy conveyed in all her writings, that she found it impossible to answer its demands.

Her own generation, with its questionings and plans, she still had time for; but the young pressed so thickly around her that it seemed as if they could neither do well nor ill; do good or repent of evil; marry, choose a path in life, or die, without looking to her. Sister of charity and spiritual counsellor as by nature she was, she now found herself under the absolute Edition: current; Page: [387] necessity of letting it be generally known that her whole life would be insufficient to meet this continual call. “They all so evidently think I am of their own age! I must try to show them their mistake, and be to them even as I am. Was n’t there Mrs. Hannah More and Mrs. Edgeworth? I see there were reasons for it: I will be Mrs. Harriet Martineau, which will, besides, obviate mistakes in the delivery of letters, there are so many Misses Martineau!” This arrangement so soon occasioned a sensible relief, that she had reason to congratulate herself on having so easily diminished the inconvenience without wounding the sympathies of the elders: many old friends soon fell in with her wishes, and numbers of them wrote promissory notes, as it were, beginning their letters, “Dear Mistress Harriet;” but the public at large were true to their first love, and, unaware how many were the misses of the same name, would never acknowledge her but as Miss Martineau.

It was at The Knoll, at about this period, that, in the midst of many lighter books, her most laborious works were written. One was the Thirty Years’ Peace, all after the first book; and it was that unexampled thing, a history on moral principles of the time not yet passed away.

Mrs. Martineau entered The Knoll in 1846, on the 7th of April; and it was while preparing to do so, on the 25th of March, that her friend Macready

“Saw a brown-faced looking woman watching for the coach; thought I knew the face; looked out of window; it was Miss Martineau. She came to the inn where we stopped; a few words passed; she told me to get my dinner at the inn, as she had but one room, and then come to her. I got a very bad dinner and set out to her old lodgings, to which the servant had misdirected me; met her on my return in search of me, and 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 strides as she walked along with me to Fox How, Dr. Arnold’s place, from which the family are at present abroad. We walked on to Rydal Mount, to call on Wordsworth, who was ill in bed, and had had leeches this morning. I left my regards, &c., took a walk along his Edition: current; Page: [388] terraces, and, returning to my inn, soon after rejoined Miss Martineau at Mrs. Davy’s, with whom and Mr. Greg I took tea and passed a very agreeable evening. I had received a pamphlet and long letter from Professor Gregory on the subject of mesmerism, on which we had talked a little at Major Thom’s, on Saturday last; it is a translation of Reichenbach, and, with some curious facts mentioned by Miss Martineau, certainly made me pause in my utter rejection of this hitherto inscrutable and mysterious power, if power it really be.”

Of his next day’s visit to The Knoll: —

“I do enjoy the air, the hills and streams, that are keeping up their gentle noise all around me; the morning was one of the best of early spring’s. I planted two oaks for Harriet Martineau, which, with her small spade, cost me some strain of the back. The more I see of her pretty house the more I am pleased with it; it has not, that I perceive, one point of objection, with an infinite number of recommendable qualities. We walked to the chapel over the Brathay, took a lovely view of Windermere, and walked home, talking hard all the way. I read to her Willie’s account of the shipwreck; it was to me a very pleasant morning.

“I spoke to her of my wish that Nina* should hereafter spend some time with her, which she appeared to concur in very heartily.”

While Hawthorne was in England he saw Mrs. Martineau, and recorded his impression of her in his note-book: —

“. . . . I saw Miss Martineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, elderly woman, and plainly dressed; but withal she has so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face, that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from calling herself old. 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. All her Edition: current; Page: [389] talk was about herself and her affairs; but it did not seem like egotism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbidness. And this woman is said to be atheistical! I will not think so, were it only for her sake. What! only a few weeds to spring out of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympathies flowering and fruiting for ever!”

Dr. Samuel Brown, the philosopher and friend of such extremely opposed theological opinions, with whom she so often held the high argument that high-minded disputants alone can, wrote as follows at this period: —

“. . . . And my ‘beautiful enemy’ in theory, my noble friend in life (Harriet Martineau), is condemned to death! The physicians pronounce her incurable. She writes us a long letter, a sort of last farewell; but, sooth to say, it is like the abdication of a queen, this dying! Without the faith of a Christian (or even that of a Mahometan in God), and with a philosophical scheme most defective, this great woman seems to me endowed with certain of the most eminent religious virtues, — fortitude, self-possession, resignation, the having no will of her own, and perfect trust in the optimism that is at the centre of things, to say nothing of her many fine moral qualities. And what a life of virtuous industry! ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy (misknown but secret) Lord.’ ”

Perhaps the following letter of a later date, from a visitor at The Knoll, while Harriet Martineau’s life seemed to hang each day in the balance, may serve better than any narrative to show what effect she produced on the minds of her inmates.

1855

The Knoll, Ambleside

The Knoll, Ambleside,

1855

.

My dear Friend, —

Here I am at H. M.’s; and I must needs say, that an hour in death may be worth a year of life. Not that she is in articulo mortis as yet, but she may die at any moment, in one of these fainting or sinking fits, which are so distressing to see. Let the pulse stop a second or two longer, and all would be over, — just as the last drop sinks the ship. She is now engaged in writing her life, — her inner life that is, — and the changes her mind has undergone, and the reasons of them. Don’t mention this, for I do not wish to have any thing go out of this house which she has not seen. Not that she would have any objection; she has vexed and perplexed the world, during her fifty years, to the greatest extent, by her unexampled sincerity; Edition: current; Page: [390] but I do not choose to supply matter for possible misrepresentation of any thing I say. I never saw such transparency in all my experience. The French are, as a nation, far beyond the most open English in this respect. But she is like a diamond, — hard and solid, bright and sparkling, and you see through and through it, and the stronger the light the brighter it shines. But then she is like water, too, — soft, yielding, purifying, and gentle or overwhelming, as the case may be. She talks of your friend — —, to give the outside of her life. It needs no great literary ability to do it. Any body would have capacity enough to hold up so precious a stone to the light, and shift it about a little, although no lapidary or jeweller. To know its value would be the great qualification, and that, I think, — — does.

1855

The Knoll, Ambleside

The Knoll, Ambleside,

1855

.

. . . . I am still here; and here is death at the door; but Harriet Martineau is the happiest person in her enjoyment of life and her anticipation of its immediate close, that I ever saw. I see what it is to have lived, — not under the exhausted receiver of ladyhood or mere womanhood, — but the life of a human being. Yet her sensibilities, risible or pathetic, are like those of early youth. Her laugh is like that of a child, and in her sleep she seems like one, when not disturbed by the heart-difficulty. It is impossible to describe the beauty of the place here. The larches are not yet in bud, yet it is lovely past expression. I will tell you, as I think of them, the things likely to interest you, but do not mention them to friends less wise than yourself. There are people who should never hear a really interesting thing; for they have not retention enough to keep it to themselves, nor sense enough to transmit it unchanged. I mean, too, the unfriendly, such as A—, who hates Harriet Martineau fiercely on account of moral oppugnancy, or B—, who hates her gently because of theological differences. You would be astonished to know how all England and France are agitated by what I will call the death-bed question. — Her death-bed seems to have set them all on the qui vive. The anonymous letters, that pour in, apropos or mal-apropos of the Harriet Martineau letters are curious indeed. Original verses on pink paper, entitled the “Folly of Atheism;” copies of the New Testament; manuscript collections of texts about immortality, and the like. The letters from “Christian friends” are yet more curious. The kindest of them account for her peace of mind by the supposition that God is especially sustaining her and supporting her, although she does not know it. “In short,” she says, “they can easily account for my being comfortable and happy in Edition: current; Page: [391] mind, by supposing me the special favourite of their God, whom I reject.” She will use the word “religion” in the bad sense. I argue for it, — but no. Then her “views”! I have been travelling in England in the heat of the Crimean war, and I protest to you that her “views” seem much more in the minds of all the people I have met than the siege of Sevastopol. . . . .

I am so struck with her absolute, candid, real love of truth. She seems utterly destitute of prejudice. Then she is so womanly, in the good sense of the word, and in some senses so sensitive. She sometimes suffers much from little things I could not possibly suffer from at all. For instance, a story in the newspapers that she “hoed her own cabbages,” and the story of the old peasant at Ambleside, who said, “I should ha’ liked one like she for my good woman; for she would ha’ ploughed.” This would be called feminine delicacy, I suppose, but it really is human sensitiveness: I could hardly conceive of such things as annoying to such a one as she, till I learned from her that they were distressing to persons that she loved and respected. How weak is the mind of a certain part of England! I could see, by this little incident, how her “views” must strike such persons, — persons who, like one of her neighbours, expressed the sentiment that “people owed it to their friends not to change their opinions.”

In the course of conversation one evening at The Knoll, Mrs. Martineau told us of a letter she had received in 1851 from Mr. E. J. Furnival. He said that in the judgment of William Johnson of King’s College, Cambridge, the development theory and the doctrine of the non-existence of personality like man’s personality, in God, are capitally answered by Tennyson, in his “In Memoriam,” — the first by Strophe CXIX., the second by CXXIII. He did not like “The Letters.” Some one remarked that he did, however, like “Deerbrook,” and told all his friends that he had made thirty men read it. “He wanted to know,” she continued, “whether I knew Austin’s ‘Jurisprudence,’ and his distinction between the laws proper, of the moral world, and the laws improper, of the outward or natural world, — natural laws. He could not brook the accusation against Bacon (as of Moses, in ‘Eastern Life’), he said, of being what he should call a blackguard, — saying false things, when he knew the truth.”

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She gave us an abstract of her reply; but as I find it in the Athenæum, and as there is in it no confidential communication, I subjoin it (in preference to my own recollections), as it gives so many of her “views” in reply to objections to them.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

October 5, 1851

The Knoll, Ambleside

The Knoll, Ambleside,

October 5, 1851

.

Dear Mr. —, —

Your packet and I arrived here almost together. I must beg of you to thank Mr. — very heartily for me for the wonderful pleasure he has sent me in this little volume. Like most other people (whom I have met with, at least), I shrank from a whole volume of published griefs; and the more, because I knew Arthur Hallam; and, like every body that has read it, I forego my objection (which I still think natural) during the reading. I began to cut and read last night; and I stopped at last, by a virtuous effort, from the feeling that I ought not to be able to take in so much at once, — that I ought to spread it out, — though, happily, I have the volume to refer to at all times. I cannot honestly say that I had any thing like so much pleasure from “The Princess.” There are bits of wisdom and of beauty, — many; but the impression of the whole is more than odd; — it is very disagreeable, — to my feeling. It does not follow that I am not glad to know it; still less, that I am not as much obliged to you for making me read it as if I had liked it ever so much.

And now I am wondering how Mr. J. and you can see any “answer” in those two poems of Tennyson’s to anything Mr. Atkinson and I have said. Who has ever said that men are only brain? Does any one say that an orange-grove is only carbon, silica, &c.; or the nightingale only a chemical and mechanical compound, — passing over the product or result, — making no mention of the fragrance and the music? If any one did say so, and could establish it, would he not be elevating the chemical and mechanical elements and forces, and not lowering the blossom and the bird? There they are! — beyond his power to disparage. And so “we are what we are, — however we came to be,” as I said in that book. “Science” is very far from pretending to say that men are “magnetic mockeries,” or any sort of mockeries; but the most real of all things that men can have cognizance of, and therefore proper subjects of science. Science goes to show us that there is far more in man than Tennyson or any one else has ever dreamed of; and the one very thing that science most strenuously and constantly insists on is that we do not and cannot know any thing whatever of essence, but only of Edition: current; Page: [393] attributes or qualities, — say phenomena. — As for the other poem, we should scarcely object to any part of it, and eagerly agree with most of it. You know we think it nonsense — a mere jingle of words — to profess to disbelieve in a First Cause. It is an inseparable, an essential part of human thought and feeling to suppose a First Cause. (See our book, pp. 240, 342.) It is only when men presume to say what are the attributes or qualities, — making it out a magnified human being (which Xenophanes so well saw our tendency to do), that we decline to abet such hardihood, and to attach our awe and reverence to an idol. — As for our making Bacon a “blackguard” (your word, you know), the question is one of fact, — always remembering that the avowal of convictions on speculative subjects is not the same virtue in all times. I do not admit the “blackguardism” of Moses, for instance, but rather regard his avowal of so much as he did declare as worthy of reverent admiration. Bacon was awfully faulty in that matter; but, as you well know, far more criminal in others; a thorough “blackguard” as Chancellor, if timid and cunning as a philosopher. But you can satisfy yourself about this, which is better than taking any body’s word for it. Study him well, ascertaining his bearings, and not forgetting to look into the dates of his various writings, and see how the matter is; and don’t blame us for Bacon’s weaknesses, nor yet judge him by the circumstances of your and my station and time. (For that matter, however, do you know no very good people who sanction what they believe to be untrue, for other folks’ good yet more than their own peace and quiet?) As for your question about the grounds of our aspiration after self-sacrifice, &c., our ground is much the same as yours, I should think. If you were asked why you obey the will of God, you would say that it is because your nature impels you so to do; because you feel it to be best; because you long, and yearn, and love so to do. So we, — if asked why we prefer health to sickness, peace to turmoil of mind, benevolence to self-indulgence, — reply simply that we do. Our moral, like our physical faculties, indicate health and happiness as our natural action; and, as we incline to temperance as the rule of health, we naturally aspire to a life of self-sacrifice, or, say rather, of active good-will, because it is inexpressibly desirable in our eyes. This is one ground. But I think it is a higher, and therefore more natural, state (when simply living, and not arguing) not to think about the matter expressly at all, but simply to give way to our love of our neighbour, and act from it, without reviewing any “grounds.” As for the reviewers, they have been Edition: current; Page: [394] more fraudulent (in misquotations and the like) than I had supposed possible; but that is their affair, and not ours. As for their wrath, we must bear in mind that most of them are divines, doctors, or somehow concerned in metaphysics; and that we have attacked the very staple of their thoughts and lives. Thus, great allowance is to be made for them, and they really cannot do us justice. We do not see that any one of them has touched any one point of our book; and they answer one another so effectually as to save us the trouble of doing it. We have brought a great deal of censure on ourselves through the form of our book, — its mere epistolary form, and its stopping short in the middle. Some day we shall probably give out our views in a more complete and orderly way. Meantime we have the pleasure of some hearty sympathy; and, where we are most abused, it is a true satisfaction to sympathize the more with our enemies the less they are able to do so with us. There is nothing but the sheer dishonesty (of which I am sorry to say there is a terrible deal) that afflicts us at all. . . . .

Our field prospers. Every lot is sold; and all were paid for in one day, — to the last shilling. The money is in the bank; and I am thinking how to get up baths and a reading-room with it. The roofs are on the two cottages now nearly finished; and very nice houses they are. I find my ground will admit of two, and I have been asking — — — whether I may not venture on a second. . . . . I have lost (you kindly inquire, you know) some of my potatoes this year, and nearly all my turnips, — from the absence of frost last winter. All else is flourishing, and beautiful beyond description. I come home, with work for two years on my hands, — in full health, — after a capital holiday with my family, and with not a care in the world.

Now I think I have answered all your questions. And what a quantity I have given you to read!

Believe me truly your obliged

H. MARTINEAU.

O yes, — I have Austin’s “Jurisprudence” on my shelves.

But whatever she did, though in the most simple and private manner, was sure to attract public attention in an inexplicable way, both from her village neighbours, the labourers and mechanics, and her country neighbours, the nobles and gentry. The former sought her as a source of instruction, help, and Edition: current; Page: [395] information, and “the noble lords in the chair” gave her health as such at public entertainments.

Nothing is more interesting to housewives than to know how their contemporaries live; and nothing was more interesting to the great writer on political economy than the details of domestic economy the world over. The world will repay to her the compliment. Below are subjoined the accounts of one year at The Knoll.

RECEIVED.

| £ | s. | d. |  |  |
Dividends and interest | 382 | 10 | 5 |  |  |
Earned. “D. N.” | 280 | 7 | 0 |  |  |
Periodicals | 66 | 0 | 0 |  |  |
Old works | 30 | 17 | 9 |  |  |
Old papers, &c. | 1 | 0 | 9 |  |  |
Farm | 42 | 0 | 3 |  |  |
|  |  |  | £ 802 | 16s. | 2d.

SPENT.

|  |  |  | £ | s. | d. |  |  |
House and selves |  |  |  | 230 | 5 | 3 |  |  |
Highest sums, beyond wages. |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
Meat | 22 | 2 | 7 |  |  |  |  |  |
Wine and beer | 12 | 4 | 9 |  |  |  |  |  |
Fuel | 13 | 8 | 6 |  |  |  |  |  |
Postage, &c. | 11 | 2 | 2 |  |  |  |  |  |
Gave away |  |  |  | 261 | 4 | 8½ |  |  |
Farm |  |  |  | 108 | 6 | 7 |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  | £ 599 | 16s. | 6½d.
Balance |  |  |  |  |  |  | £ 202 | 19s. | 7½d.

SERVICE.

Such was The Knoll, Harriet Martineau’s house, and such was its mistress: no less admirable was her household.

All interests there were harmonized and welded into one; for she could not help treating her servants as if they were her children, and their deferential duty was truly filial. They generally came to her young and lived with her long; and friends visiting her at intervals never failed to notice, from time to time, their improvement in manners, general appearance, and Edition: current; Page: [396] intelligence. There were who made light of her knowledge of the “higher classes,” because in one of the “Illustrations” a certain Lady F. is described as treating her servants with affection. But she always thought it a libel on every class to assume that they have not all one human heart, and she wrote this tale as an example, and painted this portrait as a vindication of the higher class from the aspersion of being without exception indifferent to the humbler. Yet she recommended to all the dress and expenditure suited to their means and condition. We have already seen that she understood so thoroughly the theory of domestic service, that persons who saw her name for the first time on the little title-page of “The Maid of All Work” supposed she must herself be a servant. Looking over these little guides to domestic details in after years, how many have been reminded of the words of Scripture: “Whoso is greatest among you let him be your servant.” Neither the education nor the household training of her servants was neglected, and their devotedness was the natural fruit of her loving care.

I was authorized by the writers to print the subjoined correspondence, seeing I so much desired it, as more illustrative than any statement of mine: —

Martha Andrews

Andrews, Martha

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

MRS. MARTHA ANDREWS TO MISS MARTINEAU.

My dear Miss Martineau, —

I write a line to say that I hope dear Mrs. Martineau is better this week. I have thought much of her to-day as I was looking over a memorandum I have of our first meeting. I think it will not be uninteresting to her, just as I put it down at the time.

“September 24, 1847. — I met with the kindest reception from Miss Martineau, who was now become my mistress.

“We travelled together to Birmingham, and I shall never forget the delight I felt in her company; and the day was glorious. I enjoyed the journey exceedingly, the country was so beautiful; and we passed so many country churches, and here and there a hill in the distance. We were met at the station by Miss M.’s brother. We stayed a fortnight at Edgbaston, and I was so happy!”

I hope I am not intruding by referring to the past, but I had indeed Edition: current; Page: [397] forgotten it till to-day, when I dropped upon it, and I just copy it down, as I then wrote it, after getting to Ambleside.

With kind love and duty to Mrs. Martineau, I beg you to accept the same from

Your humble and affectionate servant,

MARTHA.

It was to this servant, whom she always mentioned as “my dear Martha,” that her mistress wrote the following letter while in near prospect of death.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

March 31

Ambleside

Martha Andrews

Andrews, Martha

Ambleside,

March 31

.

Dear Martha, —

I have been anxious for some time to send you a line under my own hand, and now I do it, partly to thank you for your very interesting and gratifying letter to me, and partly to ask your acceptance of a little gift from me which I hope to send by the next post (as I cannot put in the packet on a Sunday). It is a brooch containing a bit of my hair. We cut off my long hair lately, and I knew you would like to have a piece, so I had it set in a brooch; and I send it now, not at all knowing how long I may be able to hold converse with you in any way.

You are fully aware of my state, I believe, — that I may live for even many months; but that it is more probable that I shall go off suddenly in one of the sinking fits which occur every few days. . . . . But we all think the sudden and easier ending the more probable. One does not think of having any personal wishes in matters so serious and solemn; but when I consider my dear nieces (Maria especially as head nurse), and the sacrifices they are making for me, and the anxiety to so many friends of my being in so precarious a state, and, I may add, my own former experience of long illness, I certainly feel that the end, whenever it comes, will be a welcome release.

I have no great suffering, though of course I never feel well, and often very ill, — with the strange ailments which attend a disordered circulation and an irregular action of the heart. But there is nothing which prevents our being as cheerful a little household as you could easily find. We have no concealments, and we do not wish any thing in our lot to be otherwise than as it is. We employ ourselves, and enjoy the beauty of the valley; and one friend or relation comes after another. Sister Higginson came first; then Mr. Atkinson for a month; then my brother Robert, who left us to-day; and next, my sister, his wife, will come in Susan’s place. My sister Rachel I saw in London. Elizabeth and Caroline are as kind and good as can Edition: current; Page: [398] be, and so is your brother.* I have taken care that my good servants shall be protected and assisted after my death, as I have told him. I am so happy to think, dear Martha, that you look back on your abode here as a not unprofitable time, — morally. It is a great pleasure to believe that, at that important period of your life, you were able to derive benefit from your position, and I thank you for giving me the pleasure of telling me so. Of my affection for you, you need no fresh assurance. If this should be the last time of my writing to you, accept from me, with confidence, the assurance of the love of

Your affectionate friend,

H. MARTINEAU.

My kind regards and wishes to your good husband.

Martha Andrews

Andrews, Martha

Robert Martineau

Martineau, Robert

TO MRS. MARTINEAU.

My dear Madam, —

It is with a great deal of feeling that I attempt these few lines, as it possibly may be the last time. Still I think that if you are able to be calm and cheerful in the near prospect of death, surely I ought not to be unhappy or selfish; and I wish again to express my thanks to you for the many lessons I have learnt from you. I only wish I was able to carry them out more efficiently. All the instruction I received from you comes fresh into my mind. One great principle was love and forbearance with others, not to be so rash in judging others, — suspicious, &c., which I remember I was, very strongly, when I first came to live with you. Then the lessons on calmness and patience under trouble, — the desire for honesty in every sense of the word. These things I have endeavoured to work upon, and now I try to use the same influence on the minds of those under my power. But your influence, of course, was greater than I can expect to have, because I felt that strong love for you which not many servants have or can have, because they and their employers are differently situated. I have often thought of the great dangers we were exposed to, had it not been for your love and kindness to us.

Then to act conscientiously to our own hurt. I earnestly wish this noble principle was more taught. What a different state of society there would be!

I hope you will forgive my troubling you. Please to accept my warmest love. I hope you may yet be spared for some time to the Edition: current; Page: [399] world and those that love you. I can say with truth that the kind attentions I have received have not increased my pride or my ambition. I feel thankful and humble. This lesson also I have learnt from you.

With many thanks for all the past, I remain, my dear madam,

Yours affectionately,

MARTHA.

The guests at The Knoll were often impressed by the devotedness they witnessed of both mistress and maids. One of these, a visitor from America, who had, as the friend of the mistress, received much attention from the maid, wrote to her afterwards, with a gift distinctively American, — a gold eagle.

Twenty years of such service justifies such a reply. The handwriting is that of a person of cultivation; and guests were always prompt to say, in view of this devotedness,

“How well in thee appears

The constant service of the antique world.”

Caroline Gilman

Gilman, Caroline

May 15, 1873

May 15, 1873

.

Dear Madam, —

I really do not feel equal to express my gratitude for your beautiful letter. The contents surprised me very much. Please accept hearty thanks for your handsome present, and for what you so touchingly allude to in my long service at The Knoll. I hope to spend it in “remembrance of you.”

I feel sure it will be a comfort to you to know that our prospects are getting brighter. I need scarcely add it has been a most trying time since Miss Jane M. left us. Her illness has been a terrible sorrow to my mistress, but I am happy to say she now begins to take comfort and courage again. The last three months there is much more ease and quiet. I had the pleasure of going over to Leamington to see Miss Jane the week before last, and found she was really getting on, and she assured me she felt conscious of returning strength, and the great object of her life is to come back to us. She longs to be by her aunt’s side again: there is such a strong union of affection between them, that I trust they will be united again.

My mistress is in real delight about the steady improvement, and is quite content to wait. Of course we do our very best for her, and she often tells me we are very kind to her, and there is hardly any thing she does not praise in those around her.

I sometimes feel I should ill deserve many blessings if I indulged in any regret, and daily I preserve a tranquillity which I earnestly Edition: current; Page: [400] hope may not be construed into indifference. I regard my mistress with as much reverence as I do affection, and look upon it as a bright privilege to do all I can for her in my humble way; indeed, it is a pleasure to me!

I often wish you could see her, she is such a handsome old lady. The cap you sent her makes her look almost divine. I’m quite sure she is much better since taking the phosphate you sent. We go on so regularly and comfortably! but at the same time there is little strength to struggle with difficulties.

With renewed thanks for your kindness, and wishing you health and happiness,

I remain, gratefully and respectfully,

CAROLINE.

HOSPITALITY.

It was not her fame only, but also her delight in the exercise of hospitality, that drew around her so many guests. She was most anxious to receive the friends of her American life. The Hutchinson family — the sweet singers of our American Israel — sung to her upon her own lawn at The Knoll the songs of her other beloved land. Either to Tynemouth or The Knoll came almost all the early abolitionists. To her came Sumner in his youth, and received from her an introduction to her numerous London friends; and so many others came that it were in vain to try to name them all. “She is so — well, fascinating!” they all said; “there is no other word for her.”

There are some inconveniences, however, attending a great fame, a reputation for hospitality, and a general benevolence. As, for example, when her maid saw carriages descending, the occupants standing up with their heads stretched forward in search of The Knoll, she could not help being impressed with an idea that they must needs be admitted. “Caroline is so softhearted!” said her mistress to an old friend, an inmate for the time being; “visitors tell her they cannot go away without seeing me, when I am too much engaged or too ill perhaps to receive them.” “But what can I do, ma’am?” interrupts Caroline. “What can I do when they tell me they worship you, Edition: current; Page: [401] ma’am! and that they were brought up upon your works! — they have come from ever so far and from every where to see you!” And Caroline could seldom help fairly yielding up the castle.

Mrs. Parkinson, the old woman who lived in the cottage near the gate, used to say, “If I had a penny for every time they stop the coachman to ask where Miss Martineau lives, I should be a rich woman.”

Hither it was that statesmen came across the country for an interchange of thought with her; here it was that she wrote the Autobiography; and some few of them, who were trusted and valued friends, were privileged to read it. One of these was the Earl of Carlisle, who read it with the feelings he thus expresses, for “such an infidel” as herself: —

Loard Carlisle

Carlisle, Loard

December 12, 1855

London

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

London,

December 12, 1855

.

My dear Miss Martineau, —

It is difficult to read your account of yourself with a serenity like your own. I most earnestly trust that the decline may be gentle and painless.

I should wish you to be entirely guided by your own judgment and inclination in inserting or omitting any thing about myself, only be assured I could never have the baseness or the blindness to shrink from such companionship.

I should have much liked to see you again, and to visit you in your gabled and terraced abode, but this must not be for the present, at least, as I am just setting out again for my island.

May that spirit of love and justice to which I believe you have always wished to be faithful be evermore with you.

Yours very sincerely,

CARLISLE.

Notwithstanding her suffering condition during the twenty years preceding her death, and the amount of literary and other work she did, I suppose no one ever welcomed so many visitors of all classes, from the highest to the lowest. The heart-failure under which she laboured made it sometimes impossible to admit those she most wished to see; and to one of them she expressed her regret as she felt it, strongly: —

“I would willingly die for the pleasure of seeing you; but if it should kill me, it would make you unhappy for life.”

Edition: current; Page: [402]

Charlotte Brontë, for whom Mrs. Martineau cherished a deep affection, was previous to this time a guest at The Knoll. She gives her sister Emily an account of that visit, — the second event in their earlier acquaintance. She says: —

“I am at Miss Martineau’s for a week. Her house is very pleasant both within and without; arranged at all points with admirable neatness and comfort. Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty; what she claims for herself she allows them. I rise at my own hour, breakfast alone. . . . . I pass the morning in the drawing-room, she in her study. At two o’clock we meet, talk and walk till five, — her dinner-hour, — spend the evening together, when she converses fluently and abundantly, and with the most complete frankness. I go to my own room soon after ten, and she sits up writing letters. She appears exhaustless in strength and spirits, and indefatigable in the faculty of labour: she is a great and good woman; of course not without peculiarities, but I have seen none as yet that annoy me. She is both hard and warm hearted, abrupt and affectionate. I believe she is not at all conscious of her own absolutism. When I tell her of it, she denies the charge warmly; then I laugh at her. I believe she almost rules Ambleside. Some of the gentry dislike her, but the lower orders have a great regard for her. . . . . I have truly enjoyed my visit here. . . . . Miss Martineau I relish inexpressibly. . . . .

“She is certainly a woman of wonderful endowments, both intellectual and physical; and though I share few of her opinions, and regard her as fallible on certain points of judgment, I must still award her my sincerest esteem. The manner in which she combines the highest mental culture with the nicest discharge of feminine duties filled me with admiration; while her affectionate kindness earned my gratitude. . . . . I think her good and noble qualities far outweigh her defects. It is my habit to consider the individual apart from his (or her) reputation; practice independent of theory; natural disposition isolated from acquired opinion. Harriet Martineau’s person, practice, and character inspire me with the truest affection and respect.”

After another visit at The Knoll she writes thus: —

“Of my kind hostess herself I cannot speak in terms too high. Without being able to share all her opinions, — philosophical, political, or religious, — without adopting her theories, I yet find a worth and greatness in herself, and a consistency and benevolence and perseverance Edition: current; Page: [403] in her practice, such as win the sincerest esteem and affection. She is not a person to be judged by her writings alone, but rather by her own deeds and life, than which nothing can be more exemplary or nobler. She seems to me to be the benefactress of Ambleside, yet takes no sort of credit to herself for her active and indefatigable philanthropy. The government of her household is admirably administered; all she does is well done, from the writing of a history down to the quietest feminine occupation. No sort of carelessness or neglect is allowed under her rule, and yet she is not over-strict, or too rigidly exacting; her servants and her poor neighbours love as well as respect her.

“I need not, however, fall into the error of talking too much about her, merely because my mind is just now deeply impressed with what I have seen of her intellectual power and moral worth.”

There Charlotte Brontë saw Mr. Atkinson, who had been described to her as a combination of the Greek sage of antiquity with the modern European man of science.

“But,” she says, “he serenely denies us our hope in immortality, and quietly blots from man’s future, heaven and the life to come. That is why a savour of bitterness seasoned my feeling towards him.”

No wonder that, with such a predisposition, she should herself have been disturbed and distressed by the publication of “The Letters.”

They had talked of Comte, on whose lectures Mrs. Martineau was then engaged; she had admired the laborious devotedness which could compel into an English existence a work so utterly opposite in character to the impressive fictions that occupied her own mind, but she was too strongly bound to the past to be willing to cast a thought beyond its vague shadows on futurity. She accepted, as it was natural for a clergyman’s daughter to do, the clerical declarations that philosophy was atheism; and so she told her friend. Harriet Martineau’s affection was in no way impaired by this. She thanks her friend warmly for the frankness of the letter, saying, —

“It charmed me, and I thank you for it. Only one remark. I have no objection to words, when, as you do, people understand Edition: current; Page: [404] 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.”

This extract is from a very long letter, full of news and pleasant thoughts, ending thus: —

“My lecture was upon Wickliffe; — was in raptures with it. Now I must go to my proofs, my dear. How I like to think that I have you, be you any where from atheist to Latter-day Saint; I don’t care, as long as you love me, without regard to the results of the understanding.”

More correspondence there was, and it was not on this ground that Charlotte Brontë felt for a time repelled from her friend. She had earnestly adjured Harriet Martineau to give her a full and frank opinion of her novel, “Vilette;” and, however affectionately and thoughtfully given, it was only the more painful to the receiver, seeing that it confirmed the current and more roughly expressed opinion of the world. Greater experience than Miss Brontë possessed would come to her, doubtless Harriet Martineau thought, in season to correct the fault in question.

It is painful to remember that Charlotte Brontë did not live to profit by the just criticism she had so ardently evoked. More knowledge of some kinds would in all probability have shown her its justice. But death prevented the two friends from again meeting.

The affectionate fear of the younger that the publication of “The Letters” might deprive H. Martineau of valued friends proved entirely unfounded.

Perhaps the best way of correcting certain mistakes that are noticeable in periodicals, even to this day, is to insert this letter from Harriet Martineau to the editor of “Men of the Time.”

Edition: current; Page: [405]

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

March 22, 1856

Ambleside

Ambleside,

March 22, 1856

.

Sir, —

Mr. Murray is always glad to receive information of mistakes in his hand-books; and I presume you wish to be made aware of all such serious errors in your “Men of the Time” as may discredit a work upon so excellent a plan. The mistakes of fact in the notice of myself are so numerous, and I must say so inexcusable, considering the means of information that exist in print, that you ought to be informed of them on authority, in order to their rectification. If allowed to remain, such mistakes discredit the whole work, as is the case already with my family and friends, who ask how they can trust any part of the book, when any one memoir is so unnecessarily full of errors.

1. My forefathers were not manufacturers, but surgeons. It was that profession which descended from generation to generation.

2. There was no silk manufacturer in Norwich till after my father’s death, and the removal of the family from the city. My father (the first manufacturer of the family) was a bombazine and camlet manufacturer.

3. This is the most important mistake of all, because it deprives my parents of honour due to them. My education was not of the “limited character” imputed. On the contrary, my parents gave their children, girls as well as boys, an education of a very high order, including sound classical instruction and training. What the family have done is sufficient evidence that their education was not of “a limited character.”

4. It was in 1834 that I went to America.

5. “Deerbrook” has been more popular than almost any of my works, and has gained a higher reputation than any other. It has gone through two large editions (a rare thing for a novel) and I have disposed of it for a third.

6. Lord Grey never offered me a pension. The one which was at first proposed was not £150, but £300.

7. It was at the end of 1842, and not 1853, that my medical man declared me incurably ill.

8. Rev. James Martineau was not of the party to the East, or ever in the East at all. The names of the party are given in my “Eastern Life.”

9. Mr. Atkinson is not a “Mesmerist,” but a philosophical student, and a gentleman of independent fortune. The standing of the “Letters on Man’s Nature and Development” is, in point of fact, as different as possible from that groundlessly asserted in the memoir.

Edition: current; Page: [406]

10. My version of Comte does not close the list of my labours.

11. One of the best received and most important of my books is not mentioned, — “Household Education.”

12. Nobody has witnessed “flashes of wit” from me. The giving me credit for wit shows that the writer is wholly unacquainted with me. . . . .

Now, what will you do? Of course, you will not allow proved errors to continue to circulate uncontradicted. Will you cancel these notices, or print this letter, or what will you do?

You are probably aware that I am mortally ill. I have written and got printed an Autobiography, which will be published immediately after my death. But this does not affect the case, as your notice will then be withdrawn. It is the interval between this time and that, that you have to provide for: and I hope to hear, before I decide on a public contradiction, what course you propose to take.

Yours obediently,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

It is hardly necessary to add that the editor of “Men of the Time” was much obliged by the corrections, and profited by them immediately.

When I consented to Harriet Martineau’s desire that I should make such additions as I judged proper to her Autobiography, I entreated her to allow me the publication of such letters as I might select from her correspondence with myself. The following is her reply, with this preliminary note: —

“For publication if you wish it.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

June 11, 1855

Ambleside

Ambleside,

June 11, 1855

.

My dear Friend, —

You desire my permission to publish, after my death, certain letters of mine to yourself. Mr. Atkinson desires permission to give you some of my letters to him for publication. I give you my sanction with entire willingness, and I hope you will employ it as freely as you like in regard to these two sets of letters.

Such use of them is perfectly consistent with the principle on which I have forbidden, in my will, the unauthorized publication of my private correspondence. That interdict is grounded on the objection that all freedom and security in epistolary correspondence are destroyed by the liability that unreserved communication may hereafter become public. No such danger is incurred when writer Edition: current; Page: [407] and receiver agree to make known what they have said to each other. There would be no fireside confidence if téte-à-tête conversation were liable to get abroad, through some third person thinking what he had overheard might be useful. But if the two talkers agree to say elsewhere what they have said to each other, there can be no possible objection to their doing so.

You have, therefore, my full permission to make any use you please of any thing I have written to you; and Mr. Atkinson has the same, as I am going to tell him.

Yours affectionately,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Edition: current; Page: [408] Edition: current; Page: [409]

PHILOSOPHY.

“Christianity, I conceive, is to be re-established by clear development of its original essential truths. No religion can now prevail which is not plainly seen to minister to our noblest sentiments and powers, and unless Christianity fulfils this condition I cannot wish it success.”

— Channing.

“There is no condition in life, no degree of talent, no form of principle, which affords protection against an accusation [as of Atheism] that levels conditions, confounds characters, renders men’s virtues their sins, and rates them as dangerous in proportion as they have influence, though attained in the noblest manner and used for the best purposes.”

— Walter Scott.

“But the commandment of knowledge is yet higher than the commandment over the will: for it is a commandment over the reason, belief, and understanding of man, which is the highest part of the mind, and giveth law to the will itself. For there is no power on earth which setteth up a throne or chair of state in the spirits and souls of men, and in their cogitations, imaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning.”

— Bacon.

Harriet Martineau, by independent thought, study, and travel having arrived at an ascent whence a wider view of existence became visible to her; and Mr. Atkinson, after long study and induction, having attained, by a new application of an old method, the knowledge for which she was labouring, it followed, after her cure by the means he recommended to the lady whose mesmeric patient she had been, that he became a personal acquaintance, a coadjutor in philosophical pursuits, and ultimately a most valued friend. He was not “a mesmerist,” but a philosophical student of all natural phenomena; and, being a gentleman of independent fortune, was at liberty to devote himself entirely to the examination of facts and the search for truth.

It was he who, Margaret Fuller thought, possessed “a fine instinctive nature:” —

Edition: current; Page: [410]

“A man of about thirty; in the fulness of his powers; tall and finely formed, with a head for Leonardo to paint; mild and composed, but thoughtful and sagacious; he does not think, but perceives and acts. He is intimate with artists, having studied architecture himself, as a profession. . . . . Sometimes stationary and acting in the affairs of other men, sometimes wandering about the world and learning, — he seems bound by no tie, and yet looks as if he had relations in every place.”

It ought, however, to be noted, that Mr. Atkinson, though so rapid in thought, was pre-eminently a thinker; possessing that faculty of clear, methodical explanation of the essence, the nature, and the qualities of things, that Plato rates so highly.

The results of research on the part of Harriet Martineau and himself, as given in “The Letters” they conjointly published, were popularly called “views;” but having had warning sufficient that common fame is as deceitful as the human heart, and sometimes as desperately wicked, I determined not to rely upon it; and I frankly asked Mr. Atkinson what were his “views.” Hers I had already learned: and it seemed but fair to ask the question of himself, and thus avoid the mistake of asking one person to make a confession of faith for another. “The Letters” told what views were held in common; but each being independent in mind, it seemed needful and desirable to one deeply interested in the premises to learn what each thought at first hand.

This was Mr. Atkinson’s reply both to my inquiries respecting our dear friend’s now failing health, and touching his philosophical views: —

Henry G. Atkinson

Atkinson, Henry G.

May 29, 1856

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

MR. ATKINSON TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

May 29, 1856

.

My dear Mrs. Chapman, —

Thanks for your kind note. I like to see what you say of our dear friend; and she is a dear friend, and I do not know what we shall do without her. It seems almost unnatural that such a fine nature and clear perception should be dying away like a flower, astonishing us with its great beauty for an hour, and then gone for ever.

But to question the ways of nature according to the demands of the Edition: current; Page: [411] human heart is the province of the poet, not the duty of the philosopher. The philosopher must leave the little nook of his own nature, and study and learn obedience to the divine law discovered on a wider view. It is this peeping out from under the cover of self that has given to our friend Harriet Martineau this wide range of view and this superiority, in a corrected sense of the end and order of nature. She is not an investigator, a discoverer in science, but she is, strictly speaking, a philosopher, as a lover of truth in a highly practical sense, for the sake of mankind. She is not an original philosophic genius, but her artistic power and ability to learn is extraordinary: and more extraordinary still is the power of seizing on salient points, and reproducing in a clear form what has been imperfectly stated by others.

But it is not my purpose now to go into the statement of what I think of her intellect and character and the scope of her powers. This is not what you have asked me. You may be sure that I quite assent to your proposition that, had our friend possessed a less pure and elevated nature, she would have been better understood, and more certainly received the praise of the multitude; more especially in relation to that brave exercise of her free nature in expressing opinions which she conscientiously believed for the ultimate good of mankind. That the views promulgated should be mistaken and maligned (as you notice) is of small consequence. It could not, in the nature of things, have been otherwise. All improved and true views, and almost all discoveries, have been at first opposed and maligned; so that Bacon very properly says, “There is no worse augury in intellectual matters than that derived from unanimity,” with the exception of divinity and politics where suffrages are allowed to decide. For nothing pleases the multitude unless it strike the imagination or bind down the understanding with the shackles of vulgar notions. Hence we may well transfer Phocion’s remark from morals to the intellect, “that men should immediately examine what error or fault they have committed when the multitude concurs with and applauds them.” Again, says Bacon, “to speak plainly, no correct judgment can be formed, either of our method or its discoveries, by those anticipations which are now in common use; for it is not to be required of us to submit ourselves to the judgment of the very method we ourselves arraign.” Hence there is nothing for it but to submit to the misinterpretation and disapproval of the old world we are leaving behind us.

I hope it is no presumption to say this. I merely speak after the Edition: current; Page: [412] manner and spirit of Lord Bacon, as one who has endeavoured to carry forward his principles. But as to those who speak or think or write in a harsh and presumptuous spirit of my views, I would remind them that “they who live in glass houses should not throw stones;” for they may be sure they will find it difficult to make good their own ground, either from a moral or an intellectual point of view.

If you ask what I am, I should say, a rationalist; that I take my view from the point of reason. Or I may say I am a naturalist; as opposed to the non-natural or supernaturalists; that man is a reasoning being, and that his progress in power and excellence depends on his acquired knowledge of nature; — of nature in general, but of human nature in particular. I see and feel that logic or reason implies the fixity of principles; and hence we speak of eternal truths, and of universal laws; and until we perceive the absolute necessity of things being just what they are, and the impossibility of their being different in law and principle, we have a sense undeveloped and are neither philosophers nor, strictly speaking, natural beings. “Neither is it possible” (says Bacon) “for any power to loosen or burst the chain of causes, nor is nature to be overcome, except by submission.” Because the power of man over nature, and over his own nature, rests in his knowledge of causes; and the province of the philosopher is to trace all effects to their causes in nature, to their material causes and conditions, in order to the discovery of the laws concerned. And there is no possibility of an exception to causation. Hence the notion of an interfering providence, acting by results and by a free-will, is sheer nonsense; the shallow and dangerous dreaming of unenlightened and unphilosophic minds. But the study of human nature must be pursued as a pure science: for the human mind in general, like the separate senses, is subject to error, the correction of which imperfection cannot arise out of meditation, but must be sought by experiment in deep investigation into causes, and by the analogies of knowledge. We require a new mode of investigation, another range of facts; for the attempt to understand human nature by reasoning and by simple abstract reflection, without a scientific procedure by experiment and observation by which to trace effects to their causes, is absurd. We may as well try to live by the study of the multiplication-table, leaving out all respect of the loaves and fishes.

Bacon finely admonishes: “But if any individual desire, and is anxious not merely to adhere to and make use of present discoveries, but to penetrate still further, and not to overcome his adversaries by disputes, but nature by labour; not, in short, to give elegant and Edition: current; Page: [413] specious opinions, but to know to a certainty and demonstration, let him, as a true son of science, join with us; that when he has left the antechambers of Nature trodden by the multitude, an entrance may at last be discovered to her inner apartments.” But then, granting all this, our good friends or enemies of the old world may say, “What becomes of those sentiments of our nature that have been exercised in religion?” I reply, that those sentiments that have been misdirected by error, and crushed by folly and degrading and hideous notions; which have been little better than a jingle of words, will spring up again unimpeded, — a new growth of beautiful flowers in our path; for our philosophy is —

“Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo’s lute.”

But in speaking of the philosophical method and of the development of the sentiments, you must consider that I speak of myself alone, and do not answer for our friend’s agreeing with me implicitly. For in using common terms, such as religion or spirit, she thinks I shall be misunderstood.

In Froude’s article* you will find a reference to Appendix O (of “The Letters”), which I wrote purposing to soften any ill impression and prevent misinterpretation. But our friend thinks the terms were misinterpreted by Froude; or, as she expresses herself to-day, in a note in reply to what I told her I should write to you, that “they will be supposing the old bottles to hold the old wine.” “To be sure, if they read you as a whole, paying due attention to every part, they could not make the mistake; but then people are so run away with by sounds and associations!” This is quite true, but we cannot invent new terms for the sentiments; and by dropping such terms as religion, spirituality, and the like, we shall be equally misinterpreted, in another way, and be called dull, cold, unimpassioned atheists, dry reasoning materialists, and indeed be found wanting in the faculties and feelings more or less common to the human race. But with this caution people must be indolent indeed if they misunderstand me. True philosophy, in an emotional sense, may be termed an affection of the mind, obedient to the highest reason; but this can hardly be entertained by those who, as Plutarch says, “retain the foolish and frightful opinions they received in infancy.” And when I speak of the old world, it must be understood that the old world is, in reality, the young world. My opinion is, then, that philosophy rightly felt as well as understood is deeply reverential, and a profoundly Edition: current; Page: [414] pure religion, and the only high and elevating religion; the only religion completely discarding idol-worship and selfish principles; the only religion that distinctly excludes pride, in the humbling sense of our being wholly dependent on causes, which, in their effects, appear as a uniform, perpetual, and universal miracle, in the wondrous working of an incomprehensible something we term power, or fundamental nature, or the nature of nature, as Bacon calls it; or the first cause, more commonly termed (or can be termed) miraculous: — this idea of power, meanwhile, in contradistinction to our sensational experience, recognizing the course of effects; which sensational appearances (effects) again, from their order and beauty, rivet attention and claim a tribute from the feelings. The contemplation, referring to the cause or power, is wonder, or knowledge broken off. The contemplation of the effect is admiration and exquisite enjoyment. But these sentiments with which I am so solemnly impressed are not to be explained in a few lines; may easily, as our friend fears, be mistaken; and are hardly to be comprehended by those under the dreary slavery of old superstitions, where power is personified and evil is personified, just as Beauty, Time, Strength, and Fleetness were personified in the heathen mythology. People still rest among the same or similar delusions, the “spirit” of power being shaded off into three distinctions, opposed by the Devil, who really seems to have had it pretty much his own way; and in the last day is to get the lion’s share of the poor human race, for eternal damnation. Now I really don’t think our view of things, which excludes this fearful demon, and damnation, can be so very offensive. But if I am to be damned here and hereafter for discrediting the Devil, I cannot help it.

Yet if we would seek that spirit of excellence, of wisdom, and of power, that eternal reason or mind in nature, or the inspired word that is spoken from the depths of human nature, it must be, as it were, by an invocation of the enlightened conscience; by an appeal to the untrammelled understanding; by a deep and devoted love of all that is virtuous and most noble; by a reverential love of beauty and excellence in every form; and by a strict fidelity to truth and honour: for truth must be considered what Plato terms it, “the body of God; and light, as his shadow.” The religion of philosophy should pervade our whole being, and prevail throughout our whole life, and under all circumstances: should be seen in the artist devoutly conscientious towards that nature which he so loves; in the statesman’s disinterested labour for the good of mankind; in the merchant’s Edition: current; Page: [415] undeviating honest course; nay, in fact, must be seen in a growth towards true magnanimity, and in the abnegation of self, and in the respectful feeling of every man towards his fellow-man.

The great privilege of the freethinker being in the pursuit of knowledge as of an enterprise, and, freed from error, to learn wisdom in a deeper devotion to truth, and for its own sake as well as for the good of mankind, depend upon it we shall not by any power in reason, or, as it were, jugglery of the intellect, rob human nature of its devotional feeling and hero-worship. We must love, though, alas! that love may be often blind and misplaced. We shall retain self-respect, though we cease to have pride. We shall retain the desire of approbation, though freed from the slavery of vanity. So also of the devotional feelings: they will retain a sphere of action and acquire a more healthy vigour, when no longer perverted and misdirected by the belief in the silly fables of the ancients. Be sure the devotional feelings will not wither away and perish when we awake from the long dream, and have cast down the idols that have so long disgraced the altar, and trampled hell under our feet, and extinguished its “eternal fires,” putting to flight all the lies and blasphemies consequent upon those erroneous opinions established by the blind ignorance of the infant world.

Some mean by philosophy the being raised above, or the becoming indifferent to, the accidents of life; or the being, as it were, a law unto yourself. Thus we speak of a person bearing a matter philosophically; we never say a person bears a misfortune religiously, because few of the old religions teach fortitude, but chiefly compensation and the low principle of reward and punishment for “poor miserable sinners.” But supposing I call the fortitude of philosophy the religion, and the compensation doctrine a worldly and vain philosophy: — shall I be misunderstood? And when I say that philosophy by knowledge is erecting a strong mansion, while the old religions are but propping up a tottering house that was built on a shifting sand-heap, let it not for an instant be supposed that philosophy ends in the reasoning ourselves out of ancient beliefs; for a clearance from such beliefs is simply opening the way, and making it possible for us to pursue philosophy, somewhat as the musician runs down the keys to make silence ere he begins his song. And let none pride themselves in the goodness of their natures, though there be some that truly seem, by the beauty of this form, to be a law unto themselves; but let even these remember that the best minds are most capable of being improved, and that those who have pronounced on the value of philosophy Edition: current; Page: [416] have been the giants of the world, some of the noblest and the best of mankind. The pride of supposing we can discern good from evil without knowledge was the ignorant pride fabled in the fall of Adam.

Granting, then, the beauty and the value of knowledge, the next question is, what kind of knowledge it is we are chiefly in want of, and how this is to be acquired: and for a reply to this I refer you to my published letters to Harriet Martineau; for the critics on those letters have discussed what they do not like, but have not endeavoured to comprehend that which would lead them to something better than they at present like: and instead of their becoming, by the force of a native and wild reason, sceptical of ancient beliefs, they shall become acquainted with facts which will exhibit the nature of the delusion, and the reason of those follies which have so beset and perverted the human understanding. For by a new range of fact, and by another method alone, is it possible for us to attain a knowledge of human nature, and of those differences, similitudes, and orders which are the elements of a true science; but which attained, we shall then define clearly the meaning of “the flesh warring against the spirit,” and of that inspiration speaking, as it were, out of the depth of our nature; and by the study of abnormal conditions, and by a new view and experimenting, learn the true laws of our being, and thence attain practical rules for our guidance; calmly considering the facts, yet patiently waiting upon further discoveries; earnest and attentive as a little child beginning to learn, and hopeful as a child with the world of knowledge all undiscovered before it, and humble as a child that, feeling its own weakness, seeks knowledge and protection from without, ever from its “mother,” — that is, from truth, — and from knowledge, which has been termed the mind of that nature which is our universal parent. And the man who thinks himself sufficient unto himself is only a little child who in sheer ignorance and folly thinks itself wiser than its parents.

I have been called sceptical, and at the same time credulous; and certainly I am very sceptical of opinions derived from the dark ages, and am somewhat credulous in respect of the value of knowledge and the progress of the race when more enlightened; and if people choose to consider me credulous for relating simply, and without haste or ostentation, what I have witnessed and carefully studied for so many years, for believing, in fact, that which I know to be true, I cannot help it. But as I am not one who lives after the opinions of others, I can very well afford to leave the matters I have advanced to be credited and proved in due course, when men, instead of uttering indolent criticism, Edition: current; Page: [417] choose to investigate. And if I am not orthodox in science any more than in religion, I cannot help it; and I remember what has been said about this: “Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any body else’s doxy.” I have no doubt but Franklin was thought credulous, in believing that he brought down electricity from the passing cloud to ring the little bell by his side. And, it may be, he was thought sceptical in not afterwards believing thunder to be the voice of God. We must submit to the conditions of men’s minds and the judgment of our times. But the philosopher need no longer waste his time in contending with error and folly, but devote himself entirely to the study of nature, and to the tracing of effects to their natural causes in order to discover their laws of action, in which is hidden power. Formerly men put lance in rest to uphold the virtue of their wives or the beauty of their mistresses; and engaged in what were strangely termed holy wars, in defence of their religion; and philosophers were not wholly free from this contentious spirit; simply because they were not yet free from the errors of the divine and the metaphysician, and brought down upon their knees to the study of nature out of the little world of their own thoughts, as nature ought to be studied and in the only way in which it can be understood and rightly interpreted; and to the study of human nature in particular as a pure science. And if philosophy was such a glorious pursuit, as understood and practised by those noble minds in olden times (before the forced paralysis of the understanding by theology and its professors) by those first natural rulers of the race who shone out like stars in the night and early dawn of the world’s history, what may not philosophy become when wholly purified of a debasing and obstructive theology, with all the follies and dissolving-views and phantasmagoria of metaphysics (as metaphysics has been as yet considered); and when all truth shall be felt to be divine, and philosophy to be divinity itself, that is, to be the science of divine things, — a science exhibiting the nature and laws of man’s constitution, and the sure and only means of attaining to a higher state of existence, each according to his talent and inherent capacity: and if all do not become equally great, at least the rule for all will be the highest; and from the moral and intellectual assent to this there will be no exception among cultivated and sane minds. Only think what glorious old Socrates would be, were he now one among us, — learning his misleading error about the clairvoyance of the oracles, which he could not then suppose was any thing else but the word of a god, nor think that voice within was his own nature prompting him. How could Edition: current; Page: [418] he then judge but after the popular belief, and conclude it to be an attendant demon? For the great difficulty in the progress of mind and the science of the mind is, that the error and impediment preventing clear seeing can only be cleared away by the very light which is obscured by the error. Hence the course of the mind’s progress, until fairly cleared of all superstition, could not but be devious and slow, — falling upon truth step by step and from age to age, as it were by accident.

O, it will be a strange sight to watch the last spasms of dying superstition, — the superstition of the scientific! And the High Church will go ahead of the freethinkers, as the tories often go ahead of the “liberals” in politics. We have Cardinal Wiseman in his lectures now taking phrenology under his protection, preaching the all-importance of philosophy; but it won’t do. New wine may not be put into old bottles; and it is vain to expect any great progress in the science by the superinducing or ingrafting new matters upon the old. An instauration must be made from the very foundation, if we do not wish to revolve in a circle; but theologians will be driven to desperate efforts to reconcile new truth with their ancient belief; and they will pretend to be the very first to welcome the very matters they have been so violently opposing. Yes — we may well smile to observe the shifts that are made to appear consistent and to consider how it must all end, just by letting the responsibility slip away, — leaving the priest of dogma and of form and ceremonies, a reformed man, — the deep-feeling and devoted priest of all holy and virtuous natures; in a word, a true philosopher, sagacious and full of wisdom, — that empress of knowledge. He will have left the shifting sand-heap for the solid rock; belief for knowledge; and in a position demonstrably true, as founded on the clear logical condition of the mind, and in the pursuit of truth, finding universal evidence of that logical position; and, as the end of all, displaying the true and natural bent, meaning, and realization of all man’s fondest hopes and highest aspirations.

It is now time to stop and apologize for the bad writing. If I have not rightly understood your question, pray ask me any thing further you may wish me to explain.

I fear this our dear friend is something worse, but you will have an account from herself by the post which brings you this.

Believe me, with great regard, very sincerely yours,

HENRY G. ATKINSON.

P. S. I should like to draw your attention to Appendix O, in “The Letters.”

Edition: current; Page: [419]

The following letter from Mr. Atkinson finds its best place here, though twenty years intervene. Not in vain is the appeal to Time, —

“Sole philosopher,

For all besides are sophists.”

Henry G. Atkinson

Atkinson, Henry G.

August 23, 1876

Boulogne-sur-Mer

Henry G. Chapman

Chapman, Henry G.

Boulogne-sur-Mer,

August 23, 1876

.

Dear Mrs. Chapman, —

The enclosed document will show you that Professor Tyndall’s views, as given in his famous Belfast Address, as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, are precisely what was condemned in “The Letters” twenty-five years before.

Again, the one method, as applicable to all questions, physical and metaphysical, exemplified in “The Letters,” is now set forth by Dr. Maudsley, in his opening chapter on Method, in his great work on Man; and by Mr. George Henry Lewes, in his “Problems of Life and Mind;”* whilst the deep truth of unconscious cerebration or atomatic mind, as fundamental to the conscious accompaniments, has since been explained by Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Carpenter, as discoveries of their own, though clearly referred to in “The Letters.”

Then, again, all the wonders of mesmerism are being discussed in all the many newly founded psychological societies; whilst the late Mr. Jackson, in his opening address as President of the Glasgow Psychological Society, referred to my discovery of phreno-mesmerism as a matter of the deepest importance to psychology and the investigation of man’s nature; and even Professor Huxley has at length expressed his interest in mesmerism, which he says he heard so much of in his youth.

And our friend lived to know all this. And what a true prophet was her sympathizing friend Professor Gregory! And all this, I think, ought to be referred to in your own Memoir, as most certainly our friend would have been sure to do, and desired that you should do.

Yours very truly,

H. G. ATKINSON.

This was Professor Gregory of Edinburgh (long since dead), who wrote to Harriet Martineau as follows, on the publication of “The Letters:” —

“Although you and I may not live to see it, yet you may feel satisfied that, whether all your conclusions be subsequently established Edition: current; Page: [420] or not, no work has ever yet borne your name fit to be compared with ‘The Letters’ in its ultimate effect for good on the human race. We require to be roused from the lethargy of our priest-ridden mental slumber; and a more effectual rousing than that given by ‘The Letters’ it is not easy to imagine.”

In his letters to me Mr. Atkinson frequently expresses much indifference to any fame accruing from this priority of discovery:—

“What we do not discover somebody else will; and when progress is made the main point is secured.”

It was during this period that Harriet Martineau became interested in the philosophy of Auguste Comte, the great genius to whom so many have been indebted who have not, like her, acknowledged their obligations. She has told how she became associated with his “Philosophie Positive,” the great work of his devoted, uncompromising, severe life of poverty and toil.

His hopes of ultimate success in thinking out his system and presenting it to the world were at the highest, and his worldly fortunes, broken and blighted by the treatment to which the theological cast of Charles X.’s reign must needs subject one whose vocation it was to prove that the reign of theology was over, were at the lowest, when Harriet Martineau became acquainted with his name and works.

In consequence of the interest she expressed to me in his career, I inquired among my gay entourage in Paris who and what was Comte. “A poor worthless lecturer to about five hundred of the raggedest vagabonds in France,” was the frequent reply. The flower of the École Polytechnique, whose professor he had been till removed for his opinions, did not, however, agree in this judgment, and they taxed themselves at that crisis for his pecuniary support. Every where in English-speaking lands his philosophy was labouring under popular misunderstanding, though so clear to students and the scientific world, whether accepted or rejected.

The misunderstanding among those who only knew it by name was in part owing to the different shades of meaning attached to the word “positive,” which in popular English we make the Edition: current; Page: [421] equivalent of “dogmatical” or “unreasonably peremptory;” while in French it would be defined as what can be rigorously demonstrated from and sustained by facts. M. Comte used the term with regard to philosophy because it was the one that described the method hitherto used in the investigation of the special sciences which his system includes. When the persecution that makes even wise men mad had told upon a delicate frame, he was, in consequence of a brain fever, placed for many months of the year 1826 - 7, in a maison de santé; but he completely recovered his health, and went on with his deep and high thinking till he had produced the works which have not only immortalized his own name, but have opened the way for other men to positions which they adorn in the world of thought. This is not the place to say more of him than belongs to the point where the circle of his thought touched that of Harriet Martineau. She was drawn to the study of his works by the philosophical integrity which refused the slightest concession of his principles to the tyranny of his times, though under pressure from loss of place and means. “What is a great life?” is a question to which she must needs reply, with Alfred de Vigny, “A thought of youth realized in mature age.” And when any man on earth was seen struggling in adverse circumstances to realize the thoughts he deemed sacred, he was sure to be followed by Harriet Martineau’s help and blessing.

She has told how it came about that she was led to introduce M. Comte to the English-speaking world, but she has not told how he was impressed by the way in which she had interpreted his grand original work, the “Philosophie Positive.” But one learns from his own letters how highly he estimated the uprightness, the exactitude, and the sagacity shown in the long and difficult labour of translating and condensing a work which she considered as one of the chief honours of the age.

He is “grateful for the noble Preface,” in which she says that one reason for her undertaking the work is, “that most or all of the English writers who have added substantially to our knowledge for many years past are under obligations to this work, which they would have thankfully acknowledged but for fear Edition: current; Page: [422] of offending the prejudices of the society in which they live;” and therefore, “though his fame is safe, it does not seem to me right to assist in delaying the recognition of it till the author of so noble a service is beyond the reach of our gratitude and honour: and it is, besides, demoralizing to ourselves to accept and use such a boon as he has given us in a silence which is, in fact, ingratitude. His honours we cannot share: they are his own, and incommunicable. His trials we may share, and by sharing, lighten; and he has the strongest claim upon us for sympathy and fellowship in any popular disrepute which, in this case, as in all cases of signal social service, attends upon a first movement.”

A stronger reason for her undertaking was, that M. Comte’s work in its original form does no justice to its importance, even in France, much less in England; and she gave in two volumes what filled six volumes in the original lectures, with redundancies and repetitions. He thanks her for these judicious omissions, especially those which the advance of astronomical science made imperative. He sees that her work makes the “Philosophie Positive” known in a degree that he could never in his lifetime have hoped. And when it became a question of popularizing his principles in France, he gave the preference to her work over his own; and long years after his death, M. Avezac-Lavigne, one of his friends, wrote to her for permission to translate her work into French. The letter is here subjoined.

M. Avezac-Lavigne

Avezac-Lavigne, M.

23 Mai, 1871.

Bordeaux, le

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

LETTER FROM M. AVEZAC-LAVIGNE TO H. MARTINEAU.

Bordeaux, le

23 Mai, 1871.

Mademoiselle, —

Vous n’ignorez pas, sans doute, que M. Comte a placé, parmi les livres devant former la bibliothèque d’un positiviste, votre traduction de son système de philosophie, à l’exclusion des six volumes qu’il avait composés. Cette substitution d’un livre en langue étrangère à son livre français a dû être amenée par des motifs puissants bien honorables pour vous. Mais, quoique parfaitement justifiée, la préférence de M. Comte ne pouvait pas avoir le résultat qu’il s’en était promis; car, en réalité, votre traduction, malgré son eminente valeur, ne devait trouver en France qu’un nombre très restreint de lecteurs, et les personnes qui désiraient connaître la philosophie positive continuaient à avoir recours aux six volumes de M. Edition: current; Page: [423] Comte. Or, la longueur de cet ouvrage, son prix élevé, et sa rareté, avant l’édition qu’en a donnée Germer Baillière, étaient des obstacles à son expansion; en sorte que, ni votre excellente traduction, ni l’ouvrage français ne devaient populariser la philosophie positive. En presence de cette difficulté, je formai le projet de traduire vos deux volumes, et c’est la première livraison de mon travail que j’aurai l’honneur de vous soumettre prochainement, afin que, si ce specimen vous agrée vous vouliez bien m’autoriser à publier le reste.

Mademoiselle, si j’ai pris la liberté de livrer à l’impression le premier fascicule, de 100 pages environ, sans vous en donner avis, c’est que j’ai pensé qu’il vous paraîtrait nécessaire de pouvoir apprécier, du moins d’après quelques pages, mon humble travail, dont, soit dit en passant, je n’espère retirer ni honneur ni profits. Dans la malheureuse phase que traverse la France, les esprits sont naturellement détournés des études abstraites, et cependant j’ai la conviction que si le livre de M. Comte avait été plus répandu, beaucoup de malheurs auraient ete épargnés à mon pauvre pays. C’est le motif que m’a fait perséverer dans l’entreprise que j’avais commencée avant la guerre, malgré les graves préoccupations qui m’agitaient, et j’espère que cette consideration contribuera a vous faire accueillir favorablement la demande que j’ai l’honneur de vous adresser.

Je suis avec respect, Mademoiselle, votre très humble et dévoué serviteur,

C. AVEZAC-LAVIGNE.

With a refreshing unconsciousness of her own superiority in scientific comprehension and expression, Mrs. Martineau caused this reply to be made: —

Jane S. Martineau

Martineau, Jane S.

M. Avezac-Lavigne

Avezac-Lavigne, M.

M. Avezac-Lavigne.

Sir, —

Your letter was forwarded to Mrs. H. Martineau by Messrs. Trubner & Co., which she begs me to acknowledge with her kind regards. I trust you will accept her reply through me, as she is unable to carry on all her correspondence with her own hand, and I am anxious to save her what fatigue of writing I can. My aunt begs me to say that she feels much interest in the subject of your letter, and hopes that you may be able to carry out the project you propose. On account of a long and suffering illness, from heart complaint, she has for many years lived a most secluded and quiet life. She has long given up public writing, and now with increasing weakness and old age she is obliged to withdraw from business of all kinds. I am therefore sorry to tell you that it is quite out of the question Edition: current; Page: [424] for her to grant your request, or to enter into the details of your work.

My aunt begs me to say that she did not insert any thing new in her version of M. Comte’s Lectures. This being the case, she asks whether it would not be a more simple plan for you also, instead of translating her two volumes into French, merely to compress the original? It appears to her to be the most effectual, as well as the easiest method to present the substance of M. Comte’s own words instead of through a double translation.

With best wishes believe me
Yours truly,

J. S. M.

On first receiving her work, M. Comte had written at great length expressing to Harriet Martineau his gratitude and admiration, affirming that in sharing his labours she had become a sharer of his fame.

So too said M. Littré, his biographer, who, as a profound student of philosophy, and in every sense a savant, besides being an eminent physician, was in all respects qualified to make him known to the world as he really was in individual life. While appreciating his greatness and his wonderful powers of thought till age and disease overtook him, he does not shrink from such a detailed account of the latest phase of his life as justifies the inference that it was through physical failure that he fell back at last, — not into theology indeed, as the word is understood by the world at large, but into a theological method, which his real self would have condemned, and which, of itself, absolved his disciples, of whom M. Littré had been one, from elaborate care to show that they no longer agreed with him in his wanderings and retrogressions.

Harriet Martineau heard from a distance of his decline, and however pained by the evidence of failure in a brain that had been in middle life so strong, had ever the consolation of having done him justice and given him aid at a time when he could appreciate both. As the verdict of a qualified Englishman, it may be well to note that, after examining her presentation of Comte, Mr. Grote wrote to her thus: —

“I tell you of this piece of work of yours, not only that it is extremely well done, but that it could not be better done.”

Edition: current; Page: [425]

Dr. Nichol, the astronomer, qualified by his life of science to form a judgment on such a work as this compression without loss (amounting, in fact, to a gain) of the “Philosophie Positive,” gave the subjoined expression of his opinion: —

J. P. Nichol

Nichol, J. P.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

My dear Miss Martineau, —

Most admirable! It quite surpasses my expectation. Your success is complete.

Yours ever truly,

J. P. NICHOL.

Edition: current; Page: [426] Edition: current; Page: [427]

THE LIFE SORROW.

“It is not wonderful, therefore, if the bonds of antiquity, authority, and unanimity have so enchained the power of man, that he is unable (as if bewitched) to become familiar with things themselves.”

— Bacon, Nov. Org., Aph. 84.

“It does not become the spirit which characterizes the present age distrustfully to reject every generalization of views, and every attempt to examine into the nature of things by the process of reason and induction.”

— Humboldt, Introduction to Cosmos.

“Atrocitata mansuetudo est remedium.”

— Phædrus.

One consequence of Harriet Martineau’s publication of “The Laws of Man’s Nature and Development” was to bring most painfully before the public eye the great sorrow of her whole life, hitherto so well concealed from all but those who were compelled by proximity to know it, that I never before suspected its existence, intimate as the relation of our minds had been.

Now I learned, in common with the rest of the beholders, how heavy and how steadily borne, for the sake of all it concerned, this long-standing burden of private suffering had been, which Mr. James Martineau now brought before the world.

When in June, 1851, I visited London during the great Exhibition, I found in that circle of society most nearly in connection with Unitarianism a little buzzing commotion over “The Letters.” It surprised me, both as coming from a class pledged by principle and taught by persecution to respect the rights of opinion, and because accompanied in so many instances by assurances that the speaker had not read the book, yet knew it to be so very bad a one as to make it a subject of the deepest regret that such a one should ever have been written. Not having myself seen it, I could only say in reply, that, at least Edition: current; Page: [428] until after reading, the character of the writer ought to be a sufficient voucher for a book. I was assured substantially by various persons in their various ways that so it would have been of course in an ordinary case; but this was a book which persons did not like to read, lest it should undermine their faith; besides being too foolish to waste time upon. It was blank atheism, and it removed all the barriers to vice and immorality by denying moral obligation. Moreover, it garbled and falsified Bacon, in order to bring the support of his great name to what he never dreamed of. It was Miss Martineau’s act, inasmuch as done by and under her sanction, for she had prefaced and presented the whole to the public; and what was not her own she had procured to be written by a very ignorant man, who had imposed upon her by mesmeric influence, — if there were such a thing, which they did not believe.

This mixture of falsehood and nonsense bearing to an unprejudiced mind its own refutation, it was not necessary for me to have read the book to be able, in talking with those equally ignorant, to deny every thing and call for the proof.

“O, it was in vain to deny it; it was only too true. Her own brother, the Rev. James Martineau, had published an article in which he affirmed all this; and what her own brother felt thus obliged to declare to the world must be true.”

I hastened to procure both the book and her brother’s review of it (“Prospective Review,” No. XXVI. Art. IV., “Mesmeric Atheism”). Ignorance, with a mingling of worldly and superstitious terror, is capable of any degree of misrepresentation; and I thought it quite possible that both book and review might have been misunderstood among those who were thus trusting to hearsay against their own better knowledge of Harriet Martineau. I carefully read both, and found nothing in the book to justify what report had given me as the substance of it. But the review had presented Miss Martineau and her associate to the world as atheists and reckless of moral obligation; and at a time when members of the medical faculty were labouring to brand mesmerism as immorality, the article was entitled “Mesmeric Atheism.” The review did present Mr. Atkinson, Edition: current; Page: [429] Miss Martineau’s friend and co-worker in the cause of philosophy and progress, as both knavish and foolish, both vain and ignorant. Miss Martineau and Mr. Atkinson had, in fine, “piled up a set of loose and shapeless assertions, serving to mark, but not to protect, the territory they open for all the black sheep of unbelief.” Further on, the review proceeds thus: —

“But enough of this hierophant of the new atheism. With grief we must say that we remember nothing in literary history more melancholy than that Harriet Martineau should be prostrated at the feet of such a master, should lay down at his bidding her early faith in moral obligation, in the living God, in the immortal sanctities; should glory in the infection of his blind arrogance and scorn, mistaking them for wisdom and pity, and meekly undertake to teach him grammar in return. Surely this inversion of the natural order of nobleness cannot last. If this be a specimen of mesmeric victories, such a conquest is more damaging than a thousand defeats.”

After this I came to know that Mr. Atkinson was a gentleman and a scholar, and a remarkably able, high-minded, and true-hearted man, esteemed by all who knew him, and spoken of with high respect as a devoted student of science, and also for his reverential tone of mind, by other reviews adverse to his opinions; and I learned, moreover, what all who saw for themselves already knew of Miss Martineau, that, so far from denying, he affirmed man’s moral obligation and the existence of a fundamental cause, eternal and immutable, — the last as incomprehensible to human nature, the first as the great business of life to ascertain and fulfil.

But so little do people understand themselves and their own creeds, that many who had plumed themselves upon their superiority to image-worshippers were as startled on reading this book as Tacitus tells us those Romans were at the siege of Jerusalem, who, bursting into the Holy of Holies, found the fane empty.

For “The Letters,” I found the book to be an inquiry or search after the best way of studying the faculties of man, in order to obtain a right understanding of his nature, place, business, and pleasure in the universe; and consequently not always within the comprehension of minds not previously familiar with the Edition: current; Page: [430] authors’ range of studies. For the review, I saw that it sometimes shared the general ignorance, and sometimes took advantage of it, to destroy the reputation of the authors of “The Letters.” But it was the review that had garbled and misquoted Bacon, in a vain endeavour to fix on them the charge of having done so: and it exposed itself to some keen remarks, by scoffing at Bacon’s first aphorism, unwittingly attributing it to Mr. Atkinson, while in the sequel misquoting Mr. Atkinson, to make him seem to the unread to be ignorantly censuring Bacon. “The Letters” had but represented Bacon as he really showed himself to be, — not latterly a theist; and being stronger in intellect than in moral principle, willing to advance his opinions at the expense of his sincerity, in times when persecution made men more prudent than true. The argument of “The Letters” is that what Bacon said about Christianity was poetical, and by way of accommodation, as seen, for example, in his “Christian Paradoxes.” It would seem that Bacon’s views were like those of every other thinker, — changing with time, and therefore very much a matter of dates.

I was astonished to find a Unitarian, whom the Catholic and Anglican churches consider no Christian, so wrathful against the “infidelity” of this book. The authors were faithful to themselves: were the Unitarians more? . . . .

“Could this reviewer possibly be a brother of Harriet Martineau?” I asked myself, and I felt confident it must be a mistake to think so. The curious public in its talkative carelessness is capable of almost any confusion of ideas, and surely, I thought, there must be a misunderstanding here. I carried my doubts to herself to be resolved, and asked her plainly, “Who is the author of that review?”

“It is my brother James; and you must not believe it, for it is not so.”

No possibility of believing it for any one who would read and compare; no risk of it for any one who knew her. I was too much afflicted to seek further conversation with herself at that time on a subject so distressing. The circumstances must needs compel so much denial, explanation, and self-defence, that I Edition: current; Page: [431] could not bear to add to such a pain even by expressions of sympathy. I saw instantly the estrangement that Mr. James Martineau’s course would make a duty to her cause, to the coadjutor whom she had associated with herself in its promotion, and to herself as the vowed servant of truth. Private insult to herself she might choose to overlook, but a threefold fidelity forbade her any further choice. If there be any thing established by the experience of mankind, it is this: while forgiving an enemy and doing him good, never to let him travel the world with your sanction affixed to his evil offices. It is the dictate alike of good sense, good feeling, and self-defence. No one proclaiming unpopular truth at every risk but is compelled by self-respect and self-preservation to take this course, — of letting the word “brother” on no enemy’s lips beat down this only effectual guard against the dagger-stroke aimed under the fifth rib.

So near and dear a friend as Harriet Martineau was to me, it became my duty to inquire carefully into this case; and every body talked freely. This excuse was occasionally offered for the reviewer, — that it was his duty as a Christian minister, and his duty to his God, to clear himself and Unitarianism of the burden of imputed heresy. He had not been able, it was said, to prevail on Mr. Thom and Mr. J. J. Tayler,* his co-editors, to do it for him, and so he was obliged to forget that he was a man and a brother, to discharge what seemed to him a higher duty.

But, as it would have been so much simpler, so much easier, so much more effectual a way, to have disclaimed all responsibility for “The Letters” by a note in the review to the effect that he had neither sanctioned the opinions nor approved of the publication, that part of the public which in such a case is amused with looking on drew the conclusion, from this otherwise incomprehensible course on the part of an advocate of free thought, that masculine terror, fraternal jealousy of superiority, with a sectarian and provincial impulse to pull down and crush a worldwide celebrity, had moved to this public outrage.

Happily for the authors of “The Letters,” British literary usage Edition: current; Page: [432] required no reply. Men did not construe silence as consent to the imputations of reviewers.

But in private it was not so. Miss Martineau was continually obliged to encounter these misrepresentations: sometimes in reply to direct inquiries of her friends; sometimes to counteract the actual mischief which the review had stimulated and set at work, and which threatened to put in peril her pecuniary affairs by exciting a panic among the publishers.

Of this sort of painful duty thus devolved upon Harriet Martineau by her brother’s course, it then seemed as if there could be no end but the ending of life.

It was pitiable to behold the distress this whole affair occasioned the short-sighted and the feeble, who wished to maintain undisturbed relations with both parties, without in the slightest degree appreciating Miss Martineau’s moral obligation to protect her cause and her associate from injury, — especially not to desert her associate; precluded by her relationship from defending himself against these calumnies.

As to the general desertion of friends on occasion of this publication, which Charlotte Brontë supposes,* it was not a fact, nor was Harriet Martineau one to grieve, if it had been so, over the sundering of false relations. It was the regard of those she really loved and honoured that she valued, and I am not aware of a single instance in which it was not ultimately increased by this renewed example of her fidelity to what she had ever esteemed the strongest moral obligation, — “the obligation of inquirers after truth to communicate what they obtain.”

Her friends outside of Unitarianism were not wrathful or distressed. I had the opportunity to see numbers of the representative men and women of the great world in London meeting her with undiminished cordiality when she came thither immediately afterwards, and her presence there speedily dispersed the momentary panic in which I had seen some of the Unitarian-trained, minister-worshipping minds.

Few are qualified by previous philosophical, anatomical, and phreno-mesmeric studies, any more than by love of truth and Edition: current; Page: [433] faith in it, to pronounce on such a book as “The Letters.” Numbers who had been troubled by its publication soon began to suspect as much. Some were fain to let the subject-matter drop, for fear of finding out things in contradiction to established usages. Some had not even understood what they were talking about when the conversation fell on the merits of the method recommended in the book. They had found it “sadly immethodical;” while other some pronounced this old method of question and answer not a successful one except in school-books. The advantage of scientific investigation and careful study and reasoning over taking for granted or taking on authority, was never the idea suggested to such by the word “method,” to which deeper thinkers sometimes begged their attention as the main thing in this book. It gave more offence for alleged want of reverence among minds of exclusively Unitarian training than among those of more liberal culture and biblical enrichment. Mr. Martineau, for example, seemed shocked as at blasphemy, that his sister should have given the words “supreme lawless will” as a definition of the Christian God; while at that very time Christian Britain was employed upon its tenth million of Jonathan Edwards’s sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in which “God’s mere pleasure,” “his arbitrary will restrained by no obligation,” is, as by all Calvinistic doctrinal teachers, insisted upon in every form of expression.

This is not the place for an analysis of “The Letters” or a refutation of the review. “The Letters” are republished; but there is no call for abuse and calumny against their authors.

To an intelligent and unprejudiced observer one of the most painful things at that time, as at all times, is to see persons mourning over what they should most exult in, — the confession and worship of what one believes to be the truth; blaming what they should most admire, — the consistent, upright course of a righteous heart in the consequent emergency. Although herself keenly alive to such griefs as these, whether springing from wickedness or weakness, Harriet Martineau was one in whom they wearied themselves down. Sustained by her alacrity of mind and her devotedness of heart, she outlived this, and kindred Edition: current; Page: [434] blows. Public outrage is absolution; and the cruelty of compelling her in this way to choose between science and sectarism, progress and pause, the scientific associate who was also a friend and the brother who was no friend, wrought deliverance from a life sorrow: her broken idol was removed from her path.

Although this is no place for analysis of “Letters” or review, yet one undertaking to throw light upon the life of Harriet Martineau cannot with truth or justice or common sense ignore the act by which “her own brother” placed himself in the same category with the defamers of old times whom she must never again meet.

So many mingled motives springing from the troubling of the affections, family pride, forgiveness, pain, and magnanimity, must needs arise in the heart of one so tried, that I am not surprised to find, in her Autobiography, so few words given to this great calamity of her life. But what in her is magnanimity in me would be unfaithfulness.

I ought not to close this passage without stating that, as I would never be guilty of the absurdity of showing a life overshadowed, and no object visible between it and the sun, so, when she asked of me this final service, I only consented at length (and in a sense reluctantly) on the understanding that I should nothing conceal or extenuate which, either for joy or sorrow, told strongly upon her life. Her reply, given thoughtfully, slowly, and at intervals, was, “When you speak of my brother James, be as gentle as you can.”

The mass of communications that the publication of the “H. M. Letters,” as they were called, brought upon her from self-styled friends and real friends after the misrepresentations of the “Prospective Review,” became at length utterly unmanageable, and she decided to address them all under one cover; for although the degrees of their friendship, the variety of their feelings, and the tone of their correspondence were so very different, yet in one thing almost all agreed, — regret that she had left the spot on which they had stood together; and the following is the letter which I received from her, with a request to send a copy to each of them, — knowing as she did in advance, Edition: current; Page: [435] what actually proved to be the fact, — that those to whose case it did not apply would make no personal application of it.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

May 10, 1856

Ambleside

Ambleside,

May 10, 1856

.

My dear Friend,—

It appears to me that you can help me in a small embarrassment that I should like to get rid of, if I can do it without causing more trouble than the matter is worth. I call the embarrassment of slight consequence, because a short time must put an end to it; but the interest involved is not a trifle. You know how much I value the confidence and affection of my more intimate American friends; and you will not need to be assured by me that the recent letters I have had from several of them express the kindliest respect and regard, as well as interest in my departing condition. Yet these letters manifest so extraordinary a notion of my state of mind, and are so very wide of the mark as to our relation to each other (theirs and mine), that I feel as if it were wrong to let the mistakes pass in silence, while yet I have not strength to reply to each correspondent. Some believe that they have touched so lightly on what is evidently uppermost in their minds that they spare me all need to reply, and they would really regret having obliged me to answer; while the character of the light touch they do give is exactly what makes me feel some sort of reply a duty. It is true they will erelong see in my Autobiography (which I leave for posthumous publication) what my philosophy really is; but it would be hardly right to wait if, by writing one letter, I can enable them to understand me better while I am still among you.

In all the letters I refer to it is clear that the supreme association with me at present is, not my past life, present illness, or approaching death, but my “views” on theological subjects. Again, all the correspondents I am speaking of carefully and distinctly assure me that they do not hold my “views.” Most of them call me “sceptical” (even the phrase “the slough of scepticism” occurs in one letter), and others write of “unbelief,” “darkness,” “doubt,” &c. All this shows so entire an unacquaintance with even the first principles and main characteristics of positive philosophy as surprises me a good deal, after the progress which I have hoped and supposed it was making in your country. By positive philosophy I mean not any particular scheme propounded by any one author, but the philosophy of fact, as arising from the earliest true science, and rehabilitated by Bacon’s exposition of its principles. There must be thinking and educated men in all your cities who could Edition: current; Page: [436] tell my friends that positive philosophy is at the opposite pole to scepticism, that it issues in the most affirmative (not dogmatical) faith in the world, and excludes unbelief as absolutely as mathematical principles do; that there is no “darkness” in it, but all clear light, up to the well-defined line which separates knowledge from ignorance; that positive philosophy is, in short, the brightest, clearest, strongest, and only irrefragable state of conviction that the human mind has ever attained.

You see, my difficulty in speaking at all about this is that what I say of my philosophy will, almost inevitably, look like conceit and boasting about myself. I really must say that such an appearance should be laid to the charge of those who, while meaning to be affectionate and even respectful, write to me as to one somehow fallen or gone astray, or in some way in an inferior condition of faith to theirs. This conception is not true, — it is in fact the reverse of the truth; but you see how impossible it is to declare this without offending the feelings of persons who consider it a merit, rather than a weakness, to rest satisfied in ignorance of the basis of the notions or “views” they hold. If fidelity to the truth on which I take my stand must bring on me the charge of presumption, so be it! I cannot help it, and must bear it as the lesser evil of two.

You, and others of my friends, and I myself may well be tired of hearing questions or opinions about my “views.” “Views” is not the word for disciples of positive philosophy, but for those who are still within the dogmatic circle or the metaphysical wilderness. They may speak of the “views” of persons who see through the eyes of authority, like the dogmatic part of the theological world, or of those who make their own “consciousness” their point of view, and who therefore differ mutually as their consciousness differs. Among these — the metaphysical “believers” or speculators — the views are as various as would be those of the earth by the same number of persons, each in a balloon of his own, all wafted by different currents at different elevations, with no other mutual connection than travelling in the same atmosphere. The disciples of positive philosophy have no more variation of views than students of mathematics have in regard to the mathematical field already explored. The truth compels unanimous conviction in both cases. If difference of “views” arises, it is during the first attempts to conquer some fresh territory, which, when annexed, will, like all that has gone before, become unquestionable and leave no room for diversity of “views.” If, instead of the “views,” people asked about my point of view, that Edition: current; Page: [437] would be sensible and practical. The point of view is indeed the grand difference between the dogmatists, the metaphysical speculators, and the positive philosophers. The first take their stand on tradition, and the second on their own consciousness. Their point of view is in their own interior, from whence it is manifestly impossible, not only to understand the universe, but to see the true aspect of any thing whatever in it. We, seeing the total failure in the pursuit of truth consequent on this choice of a standpoint, try to get out of the charmed circle of illusion, and to plant our foot in the centre of the universe, as nearly as we can manage it, and, at all events, outside of ourselves. Copernicus has been the great benefactor of his race, in this matter; and by showing that our globe is not the centre of the universe, nor man its aim and object, he overthrew theology and metaphysics without knowing it. However, this would lead me too far. I must keep to my own correspondents and their “views.”

The first great function of Baconian philosophy is to separate indisputably the knowable from the unknowable; and the next is, to advance the pursuit of the knowable. It is obvious that the process of ascertainment first, and constant verification of knowledge afterwards, is destructive of “scepticism.” Scepticism is doubt; and the positive philosopher is in a position of direct antagonism to it. He may hold, and must hold, his decision in suspense, in the interval between the first conception and the verification of new truth; but “scepticism” about old propositions which he has duly attended to is impossible to him. In the same way there is no wandering in “darkness” for the positive philosopher. He walks in light as far as he goes. It is, to be sure, but a short way up to the blank wall of human ignorance; but we can separate, on our own side of that blank wall, what is actually known from what is becoming revealed; and both from what we never can know. I need not add that the wall itself is destined to be forced, and the limits of ignorance to be set perpetually farther back, while we can never be any nearer to knowing what our faculties are unable by their constitution to apprehend. While the disciples of dogma are living in a magic cavern, painted with wonderful shows, and the metaphysical philosophers are wandering in an enchanted wood, all tangle and bewilderment, the positive philosophers have emerged upon the broad, airy, sunny common of nature, with firm ground underfoot and unfathomable light overhead. So much for the “darkness,” “doubt,” falling away, “scepticism,” &c.

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Among the unknowable things, the first we recognize is the nature or attributes of the First Cause; and this is why we are called atheists. We are atheists in the sense in which all reformers in essential matters have always been called atheists. Like the apostles, and the Lutheran reformers, and many more, the positive philosophers are called atheists, and for the same reason, — because they are disbelievers in the popular theology. For the same reason they are insolently compassionated and insultingly grieved over. The “interest” or corporation of the great Diana of the Ephesians pitied as well as vituperated the reformers, no doubt; pitied them for what they lost, they themselves being disqualified for estimating the gain. At the Reformation the Catholics sincerely, however insolently, pitied the Protestants for their loss of the old resources and consolations, the procurableness of indulgences, the comfort of absolution, the resource of the intercession of saints, and the protection of the Virgin. In the same way now Christians, who have no more authority from Scripture or reason for their personal fancies or general dogmas about a future life and an adaptation of the universe to the moral government of our world according to human notions than the Catholics for their special comforts, insolently pity us for what they consider loss, without asking themselves whether they are qualified to estimate our gain. The case is one of constant repetition, world without end. If disbelieving in the popular theology, therefore, is atheism, then we are atheists, but not in the philosophical and only permanent sense of the term “disbelief in a First Cause.” To us the only wonder is that men are so long in perceiving that they must be wrong in “realizing” (as you would say in America) the First Cause, more or less, in any mode or direction whatever. The form or constitution of the human mind requires the supposition of a First Cause. To go further than the supposition is to give an extension to Fetishism which the nineteenth century might be ashamed of, in its grown and educated men. Infant man — the race and the individual — instinctively (therefore constantly and necessarily) transfers his own consciousness or experience to every thing his senses encounter. Enlightenment constantly restricts this application till the individual or the race, which at first concluded that every thing in the universe had a life and a will of its own, arrives at the advanced stage of believing in one Supreme Being made up of human attributes in a highly magnified form. As Xenophanes described men making gods in their own image in his day, so we see men doing it still, for the same reason that Xenophanes gives, and whereby, Edition: current; Page: [439] “if oxen and lions had hands like our own, and fingers, then would horses, like unto horses, and oxen to oxen, paint and fashion their god-forms.” In this way has the God of monotheists been in a barbaric age a “Lord of Hosts” and a “God of Israel;” and is now, after a succession of phases, the Father of mankind, with the affections, powers, and intellect of man vastly magnified. He designs; he foresees and plans; he creates and preserves; he loves, pardons, gives laws and admits exceptions, — is, in short, altogether human in mind and ways. The positive point of view — that external to man — shows that this conception cannot possibly be true in any degree, no portion of the universe having, more or less, the characteristics of the Cause of the whole. Throughout the universe, again, nothing caused bears any resemblance to its cause, or can bear such resemblance, because the functions of the two are wholly different. What is knowable about a First Cause is simply this, — as any disciple of positive philosophy is fully aware, — that our mental constitution compels us to suppose a First Cause, and that that First Cause cannot be the God of theology.

I need not say how puerile, barbaric, and irreverent appear to us the “views” of Christian Fetishism in their whole extent, comprising that conception of a future life which is fetish in being a transference of our present experience to other conditions. It is not “another life” that people desire and expect, but the same life in another place. Once regarded from the higher (exterior) point of view, the folly and practical mischief of this superstition become evident to a degree which it would startle some of my friends exceedingly to become aware of. The belief was no doubt of use in its proper day, like every general belief, but its proper date is past; that which was a substantial faith (as when the early Christians looked for the Millennium) is now (whenever it goes beyond a limited dogma) a personal fancy, a bastard conception of unchastened imagination, and a sentimental egotism. The state of anticipation which religious people try to establish in themselves appears to us in its true colours, as a selfish egotism, like that of children who would have the universe ruled to gratify their fancies and desires. I need spend no words in showing that the conceptions of no two people in Protestant Christendom, as to a future life, can be made compatible, if thoroughly examined. Christians find it difficult (and most difficult in the most anxious moments) to make out what view of a future life can be right. Positive philosophy shows that there is no evidence that any are right, while there is strong presumptive evidence Edition: current; Page: [440] that all are wrong. As for the effect on our minds of this kind of recognition, I can no more hope to convey to theological believers any sense of our privileges of emancipation, than the Lutheran reformers could show their Romish friends why they were happier than when they believed in the absolution of their sins, the protection of the Virgin, and the intercession of saints. Whatever freedom my more liberal Christian friends have gained, that we possess in greater measure. Whatever sin and sorrow they see in the superstitions they have left behind, that we are in a yet greater measure thankful to have been delivered from. As for the sense of general health, intellectual and moral, the full and joyous liberty under the everlasting laws of nature, and the disappearance of incongruity, perplexity, and moral disturbance such as every theory of the government of the universe must cause to thoughtful minds, we can only enjoy these blessings in sympathy with our fellow-disciples. It is only by attaining them that the blessing of them can be understood. What Christians may know by observation, if they will, is that we who have gone through their experience (whereas they have not had ours) are healthier in mind, higher in views and conduct, and happier in life and the prospect of death, than we were before. Our old friends may wonder at it; but that is their affair. We know our own feelings; and the wonder to us is that inexperienced persons should pronounce upon them.

Perhaps my correspondents may now see how unnecessary is their careful and express declaration to me that they do not share my views. How should they, when they have not even attempted the requisite study? An astronomer calculating an eclipse needs no assurance from those who take the stars to be spangles, that they do not share his views. After having gone through the prior stages of dogmatic and metaphysical belief, it was through years of thought and study, under able guidance, that I attained my present standpoint; and to me, who know what the requisite labour is, and how gradual is the evolution of the way, my friends who have never pursued it at all think it necessary to explain that they do not stand by my side! I speak thus confidently about their not having pursued truth in this direction, because they entirely mistake my position and state of mind. If they understood either, they would feel and express something very unlike the innocent compassion and the well-meant insolence of their recent letters. It is impossible, and of course no matter of desire, that every body should engage in the pursuit of truth, which is the most laborious as it is the highest of human occupations; Edition: current; Page: [441] but those who decline the toil should be at least capable of respect towards those who achieve it. The whole matter will be easier to a future generation, who will have less to unlearn than we have. If it should be thought an objection to the faith which I hold that it takes long to attain, the obvious reply is that fresh truth is always hard of attainment, because of the requisite amount of unlearning; but that the hard acquisition of one generation becomes the easy inheritance of another. Thus, our Protestant world suffers nothing now from dogmas which it cost the early reformers much agony to expose; and thus, again, every child will hold convictions a century hence which it costs the wisest men of our time much toil and pains to attain. I say this, which cannot in a general way be new to any body, simply to guard against its being supposed that a life of scientific pursuit is always necessary to the attainment of truth. The chief part of the business is only temporary, — the unlearning of error, the discrimination of the knowable from the unknowable.

The deepest chasm, however, which yawns between my correspondents and me is an unbelief on their part which, while it lasts, renders impossible all mutual sympathy on the most important subjects of human thought and feeling. They are wholly indifferent to philosophy as vital truth. Reality is nothing to the superstitious, in comparison with the safety of their own dogmas and persuasions. Science is to them a mere word in its highest relation of all, — as the basis of all true belief. They approve of science and philosophy as mental exercise and an innocent pursuit; and, in a utilitarian sense, as conducive to human welfare in material conditions. But they do not recognize in it the special and crowning duty and boon of man’s life, — the source of all truth and the highway to all wisdom. They do not see in science the test of all other things, including beliefs, theological and other; and till they do recognize this, they will not see how philosophy — which is wisdom derived from science — is good enough to fulfil our most ardent desires, and holy enough to occupy our loftiest aspirations. The levity and presumption with which theological and metaphysical believers and speculators treat the holiest and loftiest aim and pursuit open to us, is so painful to my feelings of reverence, and discloses so broad a severance between us, that I hope for nothing more from this letter, or from any intercourse now possible on these topics, than to awaken some sense in my old friends that there may be more than they see in the great study of my life, and in its results, and possibly to fix the Edition: current; Page: [442] attention of one or another on the difference between an indulgence in the use of time-hallowed words and images and the bona fide pursuit of everlasting truth. Perhaps I may at least have checked the unconscious presumption with which those who rest upon tradition, or amuse themselves with speculation, are apt to treat labourers who deal with a toil which they have declined.

I hope, and in my own mind I feel sure, that there is nothing in what I have said incompatible with real and warm affection for my old friends, or with gratitude for the kindliness and efforts at respect with which they have written to me. I am as sensible of their interest and their fidelity (as far as their knowledge goes) as if our theological agreement was the same as of old, and they will feel, I am sure, that I could not appear, by silence, to acquiesce in the position they assign me, without betraying at once our mutual confidence and the philosophy which is the reverse of what they suppose. I believe they will not be offended. If they are, I cannot take the blame to myself. If they are not, how much better is frank explanation than concealment or silence!

I am, dear friend, yours ever,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

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WORK.

“He that to such a height hath built his mind,

And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong

As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame

Of his resolvéd powers, nor all the wind

Of vanity or malice pierce, to wrong

His settled peace, or to disturb the same, —

What a fair seat hath he! — from whence he may

The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey.”

Daniel.

“And deeds of week-day holiness

Fall from her, noiseless as the snow;

Nor hath she ever chanced to know

That aught were easier than to bless”

James Russell Lowell.

The work of the years passed in her own home is so various as to be with difficulty classified. There is room but for the merest mention of the building-plans for cottages. The “Harriet Martineau Cottages,” at Ambleside, stand as a monument of the movement she initiated for the creation of comfortable, economical homes and the lowering of rents.

The years of winter lectures, meanwhile, were building up men’s minds. The people highly appreciated them, and could never say enough of the benefit and the pleasure these lectures gave them. They were so carefully prepared, so effectively delivered, and so widely attended by those for whom they were gratuitously given, that they make a subject of conversation and grateful remembrance to this day in the region round about.

Then the Berlin-wool work, which sometimes excited a smile in those who “wondered how the great authoress could bear such a frivolous occupation.” It was not merely for rest and amusement Edition: current; Page: [444] that these groups of flowers and fruit and forest leaves were wrought, though that alone were motive enough; but each of them was a gift of solid pecuniary value to some greater work.

“Result of raffle for Miss Martineau’s needlework, — fifty subscribers at £1 each = £50: amount to be added to the fund for the relief of the distress in the manufacturing districts.” And by a glance at the list it would appear that the names most illustrious in the worlds of rank and philanthropy were rivalling each other for its possession.

Many of these works were executed for the benefit of the anti-slavery cause in the United States. One in particular (“The Four Seasons”) was presented by a subscription of five dollars each from the best-known of the American antislavery associates to a well-known friend of hers, and was thus the means of raising one hundred dollars for the cause. “So many of my thoughts and feelings,” she said, “are wrought into that table-cover, that I dreaded lest it should pass into unknown hands. But now — How much pleasure this has given me! Thank every one of the ‘chivalry’ for me!”

Some fatiguing agricultural labours became a matter of necessity in consequence of her improvements at the Knoll. Having written an account of them to a friend, the letter by some unknown means was published in the “Times,” and brought down upon her an avalanche of letters of inquiries about small farming and cow-keeping; and as many of them were from the heads of public institutions for the improvement of cultivation and the care of the poor, and in the interests of the poorer and suffering classes, she could not refuse to reply. These letters came to her from all the country round; and “Not for me, but for the poorer than I am, I hope, dear lady, to induce you to be at this trouble,” was sure to act upon her like a spell.

The following is a specimen of the sort of reply she gave, and the result of the whole matter, ultimately, was the republication, with additions, of her “Letter on Cow-keeping” and “Our Farm of Two Acres.” “I am not sorry it was published,” she said, “but I had nothing to do with it.”

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“Mrs. Martineau’s experience is, that nothing yields so small a return to industry here as the land. As the art of tillage advances, industry has less and less chance against capital and land in masses, while skilled labour commands better wages. In that part of the country where she lives small land-tillage leads directly to poverty in proportion as skilled agriculture answers more and more. To till waste lands some capital is necessary, and the cases are very rare in which subsistence can be obtained at all comparable with that which can be had through wages in almost any occupation; and labourers who can till the soil in any way have a much better chance under employment by the farmer than at their own risk. Such is, in a general way, Mrs. Martineau’s view, and she believes that of most people who observe the rapid advance made in agriculture.”

She was always anxious to correct any mistakes which the success of her own experiments might cause. “For my success,” she said, “is the sum of many elements, including home comfort and accommodation, and the maintenance of two persons — my farm-servant and his wife — whom otherwise I should not employ.”

Under this head of work at The Knoll comes the “History of the Thirty Years’ Peace,” which was projected in 1846 by Mr. Charles Knight, the publisher. Having found it too much for him at that time to undertake, he applied to another, whose method showed that he would spin it out too long. It lay nearly two years in abeyance, and this circumstance was most injurious to its success. But Mr. Knight was pledged to a list of subscribers to whom it must be issued in numbers, and he became very uneasy at the delay. At length it occurred to him to lay the subject before his friend Harriet Martineau, and to entreat her as the greatest possible favour to consider whether or no she would undertake it. She did so, — this was about the time of the Chartist outbreak in 1848, the Tenth of April time, — on condition of being herself responsible for the whole history, after the first book; and, as she says in the preface to the history, “solely responsible.”

The most careless observer can hardly fail to see what difficulties lie in the way of a writer of contemporaneous history. There are a thousand risks in taking time as it flies. It is sometimes a blindfold walk amid hot ploughshares, sometimes like Edition: current; Page: [446] the conducting of as hot a conflict. Whoever undertakes it must charge over the fallen, alive or dead, and as often be accused of misapprehension, both by the vanquished and the victorious. He must expect the blame, most likely the ill offices, of all who stand condemned as their deeds are placed in line. Who among authors is brave enough to risk what may befall while standing under fire to identify the columns amid the battle-smoke, and drawing them up in successive masses or files for public review? So it must needs be for the writer who takes the responsibility “solely,” and yet such a writer was the one the publisher must have; for who will read the flat, unprofitable tale of the moral craven? Then the terror of inaccuracy, and the vague dread of the unknown, which may cause unexpected explosion, to the author’s detriment and pain, are alone enough to stay his undertaking. “But who,” — as Harriet Martineau used to say on so many occasions, — “who could ever stir a finger, if only on condition of being guaranteed against oversights, misinformation, mistakes, ignorance, loss, and danger?” And she courageously undertook the unprecedented task of casting ethics into the stream of contemporaneous time. The work is written throughout with reference to the principles of right, with no yielding of judgment to the plea of political necessity, and is yet most candid in all its statements of these necessities, as no partisan could have been; thus merging the piquancy which is always at the command of the pamphleteer in the judicial integrity which is the grand characteristic of the historian. Hampered as such a work must be by its linear, chronological necessities, it is most remarkable for its interest as a narration under its inevitable disadvantages. The historian of any former age can give effect to his work by front lights and side lights, which the contemporary historian does not possess, the light of its coming time being wholly wanting. These helps to the success of a Thierry with the Norman Conquest, of a Miguet with personal delineations, or of a Motley with the Dutch Republic must of necessity be wanting to a picture of the present times. These grounds of critical judgment seem to have been overlooked by some who considered this history as wanting in success. But Edition: current; Page: [447] all praised its rare exactitude, and its great value as a most lucid and able arrangement of all classes of facts, and numerous editions up to the present time prove the public to be in the right. As far as the field of vision permitted, it dealt with the present as truthfully and dispassionately as if it were the past, — a mode of procedure not at the time to be popularly appreciated, but which makes the work sure of its place in the public heart of the future, and in the treasury of facts and guiding lines for its historians. But all the author’s care in guarding her sole responsibility proved in one instance insufficient to contend with the terrors of the publisher lest his pecuniary interests should suffer. This is the story as I noted it at the time from the author’s conversation, which was not a private one.

“When a certain number was to appear, it being actually printed, Mr. Knight came, in a great flurry of spirits. He told me he had just had a letter from a Whig official touching this period, and he felt in consequence great uneasiness and anxiety. But I will give you, I said, the proofs of the truth and correctness of what I have asserted; and I ran over the evidence. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘no doubt of its truth and correctness, — I am satisfied of that, but its publication might ruin me. Government might take from me the printing’ (of the poor-law matter, &c., worth £800 per annum to him); and he went on in a despairing, frightened way to complain of the position in which it might put him. Long after, he told me he had taken the responsibility of ordering that page to be cancelled. I then told him he should never more publish for me. Had he submitted the matter to me, I would have consented to all reasonable change, but he did not. And it was ‘my sole responsibility’ he took, without my knowing it! His frequent changes of mind as to time of publication were very detrimental to the success of the History. In such a mode of publication delay is eminently dangerous. I wrote it in twelve months, and he paid me £1,000, which he thought moderate, for both parts. For the last part, beginning with the century to the Battle of Waterloo, he paid £200. This last payment was made after the ‘Letters on Man’s Nature and Development’ were published. Soon after this, Robert Chambers came to take tea with me, and told me that Mr. Knight, being pressed for money, had sold the whole, and the purchasing house was delighted with the acquisition. But before the season was over Mr. Knight bought back £800 worth of the property.

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“Robert Chambers after this entered into a treaty with me, — for he had bought the whole History of Mr. Knight, — to complete it up to the present time, which my illness prevented my doing. But I ought to tell you of Mr. Knight’s most handsomely proposing to me to buy back the first book, that I might have the satisfaction of the beginning as well as the completion of the work.”

She afterwards wrote an entirely new book for the American publishers, who were induced by a sense of its need, and by a manifest demand indicating the same in the public mind, to republish it in Boston, in the heat of the slaveholding rebellion. It was felt by the most observant of those Americans who read it at the time to be a fit medicine for the hour; and the author was entreated by the American publishers to furnish them with a preface of warning against the policies that have ruined nations in old times, and that should be accordingly avoided by the statesmen of to-day. She immediately consented, and not only wrote the preface, but the new part, continuing the work to the Russian war in 1854. That edition is entirely exhausted.

The publishers preface the American edition thus: —

“The reproduction of this work may be regarded as peculiarly opportune at the crisis through which this nation is now passing. Our people are studying anew the great problems which have been agitating England for more than half a century. The questions connected with an extension of the suffrage, the emancipation of the blacks, a paper currency, the removal of restrictions on trade, the increase of taxation and the national debt, have to-day their direct analogies for the consideration of the citizens of the United States. To a certain extent the solution may be found in these volumes. . . . . The personal opinions of the distinguished author are forcibly stated, but the expression of them is characterized by an admirable fairness.”

The same year — 1846 — that the History of the Peace was projected the “Daily News” was started, under the management of Mr. Charles Dickens, Mr. Forster being the chief editor. The arrangements were of a very costly character, and the success of the paper was by no means commensurate to its expenditure. Edition: current; Page: [449] Mr. Dickens retired in a few weeks, and Mr. Forster threw up the editorship; and the proprietors, under the advice of Mr. Dilke, determined to try the experiment of a cheap paper, and to establish a daily paper at a reduced price. But after a trial of two years the cheap paper was abandoned as unsuccessful, as the circulation, at one time 20,000 per day, had fallen off to scarcely a quarter of that amount. Since the first of the year 1849 the paper continued (till the very recent change to a penny) at the ordinary price of daily London newspapers, that of five pence with a stamp. The politics of the paper have since been uniformly liberal, and in favour of free trade. Its devotion to the latter object caused it to be spoken of as the Cobden organ. But it was always independent, and it never followed the peace view nor the proslavery tendencies of that party, and has in those respects been its energetic opponent.

In view of Harriet Martineau’s numerous leading articles, at the rate at times of six per week, her valued friend, Mr. Hunt, said at that period: —

“Our contributors never wrote more than four articles a week at most. It is all that the best of them could fairly do. And political writers commonly deteriorate. The first article is excellent, and we think we have found a treasure. The second is less striking, but we are not surprised that so high a standard cannot in every instance be maintained. At the third we say, ‘Have we not read something like this very lately?’ The next is so manifest a falling off that we desire no more.”

There was no such feeling or failure in the political career of Harriet Martineau. “Do you know,” said Mr. Hunt to one of her family, “that your sister is a great political writer?” He told, too, how these writings moulded public opinion through Parliament. “They are read in the clubs; they precede the debates and modify the ‘Times.’ The ‘Daily News’ leads.” And well it might and must lead; “for these,” said a friend to Mr. Hunt, “are not only newspaper articles, but poems.” And so they were, — the full sweet harmonies to which

“The powers militant that stood for Heaven

Moved on.”

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The subjects of these articles cover the whole field of national and political action, philanthropic effort, and agricultural statistics. In the department of agriculture no one had done so much, except Sir John Walsham. Irish, Jewish, and American subjects, Indian and educational reform, antislavery, geographical, and historical articles, economical and West Indian interests, reviews and miscellaneous writings, made up her sixteen hundred strong.

It was fortunate for all whom political knowledge and integrity might concern, that, on the death of Mr. Hunt, his successor should have been such a man as William Weir.

He had been early trained by classical studies at home, and by the study and use of the European Continental languages abroad; and foreign travel and a University course in Germany had completed his preparation for life. It was currently said of him that he was master of the library of Europe. A man of great natural abilities, a barrister by profession, and a fluent and eloquent speaker, his career was arrested by a deafness which increased with years, and he became a journalist. He brought to the editorship of the “Daily News” long training in other journals, and an extraordinary array of qualifications for the post. Law, history, geographical research, literature, — he was at home in them all; and nothing in his experience had worn away the native vigour of his mind or warped the rectitude of his principles. It was his unalterable determination to hold the “Daily News” in its independent political position, and to make it the guardian of popular rights, needed reforms, and social improvement; and his cosmopolitan tendencies disposing him to believe that the field was the world, he was greatly gratified to find in Harriet Martineau the same purposes and accomplishments as his own. “When I returned from the Continent,” he used to say, “her writings took me between wind and water, and went a long way towards determining the direction and character of my mind for life.” It was probably the same with his colleagues in the office; for it was by having more or less formed the minds of her whole generation, that she was enabled so greatly to influence her times.

When it fell, in regular succession, to Mr. Weir to reorganize Edition: current; Page: [451] the office, he at once recognized the supreme value of her collaboration, and wrote to her as follows: —

William Weir

Weir, William

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

My dear Miss Martineau, —

You are no Miss Martineau, but a benevolent, indefatigable fairy, who knows instinctively what is wanted, and how it should be done. There is something supernatural in the patness of many of your articles (that on the queen, for example) to my views and wishes.

Seriously, I do not know how I should have wrestled through this last week without you. As we say north of the Tweed, “I owe you a day in hairst.”

Ever gratefully yours,

WILLIAM WEIR.

What most commended Mr. Weir to Mrs. Martineau (she had now for good reasons taken the style that had been in use in the last century for maiden ladies no less than married ones) was his readiness to encounter the opprobrium that always attends those who intermeddle for good with public affairs. She found him always valiant for the truth.

In another letter, written during a suspension of her articles, he says: —

William Weir

Weir, William

Mistress Harriet

Harriet, Mistress

My dear Mistress Harriet, —

I should have answered your note, but I have been severely indisposed, and at the same time more severely tasked than usual. I have had to go more into public company than usual, and have had to take my daughter to school.

You cannot doubt that your aid will always be acceptable. In political principles we are probably as nearly at one as two distinct existences can be. The only modification I am likely ever to suggest in any communication with which you favour me, would be when the accident of position enables me to know some recent fact that renders a different strategy advisable, or disproves some inference.

I have said before, and say again, your loss has been to me irreparable. I have never before met — I do not hope again to meet — one so earnest to promote progress, so practical in the means by which to arrive at it. My aim in life is to be able to say, when it is closing, “I too have done somewhat, though little, to benefit my kind;” and there are so few who do not regard this as quixotism or hypocrisy, that I shrink even from confessing it.

The “sold to the Ministry” story must be an American echo of what was once said here. I cannot conceive how any person who has Edition: current; Page: [452] read the “Daily News” can imagine such a thing. We are opposed to them on all broad, general principles; we neither spare men nor measures. There is only one way to get rid of such reports, — to live them down.

My great object just now is, to stir up the more or less instructed class to self-exertion; to assert its right to participation in administrative office, and to that end to be more careful in its selection of the men to be sent to Parliament. I believe we are on the eve of a great social revolution, and that cool-headed and earnest men are the only thing that can carry us safely through it. But where are they to be found? . . . .

Ever gratefully yours,

WILLIAM WEIR.

Mrs. Martineau’s objects being identical with those of Mr. Weir, their correspondence was one of mutual consultation as to means and measures. At the moment when the affairs of India became of paramount importance to Great Britain, she felt the necessity to the general public of more information and a wider diffusion of it; and she wrote to inquire of the “Master of the Library of Europe,” whether any book calculated to convey the requisite knowledge was in existence.

Mr. Weir immediately replied: —

William Weir

Weir, William

Mistress Harriet

Harriet, Mistress

Dear Mistress Harriet, —

There is no such book, and it is much wanted.

There are only two people in England who could do it. One would do it admirably, — yourself; the other very indifferently, — myself. When I came to the bottom of your third page, I cried, “That is just what crossed my mind when you first spoke of the ignorance of the public regarding India.” I wish you would try it. I will strain heaven and earth to get in two chapters (so call them) a week.

Much will depend on selecting the starting-point, — not too far back. As for a ballad or an epic, some epoch comparatively recent ought to be selected; and as opportunity offers, the growth of the army, administrative system, judicial system, etc., observed ab initio, so as to render intelligible their actual characters.

Perhaps the present mutiny, — apparently confined as yet to the army, — the relation of the army to the presidency, the relations of the three presidencies to each other, and so forth. I throw these things out hurriedly; for I have no doubt you have already a plan of your own sketched out, and this may help to fill it up.

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You must have much matter, and many intelligent friends who will aid. I will give what I can, and search for more.

Would it not be best to commence it from the beginning by “H. M.”? I will write again to-morrow.

I wish you were at work.

W. WEIR.

Mr. Walker, known as “the friend of the United States,” succeeding at the death of Mr. Weir, it is needless to say that, under such management, the circulation of the “Daily News” continually increased.

It was vastly more influential than the “Times” with the great middle class in England, from the time that Harriet Martineau’s spirit was moving in the wheels; and it is the great middle class that ministers and cabinets watch with most interest for the guidance of their course.

Besides what other authorship she might have on hand, whether light or weighty, Harriet Martineau wrote for this paper above sixteen hundred leading articles, at the rate sometimes, for months in succession, of six in a week, — all so valuable that it was once proposed to her to have twelve volumes of them republished. This idea she did not much favour. “Three volumes would be enough,” she said, “as so many of them are merely temporary.”

Through the kind offices of her friend Mr. Robinson, the managing editor of the “Daily News,” the experiment was tried long after with a volume of her biographical articles. She was too ill to attend to the publication herself, and in the midst of his own engrossing duties he assumed the whole labour of putting this work through the press, — a testimony of devoted friendship for the author.

The volume on British India, of which she felt the public need, published in 1851, is “beautiful exceedingly.” In 1855 appeared her “Guide to the English Lakes,” in another way no less beautiful. In 1859 the book, “England and her Soldiers,” for the promotion of army reform, was written in aid of Florence Nightingale’s objects. In 1861 came the volume entitled “Health, Husbandry, and Handicraft,” and also a volume containing a collection of her contributions to “Once a Week,” the Edition: current; Page: [454] periodical for which she wrote after she felt obliged, by the refusal of “Household Words” to publish any article reflecting credit on the Catholics, to sever her connection with Mr. Dickens. In 1869 the “Biographical Sketches” reappeared, with the same admiration as at first, and the same reserves on the part of those who use some few words in a narrower sense than herself. One of these was the word “heart;” and one of her very latest utterances to a friend who inquired what she meant by saying that Lord Macaulay was not a man of heart, illustrates this difference. “I do not mean,” she said, “that he did not love his family, or that he was not, in a small way, benevolent. But if he had been a man of heart, could he have gone through the world, without taking it in, with all its grand interests, its sufferings, and its destinies? He did not live on the high level of the heart. But he was a most charming littérateur, and as such admired and rewarded.”

It may be remarked of her appreciations of character in general, that they suggest this conclusion, — that disinterestedness unfetters the judgment. Let almost any one try the experiment of uttering his exact opinion as if in the palace of truth: it will be found to differ materially from his utterances in other palaces. But it was not so with her.

Her correspondence shows how every originator or promoter of a benevolent plan looked to her for co-operation.

Mr. Rathbone of Liverpool, knowing how busy she always was for the natives of Westmoreland, her proceedings there “sending a sunbeam into his room” (as he writes to her), sent her a plan for the introduction of penny banks among the people; and he tells her at the same time how much he has been struck by her plan for better organization of life for single ladies, and of the economies of life in general, that all the toiling millions may have leisure to be good; and all these thoughts make him sign himself “respectfully and affectionately” hers.

Her very numerous articles in leading periodicals were all written with some strong purpose of service to mankind, and her biographical articles were written on the principles of fidelity and openness, as the only security for a similar result from them. Edition: current; Page: [455] Her method seems to have secured general approval, for almost every newspaper in England hailed them with admiration, and there was actually a renewal of the enthusiasm attendant on her early fame. Her object in writing them was to be true to what she had known and observed of the life she was dealing with. Nothing to extenuate and nothing to overcharge was her way. To copy the portrait her subject had himself painted was her endeavour; and in observing the manners that indicate the mind, she used to say the alert eyes of the partially deaf, so constant in their watchfulness, learn many things unknown to others. Harriet Martineau was for long periods of her life in correspondence with her friend — I believe, too, her distant relative — Mr. Henry Reeve, so well known and highly esteemed as editor of the “Edinburgh Review,” in which many of her most valuable articles from time to time appeared. The “Westminster Review,” the foundation of which she had prophesied in the days of her early fame, was always at her command; and when it fell into financial difficulties, she took a mortgage of it as property, great as was the ultimate risk of ever being indemnified. “But I owe that amount of loss,” she said, “if it be one, to the review that has so often been my organ of communication with the world.”

These review articles and pamphlets were no “paper capital,” no “charming twaddle;” but all of heartfelt value and depth, written because her intellect and experience told her the world needed them, whether in great national interests or in defence of individual rights. A narrative of the rise and progress of every one of them would be a light cast upon her life. Those written in behalf of desert or in deprecation of neglect or wrong were always full of power. As when, for example, she studied so many volumes in order to be qualified to take up the cause of the Rajah Brooke, — that Sir James Brooke who devoted his life and fortune to the service of the natives of the Eastern Archipelago, and was made a prince by them because he had fostered their industry, stimulated their commerce, counselled their foreign policy, protected them from piracy, and ruled them in their own native customs and ideas, using these meanwhile as a basis for Edition: current; Page: [456] reforms, and resisting all efforts of the Dutch, English, French, or Belgians to settle in the country in great bodies, or to make of it a European colony. A man so high-minded and devoted, a man of such practical genius and utter disinterestedness, a born ruler, was sure to be maligned and calumniated. And it was while he was striving under this load of calumny to obtain such recognition by his native country as might best enable him to serve his adopted one, that Harriet Martineau consulted with his counsel, Mr. Templer, studied his case, received himself at her home, and wrote that able article in the “Westminster Review,” which, showing her thorough understanding and strong grasp of the whole matter, made him desire her action as a legislator for the Eastern Archipelago. But her various other duties precluded such an effort.

The rest and peace of home after Eastern life gave opportunity for Western exertion; and remembering the dust flung in her own eyes by slaveholders about the “intermeddling” of the North, and finding the same process constantly in use to blind the eyes of England at large, she threw before the country, in the “Daily News,” a history of the American compromises. There was an immediate demand for it in book form, as there had before been nothing to which the people could refer, and the ignorance of the people was profound. It made a great noise, not only in England, where the work was speedily and loudly applauded, but on the Continent. Four days after its appearance in London the “Milan Official Gazette” was earnest in its recommendations. It had a great circulation, gentlemen in various parts of the kingdom ordering copies by the hundred for distribution.

Mrs. Martineau wrote another much-needed work touching the important theme of the true functions of government. Its title was “The Factory Controversy: a Warning against Meddling Legislation.” She had written it with difficulty, on account of the head and heart attacks, at this time very severe, as a gift to the editor of the “Westminster Review,” then in pecuniary difficulty; for she always felt it a duty to sustain it, as a medium for the free expression of opinion of which she had so Edition: current; Page: [457] frequently found the usefulness. The editor accepted the article, but when he saw the manuscript he started back. He approved of her doctrine, but dreaded the personalities it contained. Its object was to show that Mr. Dickens, in “Household Words,” and Mr. Leonard Horner as factory inspector, were in the wrong in demanding of government what governments have no business to undertake. She did not know, when she determined to take the working of the factory acts as a most complete illustration of the vice of the principle of meddling legislation, that an association of factory occupiers was in existence. But learning it from Mr. Horner’s report, she obtained all the evidence on both sides, and wrote her article.

“My article won’t do,” is the only entry in her skeleton journal on the day that she received back her manuscript from the editor of the “Westminster Review.”

She then placed it at the disposal of the Factory Occupiers’ Association, with a letter of which the following is an extract:—

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

I, for my part, cannot modify what I have said [of Mr. Dickens, Mr. Horner, and others]. These gentlemen have publicly assumed a ground which in the opinion of sound statesmen cannot be maintained; and I believe my article proves that they have supported their position by inaccurate statements, and in a temper and by language which convey their own condemnation.

In a matter of literary judgment or taste, one may soften one’s tone of criticism and opposition to the gentlest breath of dissent; but in a matter of political morality so vital as this, there must be no compromise and no mistake. Mr. Horner and Mr. Dickens, as inspector and editor, have taken up a ground which they do not pretend to establish on any principle; and they hold it in an objectionable temper and by indefensible means. It seems to me, therefore, necessary to meet them unflinchingly, and expose, with all possible plainness, the mischief they are doing. They cannot complain, with any appearance of reason, of any plainness of speech. I have judged them by their own published statements; and the language of Mr. Horner’s Reports and of Mr. Dickens’s periodical leaves them no ground of remonstrance on the score of courtesy. I like courtesy as well as any body can do; but when vicious legislation and social oppression are upheld by men in high places, the vindication of principle and the exposure of mischief must come before considerations of private feeling. Edition: current; Page: [458] These gentlemen have offered a challenge to society, — and certainly in no spirit or tone of courtesy; and they will not, if they claim to be rational men, object to a fair encounter of their challenge.

On these grounds I declined to modify my article, preferring to publish it unaltered through some other channel. As the best means of meeting the mischief it denounces, I offer it to your association, to be published as a pamphlet, or in any way which in the judgment of your committee may insure the widest circulation for it. In my present state of health it has been something of an effort to write this article, and if I had consulted my own ease, I should have let the matter alone altogether; but the struggle for the establishment of a good or bad law in this vital case is so important, and the existence of your association seems to me a social fact of such extraordinary significance, that I could not have been easy to let the occasion pass without an effort on my part, for no better reason than its occasioning me fatigue and many painful emotions. . . . .

I suppose and hope you will print this paper just as it stands, in the form of an article intended for a quarterly review. It will insure the reader against lapsing into a supposition that the writer is the agent or advocate of your committee, or in some way or other less independent and impartial than I really am.

Believe me, dear sir, truly yours,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

The result was the amendment of the objectionable law; and in communicating to Mrs. Martineau this welcome news, the committee of the Factory Occupiers’ Association informed her that they had repeated evidences of the valuable service she had rendered, especially in quarters where disinterested statements were most needed. When they met for the first time after the passage of the amended bill, they all felt and expressed the obligation under which they lay to her, and it was suggested that this feeling ought to have expression in some substantial form. They considered her probable feelings in the matter, — her known feeling against being paid for doing good; and they appointed three of their number to ask her wishes as to the appropriation or expenditure of one hundred guineas which was placed for that purpose in their hands.

The chairman of the committee continues:—

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Henry Whitworth

Whitworth, Henry

I am desired by my colleagues, Mr. Turner and Mr. Ashworth, to make this intimation to you, and to assure you of the great satisfaction it gives them personally to be the medium of paying this small tribute to your estimable character and attainments. They further desire me to assure you of the perfectly unanimous request of the committee that you will allow them, through this medium, to place upon permanent record their appreciation of the service you have rendered to the cause of good government; and I can only add on behalf of the sub-committee that they will be exceedingly happy to execute your wishes in the appropriation of the amount in such form as you may most desire.

I am, dear Mrs. Martineau,

Yours most faithfully,

HENRY WHITWORTH.

Mrs. Martineau caused the sum to be invested for others.

This work was done in 1855; and in consequence of the way in which it was done, numberless wrongs were presented to her for redress. Among those, she selected such as she could best treat of, from present circumstances and past knowledge. “Corporate Tradition and National Rights,” considered in connection with local dues on shipping, she examined in conjunction with the Liverpool Association for the right Appropriation of Town Dues, in 1857.

One of the pieces of work at The Knoll (after the book on “British Rule,” which followed the mutiny) was the planning of “Suggestions for a Future Government of India.” Persons who knew most about India, able men who had been trained in the theory and practice of Indian government from their youth up, declared they had never seen a work, not written by one of their own number, which gave so clear an impression of every thing essential to a wise solution of the great question then agitating the public mind. Many, indeed, who had spent their lives in India, and thought themselves especially qualified to treat of it, were pronounced, by the really qualified, to be, in comparison with one whom they called “this sagacious and thoughtful writer,” but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

“These,” men said, “are the genuine, honest utterances of a clear, sound understanding; an understanding neither obscured Edition: current; Page: [460] nor enfeebled by party prejudice or personal selfishness.” And they wondered how any reasonable being could dissent from the propositions thus laid down in Harriet Martineau’s incisive words:—

“The time has arrived which will soon determine whether we shall lose India very soon, or keep it as a more valuable portion of the British Empire than it has ever been yet. Events have hastened the hour when we must take a new departure in our administration of our great dependency.

“If we take time to collect, and reason from, all procurable knowledge on the subject of India, we may make arrangements for which the whole world will be the better. If we hastily decide that India shall be a crown colony, ruled directly and entirely from England, according to existing British notions and habits of colonial government, we shall lose India speedily, disgracefully, and so disastrously that the event will be one of the most conspicuous calamities in the history of nations. If it is true that this is the alternative before us, every man’s duty is plain, — to exert himself to avert a hasty decision, first, and to procure a wise one afterwards.”

She goes on to deprecate the government of the great Eastern Empire, not for India itself, but for a parliamentary majority; and dreads the total departure, dreamed of by some, from all the principles and rules of action which had up to that time enabled England to maintain her Anglo-Indian government, at the very moment when for the first time the nation is called upon to decide on a method of dealing with that territory without aid from precedent or analogy. She continues:—

“Even if we made no change at all in the apparatus of government, it would be a new departure, because it would be a choice, — a deliberate adoption of a scheme of rule; and to such a choice there is no parallel in our history, nor perhaps in any other. Our great privilege as a nation is, that our British institutions have grown up, naturally and inevitably, from our character and our circumstances together. No man, or body of men, ever invented, or even foresaw, our constitution as we are living under it now. . . . .

“Already the nation prefers the company’s generals to the queen’s; and as other departments of service are laid open to view, the superiority will every where appear on the same side. Important as this is, Edition: current; Page: [461] there is a consideration (before touched upon) which is more vital still: that India has long been, and now is, governed on behalf of the Indians; whereas, from the hour when so-called parliamentary government should be instituted, that aim could never more be steadily maintained and fulfilled. No practical citizen will assert that it could; for the steady maintenance of such an aim can be looked for only from a special association (under whatever name) of men of special and rare knowledge, qualified for their task by a lifetime of such experience as no man can pick up in Parliament, or attain any where in a hurry. When we cease to rule India for the Indians, we lose India; and to vest the service of India in the Horse Guards and our civil departments, is to hand over India and the Indians to parties whose distinctive characteristic it is to regard all public service as a patrimony of their own.”

But in this whole regnant work of suggestion there is perhaps nothing more true than the following: —

“Through whole centuries of irregular changes and frequent perturbations, which Englishmen could control and overrule at home, but which made terrible sport of the interests of our colonies, the government of India has been stable, consistent, as immutable in the eyes of its Indian subjects as a god ruling from a steadfast throne. In so peculiar a case this has been an inestimable blessing. Its corporate character, and successions of various men, have redeemed its rule from the curse of despotisms, — the power of self-will; while its independence of the politics of the day has protected its dominion from the manifold mischiefs of party changes, — mischiefs which we admit to be evils at home, though we prefer them to the evils of any other system. To Hindostan the non-political character of the company has been absolutely a vital matter. Our rule there could not have been maintained if the authorities at the India House had been changed as often as the Ministry, and at the same time with the ins and outs of the President of the Board in Cannon Row. But the benefit has also been great to ourselves at home, though we may only now be beginning to understand the greatness of it. While subject to a constant sense of nightmare under our painful efforts to get the national business done by groups of officials who always and necessarily begin in an incompetent condition, and usually go out of office or change their function as soon as they become equal to their work, so that the conduct of public business is a perpetual irritation to middleclass people who, in their private affairs, are accustomed to efficient Edition: current; Page: [462] performance, it has been a real blessing to have one public body in the midst of us which did work effectively, as far as it undertook to work at all. No doubt, it was often jealous in its temper and restrictive in its policy, and repressive and vexatious towards adventurous men; but whatever it undertook to do was done in an orderly, prompt, liberal manner, and with a continuous force which would have been impossible if it had been implicated with the Ministers of the day. Before we abolish such an institution as this we are bound to take care that the government of India is secured, as carefully as hitherto, from being affected by party changes; but so far from such a precaution being a feature of the Ministerial proposal, the plan actually is to bring India within that very sphere of fluctuations to exclusion from which she owes her existence as a dependency of England. Englishmen may now show that they value a blessing before they lose it.”

The superiority of the officials of the East India Company over any others possible was strongly set forth: —

“On this head the public are provided with a notion and a wish. They see that wherever the officials of the imperial government and those of the company come into comparison, the superiority of the latter is conspicuous and unquestionable. The company’s military officers, or queen’s officers, well practised in Indian warfare under the company’s arrangements, have achieved, wherever tried, successes as brilliant as the failures of the other class have been intolerable. The people of England have less opportunity of knowing how far a similar contrast prevails in the civil service; but it is at least as striking to all who have penetrated into the business offices of the two governments. It is generally understood that nothing, in the way of transaction of business, exists that can compare with the achievements in Leadenhall Street, and in most of the offices in India, which are held duly responsible to the central authority; whereas we are in the habit of hearing a good deal of the opposite weakness, and feeling something of the misfortune of it, in our home administration. The natural inference is that in the highest office, as in both classes of subordinate functions, a nominee of the company would answer better than one appointed by the imperial government. All eyes turn at this moment to Sir John Lawrence as the right man. Whether he be so or not, the general desire should operate as a popular nomination, to check an unpopular one. If it were duly attended to, neither royalty, administration, nor aristocracy would venture to propose any Edition: current; Page: [463] ordinary home-bred Englishman as the ruler of a hundred millions of men, while there are Anglo-Indians in existence who are familiar with the country and the people, and have proved that they can administer the one and rule the other.”

Such truths as these were eagerly studied by all honestly in search of truth; and some of the wisest men in the nation said, “Take this book of suggestions to heart, earnestly and ineffaceably.”

It was written because the writer believed that Lord Palmerston, then in power, would follow up with rash precipitancy the wellnigh fatal apathy and procrastination of the past, and it would be doing the nation a service to rouse it to active and profound consideration and caution in so unprecedented a case. She had been earnestly entreated to write this book, and she consented, “because the leisure, quiet, and impartial position of the sick-room seem to render the request reasonable.”

“Endowed Schools in Ireland” was demanded by a parliamentary need, and was reprinted from the “Daily News” in 1859; and as “Life in the Sick-Room” at Tynemouth was a blessing to individuals in numberless sick-rooms, so these four works — a blessing to nations and cities in their corporate capacity — might properly be lettered, in contradistinction, “Life in a Sick-Room;” for it is doubtful if there could be another of such a character.

These grave political labours were occasionally enlivened by narratives of previous experiences, which she had written out at the time of their occurrence, under the following title: —

TWO TRUE STORIES ABOUT CLAIRVOYANCE.

FIRST STORY.

Early in 1849 I stayed a few days at Mr. S. Dukinfield Darbishire’s, at Manchester. One night, after a party, Mrs. Darbishire told me that she had to go, the next morning, to Bolton, and she hoped I would go with her. She had a question to ask of the girl Emma, whose strange powers as a somnambule had just become known through an accident. Mrs. D.’s question related to some missing Edition: current; Page: [464] property (not, I think, her own, but a friend’s). Emma’s information had recently led to the discovery of some mislaid bank-notes, and the saving of the character of a clerk; and this induced Mrs. D.’s experiment. I shall say nothing about that business, however, but shall relate only incidents within my own experience and observation. At first I refused to go, being unwilling to countenance the practice of exposing invalids (as somnambules very commonly are) to be mesmerized for money, and urged beyond the natural exercise of the faculty, whatever it be. At bedtime, however, Mrs. D. said, “I think, if you consider that your going will make no difference to the girl, that it will be merely two ladies being in the room instead of one, you will see that you may as well use the opportunity.” I was very willing, of course; and I went.

It was a bitter cold winter’s morning; and when we left the station at Bolton Mrs. D. said she hoped we might meet brother Charles presently, and not have to wait long in the street. She had sent him a request to meet her at Mr. Haddock’s (where Emma lived), but it had now occurred to her that we had better meet him in the street, that she might caution him against mentioning either of our names in Mr. Haddock’s house. We did meet him, a few yards beyond Mr. Haddock’s shop; he was introduced to me, and we agreed to mention no name during the interview. Mr. Charles Darbishire (I believe a bachelor) lived eight miles from Bolton, and I think he and I had met once before; but we were quite strangers to each other. Of me and my ways he knew nothing but that I lived at Ambleside, and that I had been much interested in the facts of mesmerism. For his part, what he knew of Emma was the recovery of the banknotes, by her information, he being one of the witnesses of the transaction.

We entered the shop, — an apothecary’s shop. Emma was the maid-of-all-work to Mr. Haddock. As we were not expected, we had to wait in the shop while the fire was lighted in the sitting-room, and while, doubtless, Emma dressed. I will say nothing of Mrs. Darbishire’s business, but merely remark that she and I were the only persons present, after Mr. C. Darbishire went away, except that Mr. Haddock went out and came in, two or three times, as business called him. He had nothing to do with Emma while she was under my hands.

She was a vulgar girl, anything but handsome, and extremely ignorant. It does not matter to my story; but it is the fact, that she could not read. What I saw disposed me to try what I could make Edition: current; Page: [465] of her when Mrs. D.’s business was done. I mesmerized her, and soon saw she was fast. She exclaimed at once that “the lady had warmed her.”

After a good deal of very striking disclosure on her part, it suddenly struck me that I might try her power of seeing about places and persons. So I took a handful — a large handful — of letters from my pocket, Mrs. D. asking me what I was doing. I told her she would soon see: and so she did; and so did Mr. C. D., who returned in the middle of my experiment.

I was aware that the girl could not read: but to make all sure, I chose a letter which was not in an envelope, and was altogether blank outside. There was not a scratch of ink on it, and it was close folded. I asked Emma who that letter was from. She clapped it on her head, close folded, and said a gentleman wrote it who was then walking up and down his parlour, with a silk handkerchief in his hand. Her account of his appearance, ways, and habit of mind was as accurate as possible.

“Who is it?” asked Mrs. D. “Who is she talking about?”

“I will tell you all about it by and by,” I said; “surely not now.”

Emma described the room; but I need not, unless I mention one particular. It was a London dining-room, one of hundreds which any one might venture on describing. One article, however, Emma mentioned as “a long-down picture,” hanging in fact where she said it did. The gentleman was Mr. Atkinson, in his own dining-room; and the “long-down picture” was a part plan, part bird’s-eye view of Rome, two or three times longer than it was broad.

“Now,” said I, “go into the next room, and tell me what you see there.”

“The next room?” said she. “There is a room, but I can’t get into it; there is no door.” And, moving in a troubled way, “How can I get into it when there is no door?”

“I suppose somebody gets into it to clean it,” said I.

“O, yes; they go in by the hall.”

“Well! do you go in by the hall.”

“Yes, I can do that. Ah! this is a smaller room. There are some cut stones stuck up, — one, two, three.”

“Cut stones!” said Mrs. Darbishire; and I begged her to wait.

“And there are some book-shelves, — not many books: there are boxes. Some are gray, some are green; and they have large white marks upon them, — letters, I think. They are in rows, a lot of them, one on top of another between the shelves.”

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“Any books?”

“Yes, some; only one shelf of them.”

“Any thing else?”

She writhed in her chair, and shuddered, and spoke unwillingly and hesitatingly.

“Ye—s; there are some things on the top shelf. I don’t like them,” shuddering much.

“Tell me about them.”

“Well, there are six on ’em; and one is very well; but the others—” And she shuddered.

“Go on.”

“Well, there is one below in the shop, — one of the sort.”

This was true: I had seen it when we entered.

Mrs. D. could wait no longer. “What is she talking about?” she exclaimed. “She talks of ‘things’ and ‘things’; — what things are they?”

I said to Emma, “You talk of ‘things.’ What sort of things are they?”

“Well, I can’t tell you what they are.”

“Are they apples and oranges, or what?”

“O no, no! nothing of that sort, I should say,” — and she shuddered out her words, and spoke doubtfully, — “they are a sort of heads. But one goes this way,” — putting up her hands, and describing a wide arch from side to side of her head, — “and one goes that way,” describing a great arch from the nape of her neck to the root of her nose. This was enough; and I relieved her from her painful state of disgust by turning to other objects.

This may end my first story; for I could have nothing more remarkable to tell. As soon as we were out of the house I explained it all to my companions.

The second room was the place of deposit of some curious property of Mr. Atkinson’s deceased father, as well as some odd things of his own. The old Lord Elgin gave Mr. Atkinson, Sr., some of the most fragmentary of the Elgin marbles; and these “cut stones” were on pedestals in various parts of the room.

Mr. Atkinson, Sr., was an architect of eminence, and the plans, &c., of the mansions and grounds of many noblemen and gentlemen were kept by him, as deeds are by lawyers, in tin boxes, — in this case gray and green, with the names of the owners and estates painted outside in large white letters, — the boxes being shelved as described.

Above them was a shelf of books; and above them, on the top shelf, Edition: current; Page: [467] six “things” which, as it happened, I had forgotten, till the girl’s horrors brought them back to mind.

They were six casts of heads, — one, as she said nothing remarkable, or “very well.” The other five were casts of the heads of a family of idiots in Norfolk, hideous beyond expression; and two of them enormous, as Emma described, — one in length, the other in breadth.

Of course I told Mr. C. Darbishire that I should be ready to bear witness to the reality of Emma’s powers, at that date, — so far at least as (what is called) “thought-reading” is concerned, — in case of her meeting with the too common treatment, — the insult and imputation of imposture which are the weapons of the prejudiced, the ignorant, and people who are too indolent to ascertain facts for themselves. I implored him, however, to do all he could to prevent the girl being over-worked or over-urged; and thus to save her from the danger of filling up her failing power by material from the imagination, and at last resorting to tricks, deceiving herself and others, rather than give up.

SECOND STORY.

After I got home it struck me that it might be well to ascertain Emma’s faculty in regard to myself; to try in some way, which should be indisputable if it succeeded, her power of clairvoyance in the case of a person with whom mesmeric relations had been established. I therefore wrote to Mr. Charles Darbishire, who was frequently seeing her, to explain my notion. I told no person whatever of my writing to him; and he, living alone, told no person whatever of my letter. Between us we managed so that communication with Emma — if anybody had known of the project — was impossible in point of time. There was no telegraph within reach from hence at that time, if there had been any body able to use it. I wrote on a Thursday, saying that for a week from the hour when he would receive my letter he had my leave to learn from Emma what I was doing at any time between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

The immediate method was put into my head by Mr. C. D. having said, once before, that he was tempted to put a note of mine on her head, to see what she would say; but that he considered that it would be hardly right to do this without my leave. He had therefore never referred at all to me and my visit, and did not know how far the girl was conscious of it. Mr. C. D. received my letter the next morning — Friday — at his home, eight miles from Edition: current; Page: [468] Bolton. Very considerately remembering that it must be somewhat genant to me to be under possible inspection all day, and seeing the advantage of wasting no time, he determined to send me his report by the same day’s post. In the afternoon he made his call at Mr. Haddock’s, found Emma quite ill with a bad cold, and expected nothing from her while so “stuffed” and stupid and headachy; but, as mesmerizing would do her good, he tried what she could do, giving no hint of any particular reason. He was so satisfied that she was confused, and talking at random, that he presently broke off; and much surprised he was to find her accounts of things all right.

As I have said, he knew nothing more about my position here than that I lived at Ambleside. My house was just built; and whether I lived in lodgings, or how or where, he was entirely ignorant. Such was the fact; though it would have made no difference in the essential points of the story if he had known my house as well as his own.

He put on Emma’s head a folded paper, — blank except a few words which told nothing and were not signed, and were written merely to establish the necessary relation. I had also breathed on the paper, for the same reason. Outside it was blank; and it was never unfolded. As soon as she put it on her head she said she could see “the lady that warmed her.” The lady was sitting at a round table before the fire, and opposite the fire was a large window, and there was on another side another window, that opened down to the ground. The sofa, chairs, and window-curtains were light-coloured, &c., &c., — all correct. The only remarkable points of the description were two: the sideboard having a white marble top; and the bookcase, which she called “a right-up” bookcase. It was a straight, tall, narrow bookcase, made to fit in between two windows in our house in London, and looking exceedingly ugly in any other position.

“The lady” was fumbling in her work-box at the table, — turning things over. All this seemed so commonplace, and yet so unlikely (according to Mr. C. D’s. notions) that the business stopped here; and he wrote an account of it after he got home, intending to call (unexpectedly) pretty early the next day, to see if the girl was in better condition. He would carry his letter in his pocket, and finish and post it in Bolton, whatever was the result.

The girl was right in every particular. The time was near five of a February afternoon. I had come into the drawing-room from my work in the study, and was sitting in the dusk before dinner. I had Edition: current; Page: [469] sent my maid out to buy a piece of canvas for a new enterprise of woolwork; and I was looking out my needles and other needful things, ready to begin.

This was Friday afternoon, my proposal having been posted on the Thursday evening. On Saturday Mr. C. Darbishire paid his visit some hours earlier, — from half past eleven to just one. He found Emma not much better, and had no expectations whatever from the interview.

“The lady that warmed her” was in another room to-day; a long room, with a large bay-window at one end and the fireplace at the other. The furniture was black horse-hair, all but the sofa, which was light-coloured. (All true.) But the girl’s interest was about the books. Such a quantity of books she had never seen before; what were they for? She began talking to “the lady,” asking why she had so many books, and whether she could ever read the half of them. At last she came to what “the lady” was doing. She had a cloth in her hand, and she was wiping and doing among some of the books. This upset the girl’s credit with Mr. C. D., to whom it seemed more likely to be a servant-girl’s dream than my occupation.

“Now she has got a book,” Emma declared, — “a big, square, brown book, and she is going to read it on the sofa. Now she is reading it.”

Presently she declared this “tiresome.” She should not “wait long” if the lady did not leave off; and what a tune this reading had gone on! At last she exclaimed, “Well, I shall not wait any longer, if you won’t leave off.” Then, with a laugh, “Ah! but you ‘d better leave off. Tou are not thinking about your book. You have got some dust on your hands, and you are thinking you will go up stairs and wash them! Well, go! You’d better go!” Presently, “Ah! now she’s really going.”

She described my going up stairs, and my standing before the glass, “smoothing her hair,” said Emma; “and there is a lady coming in. No, she has gone out again softly. I don’t know that she is a lady exactly; but she is a nice-looking young person. And the lady never found out she came in.”

Here they stopped, Mr. C. D. as hopeless as the day before, it seemed all so improbable, and the girl was really so oppressed with her cold! He left her at 1 p. m., went to a counting-house to finish his letter, posted it himself, and went home to dinner. I received the letter the next morning, — Sunday, just after breakfast

Edition: current; Page: [470]

The facts were these. I had arranged my books the day before (Friday), and being tired, had left one shelf untouched. At eleven on Saturday, and on to about half past, I had a duster in my hand, and was dusting and placing the books. Having finished, I took up one of them, — a volume of Mémoires of the French Institute, sent me just before by M. Ampère, for the sake of a paper on the Memnon at Thebes (apropos to something in my “Eastern Life,” lately published). The volume was rather large, square, and with a yellowish-brown back. I read for a considerable time; but at length observed that my hands were dirty, — wanted to finish the paper, — hesitated, but presently went up to my room and washed my hands.

So far I could testify. When I had finished the letter I rang for my maid. I asked her, “Do you remember whether at any time yesterday you came into my bedroom while I was there?”

After considering a moment, she answered, surprised, “Why, yes, ma’am, I did. I was going to fill the water-jugs; and when I went in you were before the glass; so I went out softly, thinking you did not see me.”

“What time was that?”

After considering again, she said, “It must have been about a quarter to one; for I had just finished up stairs before I brought in your lunch at one.”

This is my second story. Many have heard it; and no one, as far as I know, has ever treated it with levity or incivility. There is nothing new or exceptional in the facts. Every one who has paid any adequate attention to the subject is aware that such instances of clairvoyance are very common; but it does not often happen that allegations of fraud or fancy are so completely excluded as in this case. There may be people who, rather than believe facts that they have stiffened their minds against, would charge Mr. C. Darbishire and me with having fabricated the whole narrative; but, short of this, there seems to be no escape from an admission that there are facts in human nature which require a good deal of humble and candid study before we can honestly claim to know the extent and character of human powers.

Prince Albert might well wonder, as he said he did, what men of science and physicians in England could mean by neglecting such a department of study as this. And nobody ought to be surprised when, as a natural consequence of such neglect, such a hell-feast as the witch-hanging in Salem takes place, or a madness takes possession of a multitude Edition: current; Page: [471] of (professedly) educated people in the nineteenth century about a supposed commerce with the spirits of the dead. When due observation is directed upon such phenomena as those of mesmerism, mankind will take a great new step onwards; and meantime the candid have the advantage over the ignorant and scoffing, that they are in possession of a very interesting and important knowledge of which the others deprive themselves, not knowing what they lose.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Among the more voluminous works of the ten years succeeding her entrance at The Knoll appeared her little book, “Household Education,” — the oracle of so many homes; and the papers afterwards collated by the suggestion of the proprietors, under the title of “Health, Husbandry, and Handicraft,” which she calls “the results of a long experience and observation of the homely realities of life.”

It was at the early part of this period of what seemed impending dissolution that Matthew Arnold, the poet and the student of public educational institutions, wrote the following lines after passing an evening with Harriet Martineau and Charlotte Brontë: —

HAWORTH CHURCHYARD.

Where, under Loughrigg, the stream

Of Rotha sparkles, the fields

Are green, and the house of one

Friendly and gentle, now dead,

Wordsworth’s son-in-law, friend, —

Four years since, on a marked

Evening, a meeting I saw.

Two friends met there, — two famed,

Gifted women. The one,

Brilliant with recent renown,

Young, unpractised, had told

With a master’s accent her feigned

History of passionate life;

The other, maturer in fame,

Earning she, too, her praise

First in fiction, had since

Edition: current; Page: [472]

Widened her sweep, and surveyed

History, politics, mind.

They met, held converse: they wrote

In a book which of glorious souls

Held memorial; bard,

Warrior, statesman, had left

Their names, — chief treasure of all,

Scott had consigned there his last

Breathings of song with a pen

Tottering, a death-stricken hand.

I beheld; the obscure

Saw the famous. Alas!

Years in number, it seemed,

Lay before both, and a fame

Heightened, and multiplied power.

Behold! the elder, to-day,

Lies expecting from Death,

In mortal weakness, a last

Summons: the younger is dead.

First to the living we pay

Mournful homage; the Muse

Gains not an earth-deafened ear.

Hail to the steadfast soul

Which, unflinching and keen

Wrought to erase from its depth

Mist and illusion and fear!

Hail to the spirit which dared

Trust its own thoughts before yet

Echoed her back by the crowd!

Hail to the courage which gave

Voice to its creed ere the creed

Won consecration from time!

Turn, O Death, on the vile,

Turn on the foolish the stroke

Hanging now o’er a head

Active, beneficent, pure!

But if the prayer be in vain,

But if the stroke must fall,

Edition: current; Page: [473]

Her whom we cannot save

What might we say to console?

She will not see her country lose

Its greatness, nor the reign of fools prolonged.

She will behold no more

This ignominious spectacle, —

Power dropping from the hand

Of paralytic factions, and no soul

To snatch and wield it; will not see

Her fellow-people sit

Helplessly gazing on their own decline.

Myrtle and rose fit the young,

Laurel and oak the mature.

Private affections for these

Have run their circle and left

Space for things far from themselves,

Thoughts of the general weal,

Country and public cares:

Public cares which move

Seldom and faintly the depth

Of younger passionate souls,

Plunged in themselves, who demand

Only to live by the heart,

Only to love and be loved.

. . . . .

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

Edition: current; Page: [474] Edition: current; Page: [475]

FRESH FOREIGN INTERCOURSE.

“It is easier to change many things than one.”

— Lord Bacon.

“Am I, therefore, become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?”

Paul to the Galatians.

I learn from all her journals and letters of this period, as well as by her communications to myself, how deeply her American intercourses touched her heart and mind. She felt that they were not mere formal or flattering expressions, but testimonies of grateful remembrance and regard from the members of the American Antislavery Society to their co-worker of so many perilous years both in England and in America; and they kept alive in her mind the recollection of the years during which she had cherished the purpose of living with them in their own land. The value of that constant co-operation was more and more appreciated, as the news of her hopeless illness from time to time reached the United States; especially as communicated by her American friend, Mr. Pillsbury, who enjoyed the hospitalities of The Knoll shortly after her consultations with Dr. Latham.

At the annual meeting of the Antislavery Society at Boston in 1856, Mr. Garrison, on behalf of the business committee of the meeting, reported the following resolution: —

“Resolved, That, since the briefest historical retrospect of the last quarter of a century would be imperfect without an expression of feeling in view of one great and holy life which the world has seen so unreservedly and strenuously devoted to the welfare of mankind; and since that whole noble life, now approaching the term that gives freedom to speak the whole truth concerning it, has a peculiar claim on our hearts, we feel privileged by our cause, to express to Harriet Martineau, while yet there is time, our deep, affectionate, and Edition: current; Page: [476] reverential gratitude for the benefit of her labours, the honour of her friendship, and the sublime joy of her example.”

And the whole audience stood up in affirmation.

Her illness at this time subjected her to very severe suffering. The frequently recurring suspension of the heart’s action was very alarming. Her recovery from each attack seemed at the time as doubtful as resuscitation after drowning. “Really and truly,” said her friend Lord Houghton, who was accidentally present at one of these sudden seizures, “we may use St. Paul’s words, ‘She dies daily.’ ” She was more than ready, — she was even joyful in the prospect of sudden departure. All her affairs had been settled, her will made, her friends remembered, as soon as Dr. Latham’s warning was given, and while her subsequent condition was becoming more and more hopeless. But she wrought on unremittingly, at every possible moment, with her Autobiography; and when that was finished, resumed her political, antislavery, and literary labours, while more than cheerfully, gladly, waiting for death. Thus life went on, kept in motion, probably, by the quietness of her spirit as well as the great care of her young family friends, till 1859, when her American friends felt the need of her more immediate assistance. For with the increase, in general estimation, of the importance of the great enterprise to which their lives had been devoted, grew a new responsibility, — that of making known on both sides of the sea whatever in relation to it might concern the two great English-speaking nations. To do the needed work effectually, it was felt that the enterprise could no longer be treated topically. It would require the trained power of thought and observation, the political intuition and accomplishment, the historic faculty and knowledge, which it is always the standing difficulty on either side of the Atlantic to combine, and the common despair of both to find united. The great antislavery enterprise of the century demanded, in addition, a universal and impartial sympathy, and a proved power to forego all things else, for the opportunity of usefulness to the world. All these deeply felt needs turned the antislavery mind to Harriet Martineau. She was a member of the Antislavery Society, and it was one of her Edition: current; Page: [477] delights to look at her certificate of membership, forwarded in behalf of the women of Lynn, by Abby Kelly,* their secretary. Long before that time she had devoted herself to the cause. She was one of the earliest abolitionists. She knew the ground and the subject thoroughly in all its bearings; and the executive committee entreated her once more to give the cause the benefit of her co-operation in their own country. Signs of a coming change in the affairs of the nation then began to be seen and felt. The work of wellnigh thirty years began to tell, and to require additional processes in aid of old principles.

Harriet Martineau’s preliminary reply was that such was the corruption that slavery had brought about in our country, and such the defects in our statesmanship, that the difficulties in the way of her compliance would be very great. The more severe and uncompromising we had been in dealing with slavery, its defenders, the apologists for its longer continuance, and its tongue-tied minions whipped into silence, the greater was her sense of the responsibility that must devolve upon herself if she accepted the proposal. But she did accept it, only, however, on condition that whenever her communications did not meet the approval of her American friends they should at once inform her of it. She replied thus: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

March 10, 1859

March 10, 1859

My dear Friend, —

I have received and read with great pleasure your letter of February 22, containing an invitation to me to write semi-monthly letters to the “Standard” on political subjects, with the object of inducing such interaction as may be possible between the European and American peoples for the extinction of slavery. It has long appeared to me that a link was wanting by which much benefit to your cause was lost; namely, a comparison of the doings of the two continents, as they affect the destinies of the oppressed, and of the negro race in particular. I perceive that our antislave-trade and West India debates and action are reported in your newspapers without any application to your own great national case, and that American transactions are detailed in our journals without any apparent consciousness that any universal interest is at all involved in the case. It is but little that one person can do towards establishing Edition: current; Page: [478] any recognition of a common interest between the two parties, and my power is much impaired by my state of health. But I have experience. I have long endeavoured to make your case understood here; and I am most heartily disposed to try what I can do on the converse side. I will send a letter to the “Standard” by next week’s mail, and will devote my best attention to the consideration of how I may most effectually carry out your wish. The drawback in this transaction is the pain of taking money for my work. I would not do it if I could help it. My friends on the committee know me well enough to know that. If I were not ill and helpless (as to my mode of living), I would beg you to accept my services as a free gift. As it is otherwise, I can only engage to make my service as good as study and care can make it, and entreat you to speak frankly, and without the slightest scruple, if, for any reason whatever, you should wish to dissolve our agreement. I trust you to do so, with or without reason assigned.

If you think proper, will you communicate to your committee (all of whom I regard as dear friends) what I have now said.

Believe me, ever yours affectionately,

H. MARTINEAU.

Her mind and time were then very full of army work, and the book she was just preparing for the press in aid of Florence Nightingale’s objects, and the critical state of affairs in Europe bound her to the “Daily News.” But it always seemed as if her heart were large enough.

“To take in all, and verge enough for more.”

She accompanied her official consent with a private note, urging still more strongly, in underlined sentences, her earnest desire to be immediately notified of any change in their wishes: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

March 10, 1859

March 10, 1859

.

. . . . That letter of yours gratifies me much; and I am less troubled than usual on such occasions, about my fitness and responsibility. One great thing is that I absolutely trust your fidelity to the cause, to say nothing of my claims on you for honest treatment, to tell me in the plainest and broadest way if I do not answer the committee’s expectations, or aid the cause to such a degree as to make the engagement worth while. . . . .

Understand that you are simply to say ‘stop.’

Edition: current; Page: [479]

In another month my book will be out, and I can have some real long talks with you. M— will tell you that I cannot to-day. You see how critical our European affairs are; and I must give what help I can here.

She always bore in mind Lord Bacon’s opinion, — “letters are the things,” — and it was agreed between the friends that the articles should appear in this form, as insuring greater ease and freedom of expression, and as to plainness of speech and choice of topics, the committee gave her carte blanche.

She wrote some ninety letters in “The National Antislavery Standard” during the three succeeding years, learning from time to time, through the editor, “that the friends of the cause on both sides of the Atlantic might,” in his opinion, “will felicitate themselves, for the cause’s sake, that the ‘Standard’ was in future to have the benefit of her guidance in respect to European politics.” He adds: —

“Do not hesitate, I pray you, to utter any word of counsel that may be from time to time suggested by the course of the American abolitionists. Your intimate relations with the cause, and your long-continued and faithful devotion to it, will command for you the respectful attention of all its friends on this side of the water. Exercise the freedom and frankness of speech that pertains to the most intimate and friendly relations.”

And he disapproves of a disposition to magnify mere differences of judgment as to individual character, and a too great unwillingness to admit of sincerely offered aid for the cause working in political or other channels than the Antislavery Society.

“Any views which you may be moved to express in relation to these matters would, I am sure, be well received by all concerned.”

While the first year’s letters were appearing, as had been agreed, over the signature of “H. M.,” the youth of the cause used to call Harriet Martineau “Her Majesty,” as an expression of their satisfaction. But by and by some were offended.

The first occasion was the warning she gave that the friction of debate about individual antislavery character, which was using up the time of the meetings at a moment when change was impending Edition: current; Page: [480] over the nation, was working ill to the society and to the cause.

“Why could not these valued friends [and personal friends of her own, too, some of them were] work apart by themselves, in their own way, if they found themselves unable to work any longer with their own acknowledged and chosen leaders?”

But these friends, being unaware of the technical parliamentary use of the word “leaders” in English politics, where it implies neither disparagement of the members nor abatement of political independence, were exceedingly indignant. “God is our leader! we have no other!”

Other some felt it an indispensable duty to tolerate intolerance; and declared their conviction that the meetings would lose their charm if these brethren should not be sustained. It was the duty of the hour. So the framing and debating of proscriptive resolutions went on.

A very interesting debate followed on the presentation of one, at a great meeting of the abolitionists. The Rev. Samuel May opposed them, and Mr. William Lloyd Garrison, the president of the Antislavery Society, seconded him. “I agree with my friend May,” he said; “as a matter of conscience and from a sense of duty, I cannot vote for these resolutions.” There was a long debate, the result of which was, that the proscriptive resolutions were laid on the table by a large vote, and the society adjourned sine die; and Harriet Martineau congratulated those with whom she was in correspondence upon the event. “It is a good thing that your standpoint remains unchanged.”

The society did indeed remain uncommitted to the incorporation into its records that Mr. Greeley, the editor of the “New York Tribune,” and Mr. Cheever, the pastor of the New York Church of the Puritans (the one active in the Republican party, and the other engaged in organizing a New York Church Antislavery Society), were enemies of the antislavery gospel; but the movers and supporters of these resolutions felt it their duty to carry them through the country, and so debated them as to convey the accusation that Mr. Garrison, the founder, the leader, Edition: current; Page: [481] the president, and the representative man of the society had, by not acting in accordance with them, “lowered the standard” and “betrayed the cause.”

The next “H. M.” letter was as follows: —

It is no part of the object of our correspondence that I should engage in a controversy about any American affairs; and least of all about what concerns your association. Justice seems to require, however, that I should say in reply to a suggestion in the “Standard” that letters are written by our friends in the United States to bias our judgments, that I, for one, refer altogether to the published reports of your proceedings when I comment on any of them. I derived my impressions from published documents, and the speeches on the points they embraced. All I have to say is, that your friends here have always understood the strong point of your association to be that it was not doctrinal in any direction; that it set up no test of opinion and allowed none to be set up; that (as Dr. Follen used to explain to me) it had not even any plan, but that it left opinion free, requiring only that its members should earnestly desire and work at the abolition of slavery, by the means which should present themselves at each passing moment, — the object perdurable, the aim steady, the means whatever time and change should offer. We still understand such to have been the original character of your organization. If we are mistaken we shall be grieved; because the failure of associations grounded on or subjected to opinion is assured in the nineteenth century. When, therefore, a few members attempting to introduce a new principle and method require assent to points of opinion in which unanimity is wellnigh impossible, it seems to us that those who propose to change are the party to withdraw. They say, “We believe this and that, and we must be faithful to our convictions.” By all means; let them say what they think of persons and parties; but surely it is directly contrary to the principles of your association that they should require other members to think as they do, or say whether they do or not. To declare by resolution the demerits of various persons and parties is a direct enforcement of a test in a matter of individual opinion and an infringement on the liberty of every member of the body. Any man has a right to say, on his own account, that he believes A to be as bad as B or C; but when this opinion is pressed as a resolution, the natural objection arises that it is no part of the business of the society to pronounce on such a matter. If the movers go on to intimate that, whereas A is as Edition: current; Page: [482] bad as B and C, D is as bad as either of them if he does not admit it, a further encroachment on liberty is made; for this is forcing D and his friends to assent or dissent. If they do not dissent, they may create a false impression; and if they do, they are compelled to appear as opponents of those with whom they do not desire to dispute. This seems to us a wrong on the one side and a hardship on the other. In salaried agents of the society it seems something graver than impolicy. To us there is no manner of doubt about the prodigious advance of the cause. We see Americans enough, and read and hear enough of what goes on, to be able to compare the tone of united speech at this day with what it was ten, five, three years ago. An association which has to work on through such changes as you have experienced and we have watched, must necessarily be what we have always been assured that yours is, free to act according to the circumstances of the time, sympathizing with all who are doing any thing for the abolition of slavery, and not concerned with the shortcomings of any body else when once you have obtained an open course for yourselves.

As I have said before, and as nobody will dispute, the church stands on a different ground from any other portion of the community, because it assumes to be master of the spiritual and moral situation at all times and under all circumstances; and its false pretensions in the particular case must be exposed, because the abolition of slavery is its primary and express duty, and the omission of its proper and peculiar business is a perilous hypocrisy. There is and can be no case analogous to this; and there is, I suppose, no difference of opinion in your association about it. Those members who think it right to “criticise” colleagues for opinions which they force them to declare, or for a procedure on which every man must judge for himself, cannot be displeased at criticism on such an occasion as their attempt to shift your association to a new basis. That all are faithfully and fervently devoted to the object of your association, no one, I believe, on either side of the water, ever had a moment’s doubt.

H. M.

The foregoing letter, as well as the preceding one, had been submitted to the editor of the “Standard” in the following letter: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

August 1, 1859

August 1, 1859

.

My dear Sir, —

Let me beg the favour of you to consider carefully (with my friends of the committee, if you like) whether to Edition: current; Page: [483] print the last section of my letter, especially the parts in pencil brackets. My desire is to aid in establishing the principle of your association as we understand it here, and I should be heartily grieved to do any harm. So allow me to put that part of my letter absolutely under the veto of my friends. Of course I don’t wish the part to be altered. That is of course out of the question. But the omission of all that section, or of the parts I have marked, will not in any way vex me. We all have one object. To me it seems well to explain thus far, but I may be mistaken, and unable to settle the expediency at this distance, though I feel sure of my principle.

Yours very truly,

H. MARTINEAU.

The editor’s conclusion was: —

“I could not see that there was any thing calculated to do harm to the cause or to any individual; and could see no good reason for withholding what was evidently written in charity to all concerned.”

By this time the political signs were threatening in the United States, and Mrs. Martineau became more and more careful to avoid at such a crisis all small issues, while desirous to keep open whatever communication might be deemed useful, and she again took counsel, as follows: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

August 15, 1859

Ambleside

Henry G. Chapman

Chapman, Henry G.

Ambleside,

August 15, 1859

.

Mrs. H. G. Chapman.

My dear Friend, —

As you were before the medium of communication between your committee and myself on the subject of my correspondence with the “Standard,” I ask leave to transmit through you an inquiry which new circumstances call upon me to make.

I do not suspect my friends on the committee of forgetting my request that they would speak frankly and without the slightest scruple, if for any reason whatever they should wish to dissolve our agreement. But it is necessary to my own satisfaction that I should repeat this request at the present stage of the correspondence. I hardly need explain that the occasion is the letters . . . . in the “Standard” . . . . which suggest to me the possibility that the committee may think my correspondence no longer likely to be profitable to the cause we all have at heart. It may be that they think so, or that they think otherwise. I wish to know their pleasure, which I am ready and anxious to obey.

I have only to say this, further. If I go on, it must be in frank Edition: current; Page: [484] fulfilment of my engagement to write whatever I believed would promote a mutual understanding and interaction between your country and mine in regard to the antislavery cause. If I stop, it must be publicly and clearly made known that the arrest of the correspondence is by the committee’s desire, and not mine.

My single desire is to do what is best for the cause. On so great a question as that of changing the principle of the American Antislavery Association I could not but remark, while obeying the invitation of your committee; but I am equally willing to speak or be silent, as they may now instruct me. Till I hear from them, I shall write as usual; and under all circumstances and arrangements I shall remain their hearty well-wisher and affectionate friend in the cause.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

This letter having been read to the committee, the result was the adoption of the following expression: —

Samuel May, Jr.

May, Samuel, Jr.

Voted, That it is the unanimous desire of this committee that Mrs. Harriet Martineau should continue her correspondence with “The Antislavery Standard,” exercising the largest liberty of thought and expression according to her own perceptions of right and duty, with reference to whatever may seem to affect the interests of the American Antislavery Society, or the welfare of our cause at large; and that her continued co-operation is deemed of essential service to that cause on both sides of the Atlantic.

From the records

SAMUEL MAY, Jr.

On receiving this vote, Mrs. Martineau immediately replied to Mr. May, conveying her grateful acknowledgments to the executive committee, and expressing the satisfaction and pleasure it would give her to continue the letters: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Samuel May, Jr.

May, Samuel, Jr.

I shall fulfil my welcome duty with fresh animation, now that I have received decisive proof that my friends of the committee and I are of one mind as to the necessity of a perfect freedom in our acts and words while working for the gravest and greatest cause now agitating human society.

With cordial esteem and regard, I am yours faithfully,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

The scene between antislavery and proslavery might have now reminded the beholders of that at Bothwell Brigg, when the Edition: current; Page: [485] hosts were about to close in front while the preachers were wrangling in the rear; for the slaveholders’ rebellion, confusion, and civil war were at hand.

First came the enterprise of John Brown. The “H. M.” letters deprecated the act, as precipitating the conflict and placing the North at a disadvantage; while deeply moved with admiration for the saintly heroism of the man, she questioned his political sagacity.

Then followed, as topics, the antislavery and friendly feeling of England; the duty of American abolitionists to sustain the United States government the moment it should take its rightful position; the importance to a nation, in process of being renovated, of getting rid of a protective tariff; the course of damaging diplomacy adopted by Mr. Seward; the neutrality of England not hostility: on all of which a statesmanlike view was taken, which, in the opinion of so many, time has since justified, though some of the American coadjutors were much dissatisfied at the moment.

Still, as no official disapprobation came from the antislavery committee, the “H. M.” letters went on. Noticing, however, in the “Standard” here and there, slight signs of the discontent, the correspondent again sought information of the editor of the “Standard” as to the desirability of discontinuance. “I trust, for one,” he replied, “that the committee will never discontinue them.”

The next “H. M.” letter spoke thus: —

“I had hoped that a recent paragraph of my American letters would be noticed as an explanation of my method. I remarked that I need say but little of the discontent with myself; I do not wish to occupy your space in such a way. Every practical purpose will be answered by a brief explanation of my point of view. My course has always been to fight your battles on this side the water to the utmost extent that truth will allow, while speaking the plain truth on the other side on all matters which relate to the principle and conduct of the cause of human freedom. This is not the way to gain popularity, it is the way to insure displeasure on both sides. But that is a small matter in comparison with the least good that may be done in either country. I certainly think that it is the course most conducive to Edition: current; Page: [486] peace and a clear understanding between the two nations. I shall go on as long as I live with that part of the work which lies here. As to the other half, it rests with you, as you are aware, whether I continue it. You know that I wait upon your pleasure in regard to corresponding with the ‘Standard,’ as I have always done. A word from you, at any time, will bring my farewell, as I have repeatedly reminded you and the committee.”

Meanwhile, she had learned the empty condition of the Antislavery Society’s treasury, and thought, besides, that if dissatisfaction existed in a single mind among her associates, it were better to remove all pecuniary considerations out of the way; and she wrote to the general agent of the American Antislavery Society declining further payments.

The reply to this was a vote from the committee assuring her that “her generous offer to continue her correspondence without pay if the committee will be pleased to accept the service, is fully appreciated, and that she be requested to continue her letters to the ‘Standard,’ but upon the same terms as during the past year.”

The secretary, Mr. May, went on to say that her “clear eye and vigorous hand enable us to see many things which are transpiring in Europe which otherwise we might not and probably should not see; and we need,” he added, “your continued criticism here; . . . . trusting you may long be spared and be strong to do the work which so much needs to be done, of encouraging and directing the labours of those who would build justly and benevolently, and of watching and thwarting those whose law is selfishness and whose measures are oppression.”

Finally came the seizure of the Rebel commissioners from beneath the British flag. Congressional and State approbation immediately followed the bursts of popular acclamation and the banqueting in honour of the deed. The commercial newspapers were forward in checking anxiety as to any ill consequences. They knew “what Great Britain always does in such cases will be done now: she will protract negotiations till the affair is forgotten.” Still anxiety did arise in some minds, and there was talk in the outside row of politicians surrounding men in office, Edition: current; Page: [487] of sending acute observers to watch, in England, the temper of the times; and Everett, Beecher, Thurlow Weed, and others were mentioned as the right sort of men to report from thence the actual feeling of the hour.

Harriet Martineau wrote instantly to the “Standard” that England was arming; but with the deepest feeling against going to war, and with the strongest self-control and the most earnest desire — submitting passion to law — that America might recede, England awaited the alternative.

Thereupon the editor of the “Standard” says, “You cannot imagine the storm about my ears!”

Remonstrants had rushed into the office, demanding the suppression of the letter. It was the long, legal, just, eloquent, and, above all, the much-needed one that should have been welcomed by wise men, to turn back the tide of popular emotion that does not distinguish between a casus belli and a self-gratification.

The editor was able, however, to clear himself from the charge of “misusing the society’s funds by paying for such letters.” “The letters are a gift,” he said to such as accused him of malappropriation of funds. But he was obliged to suppress the very letter that would have given the needed information about the public mind and assured course of England in case the action of the American public as displayed in Congressional votes, popular eulogy, and the praises of the press should not be reversed.

An abstract of the suppressed letter will show that no abolitionist need have been dissatisfied. It was the very echo of the antislavery voice and spirit, and it was no more severe upon the American government and people in this exigency than the reform voice had been ever wont to be.

It affirmed that this was not a case for the protracted negotiations that the commercial newspapers had predicted; that the right of asylum had been violated, and the English nation compelled with loathing to become the champion and protector of the slaveholding commissioners; that, while awaiting the alternative of peace or war with controlled passion and earnest demand for legal direction, England’s dock-yards and barracks and line-of-battle ships were all alive with preparation; that a terrible Edition: current; Page: [488] condemnation was the due of the Everetts, the Websters, the Sewards, the Bigelows, and all who in past times and present had misled the American people on international duties and morals; with scathing rebuke of the commander of the American naval ship whose absurd folly the American people seemed to be hailing as “pluck” and “dash,” closing with a fervent blessing on the American abolitionists, and a call to them to come to the front with such counsel for immediate emancipation as they in England longed to hear. “This and this only can avail. This and this only will secure foreign sympathy, while a foreign war in the hope of thereby uniting North and South would be madness, and the negroes would be the sacrifice. If ever men deserved the blessing of redemption from a national curse it is the abolitionists.”

But happily the “Standard” was not “H. M.’s” only American correspondent, nor her warnings confined to the antislavery office; and all English letters and despatches confirmed her information. The Washington government was wise in time; and they who had cried at banquets, “Off coats and fight!” now cried, “Off hats and apologize!”

It would have been absurd indeed at such an hour of impending civil war for any antislavery committee to debate over this or any other incidental action. The day of free speech was over, and the day of martial law had begun; and so thought Harriet Martineau. She merely said: —

“I am sorry for them that are so angry, but for myself I have seen a great many such American displays: they must, however, insert a letter of leave-taking from me (as far only as writing for the ‘Standard’ is concerned), but my work for you will go on here just the same; and, happily, I have great opportunities to do it.”

And, in effect, her writings on behalf of the United States as against the Confederates became more and more frequent and influential.

She wrote at this time, besides occasional articles in second-rate periodicals, in four leading organs of English public opinion.

Her respect for Mr. Garrison was, if possible, increased by the way in which he had borne himself under the attempts, which Edition: current; Page: [489] she had rebuked, to brand him as unfaithful to the cause. She received many entreaties on both sides of the ocean to reprint the “H. M.” letters in book form, but she constantly refused.

“It would defeat my plan to grant such requests. I see our friends have not observed my previous paragraph, which would explain why I refuse; and they do not remember that I am one of their comrades.”

It should here be remembered that from her earliest political action Harriet Martineau’s method had been the same, — to use her influence on both sides.

Previous to the exclusion of the “H. M.” letters, their treatment of the subject of “protection” had given to some readers much dissatisfaction.

The letters had strongly urged the abandonment of the protective policy as the highest expediency and the truest morality: “The sin of the North is ‘protection,’ as the sin of the South is slavery.” If the letters had said the guilt of the two sections on these different grounds was equal, the indignation could hardly have been greater; and persons brought up upon the Assembly’s Catechism to be aware that some sins are less heinous than others, and yet classed as sins in the Ten Commandments, were now laying it down as a grievous offence that here were things mentioned in the same sentence that ought not to be mentioned in the same week; and although the committee had given the letters carte blanche, it was loudly affirmed that they were “off the platform.”

Some of Harriet Martineau’s correspondence of this period is subjoined, in illustration of her opinions on the subjects of protection and American politics.

Now, as ever, was manifest Harriet Martineau’s unshaken reliance — the consequence of her long experience — on the expediency of the frankest communication between individuals and nations in cases of misunderstanding. On receiving from William W. Story (the sculptor, the poet, the traveller, the biographer, the student of jurisprudence, and the son of her old and dear friend, Judge Story) a long argument on the American side of the pending questions, with the request to procure for it insertion Edition: current; Page: [490] in the “Daily News,” she immediately sent it to the editor with an introduction from herself, urging the importance of a knowledge of the American view to England, as well as of the English view to America; and, long as it was, it was inserted at full length. Her heart having been so long given to the United States for their freedom and their peace, the “Daily News” did but become the more effectual in accomplishing these two ends, as the change of standpoint made in the “Standard” released her from its columns. The benefit of her influence in England in favour of the Union was felt and acknowledged by many.

In the words of “Harper’s Weekly,” a magazine of very extensive circulation under the editorship of the Hon. George W. Curtis, —

“Our children’s children may well gratefully remember this course of the London ‘Daily News.’ ”

It is time, before going further, to complete the story of the Trent.

The Rebel commissioners were carried to the North, and imprisoned at Fort Warren in Boston harbour. One of them was of that widely known Mason family which had received Harriet Martineau with so much enthusiasm half a lifetime before, now separated from her by her life of opposition to him.

A sumptuous banquet was prepared next day in Boston at the Revere House (hotel), to do honour to the deed of Commodore Wilkes in seizing the rebel commissioners. Among the men of note who assisted at it were Governor Andrew of Massachusetts and his staff, the Mayor of Boston, the president of the Board of Trade, and other leading men. “Wilkes did right!” they all said.

When, long afterwards, Mr. George Thompson was demonstrating the friendliness of England before a great public meeting in Boston, by statistics of the vast gatherings of Englishmen all over their country; by the universal adhesion of the labouring classes, especially the population of Lancashire; by the unvarying course (with but here and there an exception) of the press; by the steady refusal of the government to acknowledge the Confederates; by the constant support in that refusal received from Parliament, he added, —

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“For certain Confederate sympathizers among our aristocracy, defeated as they were, I offer no excuse. You can afford to pardon them.”

Governor Andrew, who sat near Mr. Thompson on the platform, here interrupted, half rising and touching Mr. Thompson’s arm: “Say no more, my friend! We all have need of pardon.”

A further portion of Mrs. Martineau’s previous and subsequent correspondence is subjoined, illustrating her political principles.

May 16, 1861

.

I am glad you encourage me to answer Greeley, and that you think Mr. Johnson will print my reply. I don’t want to throw away a bit of work that I hope may be useful. I do wish your people would attend a little to a subject which involves so much of moral and material importance, and so affects their national repute. But I doubt whether any body there has really studied the subject at all. Greeley certainly does not understand it. All his mistakes cannot be dishonesty. A more flagrant piece of nonsense could hardly be pointed out since men began setting up fancies against knowledge and science, in political economy. . . . . It would be a great thing to bring your nation up to simple principles which should preclude class legislation and insure justice all round.

Tell me what you think of my answer when you see it. There will be nothing for you to be ashamed of, for I decline noticing personalities. I see that — — and — — are both clearly unaware of my position in regard to political economy generally, and free trade in particular, and I shall not in any way refer to it. True, I ought to tell the editor, who may not be aware that I speak with any authority; but it is not a pleasant thing to do, and I had rather not. Very likely you have.

Well! I am glad you anticipate an answer. It gives me more spirit to do it; and I trust it may be of use. I don’t understand the objection to my criticism which you mention, — “of my country being a sinner like the United States.” This is not so. We have not a penny of protective duty now; and we began to reform the system as soon as Adam Smith showed us where we were wrong. Your tariff is a plunge back again into barbarism, when even the late king of Naples and such like had been removing protective duties.”

Her niece’s postscript is to the effect that her aunt is more than usually ill, but is at work on one of her articles.

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May 29, 1861

.

. . . . To day I am happier than I have been yet about your war. Russell’s letter to the “Times” ends with a paragraph — date, May 2 — which seems to show that the South will collapse on hearing of the spirit of the North. O, the “instant turning tail” is delightful! . . . .

What a wretched figure the “Times” cuts in its leaders beside Motley’s exposition! The latter is a great benefit here; just what was wanted. It feels so strange to me, — every body now coming round to me on American affairs. . . . .

Do you know I am very glad of your sort of assurance that my answer to Greeley will appear. It is a very long letter, but I shall be really sorry if it does not appear entire, because of the importance of the subject and the desirableness of showing that Greeley does not understand it. The Spitalfields catastrophe must go into my next, — the finest illustration of the case that events could furnish. The rapid conversion of the French manufacturers is excellent too. It is regretable that the South should have this handle against the North, owing to (it seems to me) the blank ignorance of society on the question. What does Greeley think of Motley’s mention of it, I wonder.

I will say something about sanitary care of your precious soldiers in my “Standard” letter of Monday next.

After remarking that Mr. Russell’s situation precludes his writing full letters: —

“One good consequence is, however, that, poor as they may be, they will dispose forever of the cry that your rupture is the result of ‘Democratic institutions.’ ”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

June 13, 1861

June 13, 1861

.

. . . . The feeling here is changed, — not at all in favour of the South; but what a pity it is that your journalists and envoys and others have no notion of political rationality and propriety! Cassius Clay and Burlingame at Paris, and Seward at Washington, and bullies every where, have made sad confusion of your cause and reputation. . . . . If it were the bigotry of a high-principled, narrow nation there would be something respectable in the rancour, and it would be appreciated here. But coming from the most profligate political writers and speakers and actors in the world, it is wholly disgusting; and the good people and the best parts of your case are involved in the general disgrace. Clay, Burlingame, and the speakers and Edition: current; Page: [493] writers on this question have not the remotest conception of the principles of science on the one hand, or of honour on the other, on which government is carried on in a European monarchy. There is, also, a style of imputation which shows the level of the writers’ conceptions. So it is in the motives found for me by Mr. Greeley and others. It really seems to be so with every speaker and writer on any part of the subject. The conception of a principled, consistent, independent national policy, such as is a matter of course under a constitution like ours, and which our statesmen are bred up to, is altogether beyond their ken. But you abolitionists will be able now to abate these vulgar disgraces of the Republic. You mention Cobden and “protection.”

You seem to lament that a very good man is not a very great one. He is so far great, however, as to be equal to his work, a very high order of work indeed, — a diffusion of social justice which tends to international peace.

“Protection.” Is not protection a sin? It involves more sin, and a greater variety of it, than any system I know of, except slavery.

It would astonish some folk not a little to learn what relation the system (in any form or degree) bears to sin.

Mr. Adams is liked thus far, because less puerile, more moderate, not frantic in preaching and proselyting. . . . . He must speak out, decidedly and honestly, and then his self-command will tell.

How I have run on politics! very needlessly, for I know you think just what I have been saying.

Yours ever,

H. M.

June 26, 1861

June 26, 1861

.

. . . . As to the protectionist matter, I need only say that we see more and more plainly that the subject is not understood; which is quite natural among a flourishing new people. Mr. Greeley ought to understand it, if he tries to make tariffs; but he clearly does not, nor do those who have any doubt about the “sin.” I wish they knew how the degradation of our peasantry (who are now rising hourly), the crime of our cities, the brigandage of our coasts, the deprivation of our poor-law system, and the demoralization of whole classes have been occasioned by the protective system, which they seem to consider an optional matter, with only some considerations of expediency, pro or con. “Protection” has ruined more of our people, body and soul, than drink. Your people cannot, in this age, be so overridden as ours was before the world was better; but if you judge wrong on this Edition: current; Page: [494] point, you will settle the point of progression or lapse. You will establish an influence, second only to slavery, in debasing the common morals and manners. I know that this is not perceived; but there is our experience and the French for younger folks’ benefit. The rowdy and vagabond and plundering element will acquire a terrible ascendency if any ground is afforded for illicit trade.

July 11, 1861

July 11, 1861

.

About the “Standard.” . . . . I am very sorry it is in need of funds. Command me if I can do good by still writing. I will send you a monthly letter (gratuitous) till you bid me stop. You see by this time that there is no cotton-homage here. There is a total absence of all regards to it in the conduct of both government and people. Every thing has been said and done as if no cotton existed. The South has been as completely out in her reckoning, as the North in her judgment and temper about us. The sympathetic interest is over here, — in the public, I mean. Nothing can at present restore the feeling of last spring, because nothing can restore the confidence in American judgment or even perception of facts. Having made up their minds that England would be mercenary, the North concluded, without evidence, that she was mercenary. And then, finding that she was not so, fancied that she had altered! The despair of the American case is in the vices of democratic government, which render steadiness and consistency impossible. This is more fatal than even the quarrelsome temper; and I cannot but fear great mischief from it during this session of Congress.

Talking of low preconceptions, I observe every where, in all the American newspapers, the same notion, — that we judge the Northern policy of protection by the rate of duty on iron and woollens that we have to pay. It does not enter into the heads of even liberal and moral writers that we can have any other objection to the principle than its affecting our purse. They are wholly ignorant of the aristocratic and pillaging character of the system, and of its damning influence on the character and reputation of a democratic republic; and they see no further than the damage to Britishers, and assume that that is what the Britishers are thinking about.

It was no vague impression, no mere wish, the parent of the thought, that dictated this assurance that England would not break the blockade on account of cotton.

She was then in the midst of the distress occasioned by the blockade, and witness to the noble way in which it was borne; and Edition: current; Page: [495] while writing to her American friends assuring them of English sympathy, she was daily engaged in such correspondence as the following, — counselling, planning, co-operating, and giving money.

For example: correspondence with Blackburn about food and clothing in mitigation of distress and abatement of the intolerance which was excluding Unitarian dissenters there from relief; the same correspondence with Ashton-under-Lyne, — the intolerance, however, being on the other side, manifested by insulting resolutions excluding clergymen and ministers of religion; correspondence, with aid to Denton Rectory; correspondence, with aid to Hulme, for Workingmen’s Institute; correspondence, with aid to relief fund, Burnley Borough; correspondence, with aid to Stockport, through central relief committee; correspondence, with aid to relief fund, Oldham; correspondence, with donation of clothing, London; correspondence, with donation to Lancashire Emigration Society, Manchester; donation to Denton Rectory; to relief committee, Salford; to relief committee, Old-field; to cooking-schools, Manchester.

Again from Manchester, entreating a letter of counsel about the management of emigration.

The following was her appeal in behalf of the distress in Lancashire, in response to the entreaty to “aid us with your pen and influence.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Henry Crabb Robinson

Robinson, Henry Crabb

To the Editor of the “Daily News.”

Sir, —

I have just seen something which impresses me so much that I hope you will grant me space to describe it, and to commend the facts to my countrywomen, on behalf of the sewing-schools of Lancashire and Cheshire.

I need hardly explain that these sewing-schools furnish at once a safe refuge for the unemployed factory-girls, a good training in domestic needlework, and the means of buying clothing exceedingly cheap. The plan is in every way admirable; and to sustain and multiply these schools is to do unmixed good. While some people send money (and much money is wanted) others cannot do better than send materials for clothing. The cry for material is very urgent; and it is about this that I write. Whatever is sent should be good and suitable. It would be a cruel mockery to send rubbish, when cold weather is coming on, and substantial warm clothing is becoming a necessary Edition: current; Page: [496] of life. But there are ways of getting good materials cheap. For children’s dress particularly this is easy; and the children have the very first claim if Lord Palmerston’s advice is to be taken, and the present dreary opportunity is to be used for keeping every boy and girl at school.

The other day a friend of mine went forth with £5 in her pocket, to see how much good sound clothing material she could get for that sum. I have just been looking over her package, before it goes to the Blackburn Sewing-School, and I find the contents to be as follows: —

15 Women’s gowns, seemly and serviceable.

7 Frocks for young girls and children.

6 Petticoats, linsey and stuff.

4 Petticoats, woven.

5 Flannel petticoats, very good.

1 Child’s pinafore.

2 Boy’s blouses, dark blue flannel, very good.

11 Women’s shifts, unbleached calico.

7 Caps, strong muslin, checked.

4 Bonnets, coburg, drab.

A good supply of tapes, linen, buttons, and hooks and eyes.

It will be asked how such a purchase was achieved, and this is what I have to tell.

My friend went to a shop (kept by a good-natured tradesman, which is an important element in the case) where there was likely to be a remainder stock at the close of each season of the year. She explained her object, and was shown remnants of flannel and calico, dresses out of fashion, out of season, or soiled (being washable) or faded. Pieces too short for a gown would serve for a frock; odd ends of stuff would make bonnets; the discarded fashions in linseys yield excellent warm petticoats very cheap. There were no cheap shawls in stock, nor cloaks; but in a town these might probably have been obtainable. So might the list and cloth selvages from clothiers’ and woollen-drapers’ shops, from which warm capes may be made, in a way which every needlewoman knows.

Now, there are good-natured shopkeepers every where; and wherever there is a draper’s shop of any consideration there are remnants, and faded and old-fashioned articles of dress. Ladies who have hours to spare can do much to serve their Lancashire sisters by trying, as my friend has done, how much they can get for £5. Fifty ladies, doing this, might go a long way towards clothing the women and children of the suffering districts. And why should there not be fifty and twice fifty ladies doing this thing within a week?

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I may remind them that there is little time on the spot, and little space and resource of convenience; and that therefore every thing should be sent in readiness for the needle. The unbleached calico should be washed out, the garments should be cut out, in breadths at least, if not to fit; and each sort should be ticketed, each parcel of gowns, petticoats, &c., being separate, and ticketed with the number and quantity.

It will be a great kindness to put in half-worn clothes. As I said before, no rubbish. But there are few houses in which there are not some articles of dress which can be spared before they are nearly worn out. I will only say further that every charge of carriage should be paid by the sender, and as little trouble given as possible. It will add a grace to the gift if every thing that can be wanted is put into the parcel, — linings, tape, buttons, hooks and eyes, thread, and even needles and pins. The very completeness will be a lesson to the girls, and will give pleasure in places where pleasures are very rare at present.

H. M.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

July 25, 1861

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

HARRIET MARTINEAU TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

July 25, 1861

With regard to raising money in Europe to sustain the “Standard,” I don’t see any probability of success whatever. The people would be astonished at being asked, at a time when the American nation is up in arms (as is understood here) on the very question, and when the government asks such enormous sums wherewith to battle for the right, and £100,000,000 are being levied to sustain an antislavery revolution and war; why should Europe send you a few hundreds? So they will ask, and I think it will not be easy to answer. But I shall not desert the “Standard.” I will, as I said, send a monthly letter (if able) till you or the editor bid me stop. And I certainly shall not take any payment . . . . no use talking about it. I wish you would just forget it. I shall not, of course, be able to give my annual £5 to the cause, but my letters I can give, and you will be welcome to them. As to Dr. Follen’s saying of having no plan, — which I myself quoted last year, — I think I know what he would have said to the proposal that the managers of a revolution and civil war should have no plan. I know what he would have said to applying to such a case a proposal suitable enough for a little band of moral apostles beginning to feel their way to the nation’s heart. So, again, — —’s notion that no serious moral principle is involved in the financial regulation of industry and commerce! Supremely silly, however, is the confounding a censure of a political system with personal Edition: current; Page: [498] impertinences. Of course there is no sort of doubt about it, political action is a proper subject for discussion, censure, denunciation. Nobody here comprehends such soreness as is shown by Greeley and others. Every political scheme here is discussed with all possible freedom, and nobody dreams of being offended. But the moment any man passes from the matter in question to insult any body personally, he is simply regarded as a blackguard (excuse the term) and sent to Coventry accordingly. Nobody would speak to Greeley here after reading those letters. You will see I have dealt with the whine about personalities in two lines. I hardly liked stooping to do it, but as they really did not seem to see the distinction in the case, I just said there could be no personality on my side, as I did not know who were the parties responsible for the policy.

Dear friend, don’t either be or seem sensitive on my account. I don’t like being insultingly treated, so entirely as I am unused to it here, but it is of no real consequence. I must keep clear of further controversy; not only that I am too ill for it, but I see it is useless. As to what you say of Clay and Burlingame, I don’t think any thing of diplomatic traditions, etiquette, court-manners, and all that. These things signify less and less, and are not expected of republican ministers. It is the utter unfitness for political counsel that amazes us in those men; the absence of judgment, temper, and decent manners. They misapprehended the plainest transactions going on before their eyes, went into a groundless passion, assumed the function of agitators, and tried to play upon the supposed jealousy between France and England; getting only laughed at by both sides, because the two were exactly of one mind. “A pretty sort of ambassador!” the world cries. I need not say what qualities are indispensable in grave negotiation and in protecting the honour and interests of one’s country; nor need I say that B. and C. have shown a most remarkable deficiency in those qualities.

The function of the “Times” (self-assumed) which you speak of I take to be, leading the most popular surface sentiment or notion of the moment, without the slightest regard to truth or right or consistency. As there is the utmost ignorance there, it is often getting wrong and always supposing a lower class (morally) than the real one to be the majority.

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CONVERSATIONS.

“It was well said by Themistocles, that speech was like cloth of gold, whereby the imagery doth appear in figures; whereas in thought they be but as in packs. . . . .

It is good in discourse and speech of conversation to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments; tales with reasons; asking questions with telling of opinions.”

— Bacon.

In the most faithful sketches of animated conversation it may well be that old friends should hardly find the picture true; so tame and ineffectual is all such reproduction, lacking the lighting smile, the penetrative glance, the eager or earnest or watchfully alert eye, the long look into far futurity, that go with a visible unfolding of the heart in so transparent a being as Harriet Martineau; but all will recognize the opinions.

Looking at the engraving of the Antislavery Society’s certificate of membership, when the rights of the women who were members were hotly contested, she said, “All that turmoil about the rights of all your members to make speeches on your platforms, while the very figure-head of your society is a woman preaching!”

The word “truth” often raised a ripple in conversation: “What do you mean by it? Are we both meaning the same thing? Is it veracity, or actualness, that you mean? The correspondence of thing to thing throughout the universe is what we ought to reckon truth to be.”

“True to our colours,” “true to our convictions,” “true to ourselves,” “true to our friends,” “speaking the truth,” were texts as the talk went on. At last the inquiry was made whether it were justifiable or not for philosophers to quote Scripture or Edition: current; Page: [500] enrich their intercourse with biblical phraseology. “Who finds fault with us,” said one, “for talking about

‘The fair humanities of old religion,’

or for quoting with gusto the old classics?” “Why not indeed?” she asked, — “why not? Why, because every body has transcended them as completely as you have done; and there is no danger in the case of becoming double-minded, or of being accused of duplicity or insincerity. But about the Bible, and the existing forms, we must be more careful. We can have respect and sympathy for others in all their forms and all their books of religion. But we must not give occasion for these accusations. We must take care not to deceive our listeners as to our real mental condition. No, no! better forbear the phraseology than be constantly encumbered with explanations.

“But one accused of infidelity may rightly affirm his attachment to religion? Is it not the true name of all that binds the human race together? — and ‘piety’ too?” “No, I should hardly allow you the word; there is no piety without a personal God in these days.” “But there was the pious Æneas?” “True; but you cannot use these words in any such philological, old-world way, at this time of day, without being misunderstood.” “But is it not really so, if these words do really mean what we define them to mean?” “Look in your Johnson’s Dictionary. What you say may be true to you, but, as he would say, ‘such is not the common opinion of mankind.’ ”

“I see the London correspondent of one of your American papers says that he trusts the Grote Memoir will be ‘racy’ and ‘sprightly.’ It sickens me. Professor Bain shares the task of Mr. Grote’s aged widow, and is no less grave than she in regard to the great scholar and philosophic historian whose labours they record.”

“Tell me about the ‘Westminster Review,’ was a question I asked her. “It was mortgaged to me in 1854,” she replied; “and if I had then known of the plots and devices going on in the office, I would not have advanced the sum. It was £ 500, and the Westminster was in danger of stopping. A base attempt Edition: current; Page: [501] having been made to get it out of Dr. Chapman’s hands in order to give it over to an anti-Comtist, some indignant friends of Chapman and of myself made great sacrifices to keep it in its proper track. The three greatest of these friends were Mr. Grote, Mr. Courtauld, and Mr. Octavius Smith; the two latter bought off the conspirators, who would otherwise have made Chapman a bankrupt and taken the Review out of his hands. It was then necessary to disburden the Review of the mortgage; Mr. Grote offered to manage that business, I offering to surrender £50 of my claim; which, however, turned out but £45, the money contributed being £5 more than was necessary. I believe [she went on in reply to my inquiry whether Mill gives the history of the origin of the Westminster correctly] that his account is correct. It was established as the organ of the advanced liberals, but it never had capital enough to prosper.”

Talking of forgiveness, she one day said, “I do not know what people in general mean by the word. Some use it as if it implied that they were to act against common-sense.” “How? Pray exemplify.” “Why, when Jack or Gill are persisting in doing you a wilful injury and from no good motive, of course you are to forgive them, till seventy times seven if you will; that is, you are not to revenge yourself, but do them all the good you can: but does this imply that you are to expose yourself to their malice? You forgive such a one; but can you respect, can you esteem such a one? Can you trust such a one? You may have forgiven one that it is not safe for you to meet except before witnesses; or to meet at all if you chance to be so low in health as to be easily shocked, or if the enemy chances to be one trying to take advantage of your society to put you in a false position.”

“Do you agree with Dr. Channing in his preference for individual to associated action?” “To a certain extent. I do hate decent time-wasting work done together by many which could be better done singly and apart. I am not fond of routine-doings, — work done to-day that had better cease, and for which no other reason can be given than that it was done yesterday. I often see people preferring the spinning-wheel after the great manufactories are in motion. All that I dislike. But we must Edition: current; Page: [502] each judge for ourselves, and I think we shall no doubt follow our natures. When individual action is insufficient for individual enterprise and desire, one naturally seeks association. In that case only is it likely to be other than a decent form. Associations for the promulgation of ideas should have enterprises involved, or they will soon die out, or be turned to selfish purposes.”

Reading an article of Miss Alcott’s, she says, “ ‘Transcendental Wild Oats’! — what a capital title! It has genius in it.”

“Sara Coleridge’s Life, at last. A melancholy book it seems to me. What a contrast is Mrs. Somerville’s! What absolute serenity! What low expectations from human kind! But she took things and people as they came, and supposed all was right. She was a charming woman, and I am thankful the world has had her.”

“This vote of the members of Congress to enrich themselves prospectively seems to me the most menacing disgrace and discouragement that has yet wounded the spirit of republicanism. But nothing pleases me like what I hear of the awakening sense in the United States of the need of a training in statesmanship. I think hitherto the Americans have seen the English governing classes in one light alone, — as lovers of power and dignity, getting grandeur and wealth by claims of birth and position; as, in short, a selfish aristocracy living for their own purposes. We regard ‘the governing classes’ as a portion of society of very great value, as qualified from the outset to render social services for which no other class or order of citizens can be qualified. One may meet with a man here and there in promiscuous society who knows something of political history, or understands more or less of political philosophy, but the cases are rare, and their worth needs proving before it can be used, and they may never light upon an entrance into public life. Whereas, where there is an aristocracy like ours, educated at the universities, and connected with statesmen on all hands, and with hereditary duty of statesmanship for their birthright, their country is tolerably secure against moral corruption (political) on the one hand, and social blundering on the other. The Americans have wonderful energy Edition: current; Page: [503] in bearing and vanquishing the mischiefs of misgovernment, but it would be a happier spectacle and a finer lesson for the rest of the world, if the men in office were educated for their work.”

“My beloved ‘Nation’ has just come to hand; but the article about Mill at the Carlyles’ [as to the destruction of Carlyle’s manuscript by a careless servant] (p. 368) is incorrect, and at p. 372 I find a misunderstanding of Mr. Grote’s action in the matter of the philosophical chair in University College. It would be a complete breach of the very principle which is the raison d’être of the institution and of the chair itself, to install a teacher whose philosophy is the product of his theology. The college was largely founded, and has since been supported, by Jews, for the education of Jewish youth; and there are many Hindoos, and the sons of others; and for special ideal Christian philosophy people must go elsewhere. It is no question of toleration or intolerance at all. As we hoped, the result is admirable. ‘The Unknown Man’* was thoroughly known to Mr. Grote, Mr. Bain, and others, and he is wholly successful and highly valued in his office. I wish the ‘Nation’ could see this matter as I do. Do you know who is the writer?

“Mill’s melancholy book is out; he is much overrated as a man, but his book is the book of the season.”

“We have heard of the great Boston fire,” she writes to Mrs. Chapman in New York, “and my first anxiety was for Mary Chapman, and whether she was safe, and whether you and she had lost much endeared property such as no insurance could compensate for. Then came the thought whether my chest of papers had been perhaps consumed by the fire. Now, mind, I am prepared to hear this; yet it will not trouble me injuriously, be assured. If the whole mass should be lost, do not heed it. Be assured my mind is free from all care about it, or about any thing, indeed. The truth is, I have been unusually glad and easy at heart for above a week past. You will know at once what this means, as you will feel that I am again worse. Yes, that is what it means. I am too far gone for any thing but humouring. I fully recognize the fact, and do not feel humbled Edition: current; Page: [504] by it. I have no pride about owning or denying the great suffering belonging to my present state. The truth is, it is great suffering, and I am thankful for any soothing or intermission of it. When your time comes, may it be easy and gentle, — this process of surrendering life. Every body is so kind and watchful! I have had a sweet greeting from Madame Mohl and from Elizabeth Pease.”

The conversation turning on what is allowable in publication, and on the shells and husks of lives given as biography, she expressed the opinion that what concerned the public should in a general sense be given to the public. “Not,” she added, “but what I feel myself suddenly turning hot, in sympathy for the pain they must feel, when I see persons praised in print more than they deserve.” I spoke of her own praise of Mary Ware of Boston, the story of whose devotedness to an English village ravaged by fever she had herself made public, and that too in Mrs. Ware’s lifetime; and of the pain that publicity gave to Mrs. Ware’s daughter. “Yes,” replied Mrs. Martineau. “She found fault with me vehemently, — unreasonably, as I thought; but I said, ‘My dear child; your mother’s high character and noble life made a part of our riches before you were born!’ ”

“Senior’s Book of Conversations? Yes; with its journals and talk with prominent men in France between 1848 and 1852 it is the fullest representation yet given or likely to be given of the interior life of the politics of both countries during an important period.”

“Paulding? No; we never saw him, nor wished to see him, nor thought of seeing him. Miss Jeffrey says the same. Somebody has been falsifying. An odd thing to take up thirty years after.”

At another time, free speech being the topic, Mrs. Martineau spoke as she always did of its necessity. “Yet,” she continued, “it is to be used with judgment. Free speech on a criminal case, for example, through the press, undisputed and universal when the trial is over, must be mischievous, and may be and generally is illegal and unjust, while the trial is in progress. The American Edition: current; Page: [505] correspondents of newspapers seem not to be clear in this matter. They mislead the American public upon the two great points of the liberty of speech and the administration of justice in English law-courts.”

“How many times in my life have I virtually said the same thing, — that if we all knew that half the existing generation of mankind would die, and half be immortal, who would not long to be sure of being in the dying half?”

“The managers of the Mill memorial put my name, without even leave asked, on their executive committee. I wrote a remonstrance, desiring it to be withdrawn. It was reason enough to assign that age and illness incapacitated me for any duty of the sort. But there are other reasons. I do not wish to implicate myself with his repute. I have a great admiration for his intellect, and a strong regard for his heart, and a full belief in his innocence of intention. But he was deplorably weak in judgment, with the weakness, so damaging to a man, of being as impressionable as a woman.

“My contemporaries are dying off fast. I am thankful for your sympathy about Bulwer’s death. There was the making of a great, good man in him.”

Talking of the “Liberty Bell,” an antislavery annual for which she used to write and procure articles from her friends, I recalled contributions of Milnes and others, written at her request. “Yes,” she said, “and I should have got you a sonnet from Wordsworth, too, if Quincy had not been so witty and Lowell so crushing upon his sonnets on capital punishment. I could not ask him after one of you had called him ‘the Laureate of the gallows’ and the other

‘An old man, faithless to humanity.’ ”

Reminding her one day of her strenuous efforts in the United States for an international copyright, “Yes!” she replied, I did a work — a vain one up to this time — on that behalf in England and in America both.”

Before me lies the English circular on the blank page of which she had written one of a sheaf of letters addressed to Judge Edition: current; Page: [506] Story, Mr. Adams, Mr. Clay, Mr. Palfrey, Dr. Follen, and others, with whom she had consulted in 1836.

The letter is as follows: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

November 8, 1836

London

London,

November 8, 1836

.

Dear Friend, —

Here is our petition. Help us get up a similar one from American authors. Rouse all Boston and New York. No time for more.

H. MARTINEAU.

“I do admire Miss Thackeray’s ‘Old Kensington.’ ”

“The Ballantines were deceived by Scott and insulted by Lockhart. I do hope Constable’s third volume will do justice to them.”

No sooner had the American antislavery cause been merged in the national one, than the English cause of social virtue and national existence appealed to her whole nature.

“I am told,” she said, “that this is discreditable work for woman, especially for an old woman. But it has always been esteemed our especial function as women, to mount guard over society and social life, — the spring of national existence, — and to keep them pure; and who so fit as an old woman?”

Being told that American ladies were shocked to think of such personal exposure, “English ladies think of the Lady Godiva!” was her reply.

Speaking of herself, she one day said: “I have an inveterate contentedness of disposition, — not constitutional, I think, but induced, — which makes me satisfied from day to day, whatever happens, and without the merit of much effort. How this would serve if I had not so much to do, I do not know.”

Referring to the invectives poured out in leading American journals against Great Britain, by representative men high in office, after the proclamation of neutrality and the escape of the Alabama, she said: “How gladly would I die, to put a stop to these senseless, fearful outbursts! Men do not know how mischievous they are. One insulting word is sometimes more dangerous to nations than even a hostile deed; and always more disgraceful to him who utters it. See what your wisest statesmen thought of such words in 1793! They are alarming, fearful, for there is no telling where they will end.”

Edition: current; Page: [507]

Speaking of Margaret Fuller’s regret that “Society in America” was such a hasty book, she said, “She ought not to have said that. It had three years of the best of my life.”

“Tell us,” we one day said, “what was the condition of political economy before your ‘series’ appeared?”

“It was never heard of outside of the Political Economy Club, except among students of Adam Smith; but the ‘series’ made it popular, aided as it was by the needs and events of the time; such as strikes, the pressure of the Corn-Laws, &c. There was cheering evidence of this in 1842, when the agitation of chartism tested the relation between employers and employed, and proved it clear and sound. Still more striking was the proof during the recent American war, when the operatives throughout the manufacturing districts braved the cotton famine, instead of seeking escape at the expense of sound economical principles. . . . . But I wish to impress it upon your Americans that these tales relate to a state of things that has for the most part passed away, though they did certainly contribute largely to that result. The young people — a multitude of them — were interested and instructed in what to strive for in politics in their schooldays.”

“When the secularists applied to you to give them a service for the grave, may I ask if you granted the request?”

“I have never done so: I have been busier with their lives than their graves; and I have my doubts about the utility of a formal service, except in the case of great men, dying in public stations.”

In the course of one of our conversations on the characteristics and merits of her works and those of other authors, she said: “My article on the census is the most marked thing I have ever done.”*

One day, after Lord and Lady Belper had sent to The Knoll a magnificent basket of game and fruit, the conversation turned on what Sydney Smith said to her on such an occasion: “They who send you good things are sure of heaven, provided they Edition: current; Page: [508] also pay her dues to the Church of England.” This set all present to considering how far the absolution extended; and it was thought to be an enormous act of indulgence, till philosophically examined; and then it was found to have a good foundation.

Harriet Martineau’s heart being in the work of freeing the United States from slavery and preserving peace between the two countries, the “Daily News” did but become the more effectual in accomplishing those two ends, and the benefit was acknowledged in America by many. The fear she felt on hearing of the early disasters of the war was very great, as her letters from time to time show.

August 8, 1861

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

EXTRACTS OF LETTERS TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

August 8, 1861

.

I hear of Bull Run with an anguish of shame and discouragement such as I never thought to feel again, . . . . yet I can understand your Henry’s even thinking it desirable (as cutting off all chance of compromise). But it troubles my very soul. I am glad to be living so apart. I groan over it on all accounts. . . . .

Davis’s message makes one’s heart sink and one’s gorge rise. Well, all this is better than previous hypocrisy. You are happily more hopeful than I about the effect of the misfortune. I have no doubt whatever about the eagerness to make sacrifices; but there is no sudden cure for such an inveterate habit of rash and conceited judgment, such unconsciousness of ignorance and insensibility to the requirements of the occasion, as have overborne military commanders. . . . .

Every mail brings a bushel of letters from Northern citizens, insisting that the only question is of the Union, and that nothing will be done about slavery.

And then the preference of passion to reason, and fancy to fact! . . . .

Whether they really believe that nothing will be done about slavery, or say so because they think it will please people here (which is a mistake), the act is equally disgusting. But such people have not been truckling and trimming all these years to be trusted by you or me to-day.

October 2, 1861

October 2, 1861

.

My dear Friend, —

I have been writing this week to somebody else in the United States; to whom, do you think? Hon. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War. “What about?” Well, I had told Edition: current; Page: [509] F. Nightingale (glad to send her any word of cheer in her affliction) that our book was known and read in America. She is thankful, and wrote at once to offer me, for your government, not only the military sanitary reports (which I should have sent to Dr. Howe), but all our war-office regulations arising out of them, some of which are not yet under cognizance of Parliament, and others are admitted to be the best in existence, and are applied for by foreign governments.

I thought these ought to go straight to your war-office, and got them packed in London, and despatched this week. In writing an explanation, I took occasion to say that we should be thankful to furnish the results of our experience and our reforms to all armies, every where, if we had the power. I also marked my letter “private,” lest the transaction should come out in American newspapers as an act of “aid and comfort” to the North, preferentially, on the part of England: whereas it is F. N.’s and my doing, and nobody’s else; and we should have done the same by any other army, of course, if we could. If duly attended to, I really hope and believe these documents may save some of your good soldiers’ lives. . . . . The confidential part in them relates chiefly to delicate and difficult considerations about the quality, attributes, conditions, and circumstances of nurses, nuns, seculars, married or single, &c., &c.

Mr. H. Reeve gives me the most cheering account of the effect of free trade on the French, and on our relations with them. Really there seem to be no limits to the good to be expected in the diminution of the false military spirit and evil ambition fostered by discouragement at home. . . . . The extension of commerce for the benefit of every body will evidently be enormous. I do wish I had had Mr. Reeve’s letter before I wrote the leader which appeared yesterday (in this 1st October, on France). I could have made it a brighter picture. The consumers are beginning to see how they have been oppressed, and the protected are so far consumers that they are becoming free-traders as fast as possible. I shall have to speak of these facts in the “Standard” in their bearing on European politics and African prospects, and in connection with the awful state of society in Russia. I have not heard from Sumner since I wrote to him. . . . . It is a misfortune to a public man, in such times, to have the sort of egotism in his way (if it be so) which could make him ignore me on account of my opinion of vituperative oratory from a man in office. And we who are otherwise with him are bound to dissent from his choice of a mode of utterance which we consider Edition: current; Page: [510] indefensible. However, he may be all right as to temper; and he has sent me documents since I gave him that offence; and he may reply as soon as he has news. I wonder if those poor Andersons will ever see one another again. . . . .

O, no! I do not get out on the terrace, nor ever shall, — not beyond the porch. As seen from the windows the valley is gloriously beautiful just now.

October 17, 1861

October 17, 1861

.

My news is, this week, that our ministers have the extremest difficulty in holding back Louis Napoleon and Spain from breaking the blockade. It is actually playing into the enemy’s hands, to distrust and insult a government which is doing its duty well in difficult times. Your correspondent, — —’s, letters, have been so exceedingly good on the whole, that I the more regret this senseless freak of his. Well as he judges of your affairs and of others which he has the means of understanding, he really is almost always more or less wrong about London doings, — Ministry and Parliament. He reads scarcely any papers on general politics. He can please himself about that, but he should not speak unless he will first qualify himself on that set of subjects.

I hope somebody will tell me when either “yes” or “no” becomes apparent about Anderson’s family. Surely Sumner will tell either you or me when he has any sort of notion whether there will be any sort of result.

. . . . It is mischievous for the cause that — and — and — do not know what a “personality” is. Let them look for “personal” in Johnson. It is the third or fourth meaning, I believe. Never mind it all. I don’t. But they, in their mood, will be likely to fancy every thing sensitiveness. It is only to say “stop writing,” and I stop. I have no sort of personal interest in the matter, and all this is to me simply an unaccountable spectacle. Very odd.

Harriet Martineau wrote during this period a series of papers on Army Hygiene for Messrs. Fields and Osgood’s “Atlantic Monthly.”

There was a time in England when the mistakes of American envoys abroad, of officials at home, of editors undertaking military movements, with expressions of ill-will from popular journalists de part et d’autre, — added to the assurances of the American government that the conflict was going on for the status quo ante bellum, — had both irritated and depressed the English public Edition: current; Page: [511] mind. At such a moment it was that the Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster made his great speech at Bradford on American affairs. He was able to do a statesman’s duty by both countries in the face of all discouragements; for he had sympathy at home and a friend at hand able in counsel, with whose mind he had been intimate during his whole political life. Yet at that moment of national agitation he could not help saying that it seemed as if Harriet Martineau alone was keeping this country straight in regard to America. Referring to this afterwards, she says: —

“It made my heart stop; but I am sure it was not so exactly, because I know how finely our ministers were and are putting forth their whole power to restrain France and Spain from breaking the blockade. But that any thing like what he said should hang on my life makes me willing to live longer.”

Shortly after, in allusion to this incident, she writes: —

“It was not about the cotton that W. E. Forster was discouraged. We shall do well enough for cotton. It is really surprising how very little influence that question has had throughout. The feeling here is owing to a lowness of spirit and conduct observable from hence where better things were expected; the ignorance of the many at the North, and the concealments and falsehoods of the few.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

October 31, 1861

October 31, 1861

.

I don’t believe Fremont will do for a hero. A man who has done, in such a way, what he has done, cannot be a statesman or a farsighted or adequate man in any way, unless a purely military way, which remains to be proved.

I perceive you ground your disapprobation of the protective system on the injustice and unkindness to foreign peoples. This is a very strong and quite indisputable ground, but it is not the one I have at all had in view at this time, or wished to bring forward in discussing the matter in the “Standard” or elsewhere. I protest against the vicious aristocratic principle, and the rank oppression exercised over the American people at large, for the selfish interest of certain classes. It is true your shippers and merchants are concerned in and injured by every injury inflicted on foreign commerce; but it is a graver consideration to my mind that every workingman in the country is injured for the illicit benefit of wealthier classes. Popular ignorance alone can have permitted it thus long. It is true the disposition to Edition: current; Page: [512] tyranny and greed, which is conspicuous wherever a democracy exists, has made protectionists of all or most democratic associations, such as the most stringent trades-unions, and other socialistic organizations; but still, it is inconceivable that, in a country full of workingmen like yours, a handful of monopolists will be permitted to saddle and bridle the industrial majority, as at present. When the case is understood, it is inconceivable that the majority will put up with it. I wish some Member of Congress, or other man who would be listened to, would propose, as a matter of economy, a handsome direct appropriation to the iron-masters and mill-owners, instead of preserving the tariff. It would be a vast, incalculable saving to pension them in a thoroughly handsome way and throw trade open. The proposal would open people’s eyes to the aggression they are submitting to.

I look anxiously for some sort of news of Anderson’s wife. I fear the poor fellow is in wearing suspense. C. Sumner has sent me his speech, which I am glad of, (but, entre nous, how very bad it is!)

Your

H. M.

November 25, 1861

November 25, 1861

.

Your letters make my heart ache, but it would ache ten times worse if they were any thing but what they are. . . . .

That young Putnam martyr’s glimpse of the future* is dreadfully painful, notwithstanding the satisfaction from his devotedness. Ten thousand precious lives thrown away through bad government, in a self-governing nation! . . . .

You and I attribute these calamities to the influence of slavery, while ignorant and distant observers generally attribute too little to that and too much to the democratic system. . . . . There is cotton enough now for six months of three fourths time, and plenty coming.

It is pleasant to find that the temptation even will be less than we expected, and that we can cut all connection with the South in future if duty requires it. I never believed that we should act essentially different on cotton considerations.

March 27, 1862

Ambleside

Ambleside,

March 27, 1862

.

My dearest Friend, —

I had pen and paper before me when your letter and the “Tribune” came, and ill fared all the intended letters. I wrote off a letter for “Daily News” on Schurz’s speech as the Edition: current; Page: [513] happiest incident since Lincoln’s accession. I yielded to the impulse to tell the good news to the English. I need not spend space or strength in telling you what I think of it, only this, — that even you can perhaps scarcely conceive the relief and pleasure it is to read a political speech which is wholly clear of adulation of any body, and of self-praise (American). And O, how wise, and — Well, we agree about it, of course. . . . . It promises what we had been sickening for want of, — the uprising of men fit for the crisis, men made by the time to make a new time. . . . .

One cannot help laughing, shocking as the thing is, at the idiotic notion we hear of, that we (the English) shall be grieved and mortified at American virtue and happiness! On the very lowest supposition, — that we could spare, time and thought for our own little complacencies, — it is for our interest, our repute as the champions of the North, that the North should justify our championship. Can’t they comprehend that? It is no laughing matter, however, that there should be any where malice enough to make such a delusion. . . . .

I hear that Professor Masson, editor of “Macmillan’s Magazine,” desires me to write in it on American matters. Yet keep it to yourself, please, at present, as it may not come to pass. . . . . This week I have got “Pierce and his Clients” into “Once a Week,” but there is not much satisfaction in treating of American subjects there, the editor being too much of a “Times” contributor to like what I say about America. It is only out of deference that he inserts such things. To be sure, it is ground rescued from the enemy, and that is good. . . . .

I am abundantly disgusted with Club and “Times” insolence and prejudice, and I speak and write against them with all my might. I also see that distaste to Americans and disapprobation aroused by the instances of lowness of official conduct and national morality have increased during the last year; but I do not believe there is any ill-will whatever. It is a case of impaired esteem, and not of ill-will; and of course the esteem may be and certainly will be recovered by good desert. The ideal of temper and manners is widely different in the two nations.

Because we hear so little from the South, ignorant people suppose the conduct and manners are better there; you and I know to the contrary; but the inference is natural from the greater reticence (or what here appears so) of the Southerners; and then we do not get from the South the petty spite which amazes the readers of Northern newspapers.

Edition: current; Page: [514]

If your people would but abstain from boasting till they may put off their armour! . . . .

The finance is the doom which they evidently do not perceive. Well, they will find it out; and meantime the aspect of affairs has brightened every way.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

December 13, 1863

December 13, 1863

.

One of the American correspondents of “Daily News,” I think, concludes “S.,” the letter-writer in the “Times,” to be Slidell. But it is Spence, as I dare say you know. If it happens that you hear the mistake repeated, just set it right. Even the “Times” would not admit a Southern editor to write letters as a contributor. You see, according to Cobden, the “Times” has one tenth of the circulation of the daily papers. Why should Northern people seem to believe that the “Daily News,” the organ of the great liberal party in Great Britain, and to a considerable extent in Europe, has no subscription? I can’t understand the sense of running down the best friend the North has in the European press. But the delusion is even odder than the impolicy. The superior order of the press here is pretty strong on the right side. But I suppose it is difficult for some to admit any thing to be friendly, short of large draughts of unqualified praise.

The puzzle is to me that those who have been impressing upon England for a quarter of a century, that the crowning evil of slavery was its having deteriorated the national morale, — the very people who have been denouncing the corruption of all but a very few of the whole of Northern society, — seem to have forgotten all this, and to stand up for the virtue, on all points, of the society they condemned before. Now, we cannot forget these lessons in an hour in that way. We do believe such to be the operation of slavery; and we see that it has been so; and a nation and its moral sense cannot be regenerated — made pure, and free, and steadfast in virtue — in a day, or a year, or a generation. But they are not satisfied unless every sort of American people are admitted to be greater and wiser and better than any body else; and all the advantages to be owing to the excellence of the people. We know this not to be true; and we don’t pretend to think it. I am sure we recognize the improvement as far as it is apparent; but we do not believe, and we will not say we believe, that the moral devastation caused by slavery in every part of the Union can be suddenly and completely repaired. We see that it is not by this very passion which has no patience in it. . . . . Look at the flagrant disregard of truth in patriotic Americans. Look at Beecher’s statement Edition: current; Page: [515] about the Trent in matters in which I for one could teach him. Look at Sumner’s speech, furious and untrue, which any school-boy in England would despise, and then look at the reckless statements that Sumner’s speech caused the stopping of the rams; when the truth is that Mr. Adams and the editor of the “Daily News,” and Mr. Forster and I, and many more knew that the rams were stopped twelve days, and the newspapers announced it on authority nine days, before Sumner’s speech arrived in England. (I will put the dates down on another sheet.)

I do not talk in this way to English folk, except to Maria and W. E. Forster, — to those who will help the more the more has to be done.

About this Cobden turmoil; I am very sorry Cobden is so cross, — so often and so very cross. . . . . One comfort is that the “Times’” ways are exposed. It will do good in many directions; but it is a pity that the injury to Cobden should be so great, after the vast services he has rendered to both England and France. I must stop.

Yours always,

H. M.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

July 8, 1862

July 8, 1862

.

I think the very worst thing yet done on this side the water is the “Times” leader on the 4th of July. I call every body I know to witness that if we have war with the United States the “Times” may be considered answerable for it. It seems to me to be a sort of crazy malignity.

. . . . We are so pleased that Professor Cairnes’s book has had such a circulation; out of print a fortnight ago. This is beyond my hopes.

I meant to try to send you my second Historiette to-day. I wonder how you will like it. And I wonder how I shall like it too, with Millais’s illustrations.

Hoo-ray! here is your letter. It comforts me about the plain speech with which we go on together. Yes, we are agreed as regards ourselves, — plain truth spoken; kindly, generously received, and done with. Louis Napoleon is in a mess about Mexico. He cannot be quiet. He will be meddling with you, and in Eastern Europe, and coaxing Russia, and teazing Germany. At home, however, and in France, many things are improving. If Mr. Lucas’s book should come in your way (“Secularia: Surveys on the Main Stream of History”) do look at the chapter last but one, — “Absolutism in Extremis,” — for his revelations of the conditions and perplexity of French politics. To my taste this book is charming, though he and Edition: current; Page: [516] I differ about American politics. Nearly all the rest is a very great treat to me. But that is much owing to the work I do.

Yes, I am pleased, as you suppose, at my, or any body’s, Political Economy being read by any of your people. I hope, however, that some one will bid them remember that the abuses shown up are nearly or quite all remedied here, — some mainly through that very book. It really should be understood that the evils have long ceased to exist.

Ever your

H. M.

July 22, 1862

July 22, 1862

.

My dearest Friend, —

Our hearts and heads are too full now for writing, since this bad news from the army. . . . .

Before you get this you will have seen the debate on Friday last (“Daily News,” July 19). Mason was under the gallery during Forster’s speech. Lindsay went straight up to speak to Mason on finishing his own dull, silly speech. You will be struck by the wariness of Forster (in one so impetuous, especially). It produced a very great effect, and I think Lord P.’s conclusion must have damped any hopes of Mason’s very effectually. I doubt not the French Emperor is as eager for intervention as people say; but I am confident there never was an idea of it here. None but the cronies of the Southern agitators can ever have imagined it possible. As for the “small and strong war party” that you hear of, if you will read instead hostile party, I could agree; but I know no person who believes there is a man, woman, or child in the kingdom who desires war. There is a singular recoil from American temper and manners, on account of the newspapers there being mistaken for organs of the national spirit and intellect. There is the gross mistake also of fancying the South more sensible, practicable, and better behaved than the North. But this is very different from wishing for war. The feeling is not pugnacious, but rather of weariness and disgust; a wishing never to hear of America again. The most insulting letters are sent to “Daily News” as if from Lancashire, but they are understood to be a Southern device. Our editor has been very ill, but is recovering. He will not be at the office till September, and I have promised to help all I can. He was sub-editor when Mr. Weir died, and succeeded him, of course, having risen and risen to that post, and was for some time in charge of the foreign department, which requires languages and large knowledge. He is now editor, and long may he continue so. They write from the office thus: “The truth is, he takes his work very Edition: current; Page: [517] much to heart, and on the American question especially. There is no editor in Europe, I am persuaded, so nobly conscientious and high-minded.” Is not this pleasant? M. A. (I think I told you, — the most fastidious of men and scholars) met him at dinner, and was profoundly struck by his power and earnestness. You ask how many articles I have written for “Daily News.” Well, there is a boxful of them here and a list at the office, all safe, if that were of any consequence; but all I care for is, not to be credited with articles I did not write. Any body is welcome to the credit of those I did. . . . . Lord Palmerston I believe to have no principle, no heart; he is insolent, light, unscrupulous, and kept right about the United States now by national opinion and by his colleagues. . . . . How on earth can any body admire Louis Napoleon! I hope it is not being illiberal, but I find it difficult to admire any body that does admire him. “Daily News” is as far from doing so as can be, as you must perceive. . . . .

Abolition I consider secure, in one way or another, but I see nothing else cheering; and the financial difficulties —

O my friend, how I mourn with you over this bad news from the army! I hardly venture near the subject, it is so overwhelming. Day and night I am thinking of your suffering country and the tension upon you.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

December, 1862

December, 1862

.

My Friend, —

I cannot let my mere envelope go without a line, especially because you have answered my questions so distinctly and openly, just as I wished. I must repeat just one; because I really, as an advocate, need the answer. What do your best citizens, such as Mr. Jay, say at this time as to the clause in the Declaration of Independence, that “Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed”? Do they give up the doctrine as unsound? If so, what do they substitute? If not, how justify coercion? You will see at once that this is a stumbling-block here. As men say, “Who may have a will as to the government they will live under, if not five, six, or seven millions of people of our own race?”

We do rejoice over that First South Carolina Regiment. It is the only thing in the actual fighting that has given me any pleasure at all. How manly and rational the good fellows were!

How few on your side of the water who do not seem crazy with revolutionary passion! Some of the feelings are fine, and some of the conduct; but reason seems gone, and knowledge and philosophy Edition: current; Page: [518] of no effect. It is more than mournful; it is fearful. You see that there is no fear of English intervention, nor ever was. Scamp* will do you a mischief if he can.

My best love.

H. M.

Remarking upon the consequences of the Legal Tender Act, she says: —

“I suppose there must be some people among you who know now what to expect about finance. I wish they could influence the newspapers not to mislead the people so cruelly. The prolific character of the country, the triumphant industry of the people, — it is all true; and in course of time these may create any amount of wealth; but this has nothing to do with the deficit of the case in hand. It does not apply to the agony caused meanwhile to the people by the creation of money which turns to dry leaves in the use . . . . actually appeals to the briskness of trade and plenty of money as a sign of Mr. Chase’s wisdom and the prosperity of the country, when these are precisely the symptoms of the coming destruction. He wonders that foreigners are not eager to lend their money, at the very moment when the last chance of any security is destroyed by such a creation of fictitious wealth as the world should never have seen again.”

The annexed poem, an effusion of the heart whose sympathies in joy as in sorrow knew no distinction of class or nationality, ought to find a place at this date (March 10, 1863).

THE SISTER BRIDES.

The sun is up; the cottage girl is springing from her bed.

The day is come, — there’s much to do; and soon her prayers are said:

She feeds the chicks, she sweeps the house and makes the kettle boil;

Once more, this once, she does it all, to save dear mother’s toil.

Now she puts on her Sunday gown, pets Dicky on his perch, —

She knows her love is there outside, all ready for the church.

Her face tells what is in her heart in turning from the door, —

“To live with him all day! my love, my own for evermore.”

The Danish maiden by the sea is looking far and wide, —

She knows the boat will soon come in with this fresh morning tide:

And there it comes; deep-laden sure, for well the nets are blest:

She could not stay within before, but now she must be dressed.

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He lifts his oar, — she moves her hand, and trips within the cot;

’T is the last time he’ll land without one waiting at that spot.

When evening comes those twain are one, and whispering on the shore,

“To live together, O my love! my own for evermore.”

The factory-girl is up before the early bell is ringing;

“The day is come, — my wedding-day,” her busy heart is singing.

The noisy mill is music now; her secret is her own;

The neighbours feel how gay she is, how kind in every tone.

The breakfast-hour gone by, they see the ring upon her finger,

They tell how at the factory-gate they saw her lover linger.

She lets them talk; she thinks all day, till that day’s task is o’er,

“It is my husband now, my love! my own for evermore.

The handmaid early comes to wake the daughter of the house;

The slumber is but feigned, for she is still as any mouse, —

Is full of thoughts; more silent she, the more her heart is singing.

What is’t to her that guests are come, that the church-bells are ringing?

The day is like a dream, — the feast, the flowers, the bridal veil;

The blessing in the church and home. Who cannot read the tale

Her eyes relate to him who with her leaves her father’s door?

“To live my life with him, my love! my own for evermore.”

All England rings with wedding peals. The people cry aloud

Their blessing on the royal pair whose lot is bright and proud.

In sweetness all the pride is lost to her whose day is come;

The brightness all is in the thought of husband and of home.

What though within the chapel throng the nobles of the realm,

Her in her bliss no splendour daunts, no pomp can overwhelm:

The bridal song in low or high is still, the wide world o’er,

“To live my life with him, my love! my own for evermore.”

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

March 10, 1863

. (Wedding-day of Albert Edward and Alexandra.)

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

March 24, 1864.

Ambleside,

F. G. Shaw

Shaw, F. G.

LETTER TO MRS. F. G. SHAW.

Ambleside,

March 24, 1864.

My dear Madam, —

An hour ago arrived the precious portrait of your son; and it stands before me now, as it will for many a day, to cheer me for his country, and to melt my heart for you. I think you must have perceived that no one feature of this fearful war has interested people so much as the career and death of your son. Many Edition: current; Page: [520] hearts have been touched and many minds enlightened by that sacrifice, which were blind and insensible.

While I was writing Dr. Arnold’s youngest daughter came in. She had told me before that she could not look at the portrait (the smaller one) without tears, for its singularly touching expression. You may imagine her pleasure at finding here the larger one, where she can come and see it whenever she likes. She and her mother are the best sympathizers I have here in the American cause.

It is so good of you to send me this sacred gift, that I really do not know how to thank you for it. I can only say that it is a sacred possession to me, and that it shall go next to no one who does not regard it as I do, after I am gone.

Believe me, with much respect and sympathy, yours,

H. MARTINEAU.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

June 14, 1865

Ambleside

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE “STANDARD.”

Ambleside,

June 14, 1865

.

Sir, —

I beg to express my thanks for the kindness shown in sending me the “Standard” up to this time; and to say that I shall now be obliged by your discontinuing to forward it to me. The American Antislavery Society, having fulfilled its mission of rousing and convincing the nation and securing the emancipation of the negroes, may now work in fellowship with society, and no longer in opposition to, or censure of it. The interest of the friends of the negroes and their rights now passes over to the efforts made on behalf of the freed people. Neither that strong interest nor any other will ever in the slightest degree impair the world’s gratitude to the great leaders of this moral revolution, who have completed their great task, and are now ready for the new labours in which the old have merged. Of their many distinctions, none will be brighter in the eyes of future generations than this particular manifestation of their disinterested patriotism. It is so profoundly impressive to old friends of the cause watching from a distance. To such, of course, the “Standard” has lost its interest, even if it does not become misleading; and this is the reason of my request to you. I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

November 27, 1871

November 27, 1871

.

What capital news New York is sending to the civilized world! What a fine spectacle it is, — the higher order of citizens, the men of Edition: current; Page: [521] culture, trained tastes, and gentle manners, repairing to the field of political action because it is the field of patriotic duty; the more zealously the greater disgust they must encounter. If they now persevere, they will have regenerated their city and State; they will have done more to republicanize the world than has been done yet. They will have exactly met the fatal doubt that has not yet been solved in connection with genuine republican government.

March 6, 1873

March 6, 1873

.

I think you had rather have a short, sincere letter, neither gay nor comfortable, than none. I feared I must fail to-day. It is one of my worst days. Meantime, this will be a busy month, with the spring cleaning and whitewashing. (Do you remember the turning out of the books on the terrace, which you thought so unnecessary?) Then the new carpet for the drawing-room for my successor, the killing and curing the pig, and then my maid’s journey.

March 20, 1873

March 20, 1873

.

The Life of Dickens is far too exclusively occupied by his personal relations with Forster. The book must lower Dickens in popular estimation, and can do no credit to Forster. Yet it has an interest, and is worth reading. In the second volume I am much struck by Dickens’s hysterical restlessness. It must have been terribly wearing to his wife. His friends ought to have seen that his brain was in danger, — from apoplexy, not insanity. To how great an extent the women of his family are ignored in the book! The whole impression left by it is very melancholy. . . . . At all times, in all his writings, Dickens opposed and criticised all existing legal plans for the relief of the poor. I had almost forgotten the “Historiettes” [her stories in “Once a Week”]. I have no copy of them. You ask why they should not be republished. If they and “Representative Men” are worth it, I should be quite willing.

April 3, 1873

April 3, 1873

.

. . . . If your statesmen could only be trained for their offices, better qualified to meet and fulfil the wishes of the best republicans in the commonwealth! No doubt matters will come to this. Rising disgust at the evils of the present time has risen as high as it will go. You will again have real statesmen, as in the early days of the Republic; and what nation has ever been so happy as yours may be then?

But I did not mean to scribble on in this way, and will tell you something you will care for far more. I have just been in the midst of our parting emotions with our friends the Arnolds, who are to be away three months. I miss them more and more painfully every Edition: current; Page: [522] time they go; and the changes in my state of health are so many, that I have no expectation of being in my present condition when they return. I am now putting before them the great enterprise which has grown out of the C. D. Acts agitation, and the national Association for the Promotion of Social Purity, — the combination of people who believe personal purity to be as possible, as desirable, as absolutely requisite, in men as in women.

I send you some letters and papers which will give you an idea of what is doing. . . . . It is a blessing to see if one cannot help such an enterprise, undertaken in the spirit of hope and faith by such people as Mr. Shaen, Mr. Warr, Mrs. Butler, and the Sheldon Amos family, and many more, who know what it is to go into a great cause, into conflict with the passions of the most unscrupulous men, — the influence of the medical profession in particular.

July 9, 1873

July 9, 1873

.

I don’t think there is much change in me. I am sure I don’t make blunders, but the ineffectiveness increases. I do not fancy unreal things.

I am in a state of something like remorse about a visitor who came last week, — Mrs. Wistar, once Anne Furness. That any Furness should be here, and I not ready with such a welcome as I long to give, and they so richly deserve from me! But I was so much more than usually ill and worn out, that I could with difficulty see or hear. How beautiful was Mrs. Furness when I saw her! I like to hear of her being so still.

I see in an American paragraph, commenting on a statement in the “London Athenæum,” that Mr. Grote was the author of a work called “An Analysis of the Operation of Natural Religion.” Now, it was not written by Mr. Grote, but by Jeremy Bentham; nor was it published, only printed. If you should at any time or any where hear of that atheistical work as written by either Mr. or Mrs. Grote, please to contradict it. — and I not only decline being on the Mill memorial committee, but keep back for the present our contribution to the memorial fund. I would willingly pay my tribute to Mill in certain capacities, but we have warning to wait and see what construction is put upon the act.

August 21, 1873

August 21, 1873

.

Worse than ever, no delusions, or mistakes, or haunting ideas, but the strange feelings I have tried to convey to you, — in vain; as I am aware one cannot convey a sensation. But it is no morbid fancy that I am failing, and I don’t object to the fact, if it is probable Edition: current; Page: [523] that the general power, the life, fails naturally and uniformly. I will endeavour to occupy and amuse myself, and let the near future take care of itself. I am not always unable to read.

October 21, 1873

October 21, 1873

.

Worse in health. No second fainting-fit, nor any loss of sense; a pretty complete consciousness; but the days grow dim and uncertain as they recede, and I seem unable, without exactly understanding why, to get any thing done. Happily, strength and power of brain diminish in about equal proportions, so that all who love me may reasonably hope that the last stage, with its irksome characteristics, will not be a long one. Surely your love, so faithful and so strong, will unite you with me in this hope. I am certain it would, if you could feel one hour what I am feeling always. My anxiety is to keep exactly the right line between complaint on the one hand and concealment on the other. Those who have the care of me ought to know what I only can tell them, yet I dread troubling them with evils which cannot be mended.

November 20, 1873

November 20, 1873

.

Our chief interest now is the election of the school-boards at Birmingham. The League has an immense triumph, — eight League men and women heading the poll. Their association for religious education apart from secular has set them right with those who fancied them irreligious. My sister-in-law, aged eighty, went in a car, with an invalid friend, to vote. My nephew Frank,* an official in the League, was entreated by an elderly Quaker to write to his mother, a Quaker lady of ninety, imploring her to come some miles into Birmingham to vote. I hope she did. No one election in the country is of so much consequence. The League did a clever thing in printing, as a prodigious poster, a passage from the Queen’s book about the Dublin schools, which her husband and she visited, ending with a well-expressed view of the true Christian way of combining religious education, where desired, with liberty of conscience. Household news: Our superb meal-fed pig weighs nearly nineteen stone. I have had the ivy clipped close; in mercy to the small birds I do it in late autumn, when the nests are found deserted, and in spring they newbuild.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

July 17, 1874

Ambleside

F. G. Shaw

Shaw, F. G.

TO MRS. F. G. SHAW.

Ambleside,

July 17, 1874

.

Dear Mrs. Shaw, —

I wish to send you my thanks under my own hand, — if I can but do it, — for sending me what I so much wished Edition: current; Page: [524] to see as Mr. Curtis’s “Eulogy” on his friend. It is very beautiful, and in ways which are not interfered with by differences of opinion in regard to its subject.

Nobody can have admired Charles Sumner more, in his day, nor expected more from him, than myself; and so many associations of this kind remain affectionately linked with his name, that it is a deepfelt enjoyment to his oldest friends — of my own generation — to read such an estimate of him as Mr. Curtis has given us. But it is required by self-respect, in such a case as my own, that one should disclaim any thing like a full agreement with that estimate, or perfect sympathy with the mourning of those who believed him to have been greater than he really was.

I knew him well, from the time of his being a law-student, — a favourite of Judge Story, from whom I took my first estimate of him. Just after my return home he appeared in London, and my mother and I had the pleasure of introducing him into some of the best society that he saw. I was struck by the character of the remarks made on him by friends, — the same in the case of all eminent in political life. They found him morally delightful, and a thorough gentleman in mind and manners; but they could not understand the ground of any high expectation from him in a political career.

When he came again, many years later, — some twelve or more years ago, — and spent a few days with me here, I was inexpressibly surprised by his change of manner and air of assumption in political matters. It was the saddest disappointment in the career of a political aspirant that in my long and special experience I had ever known. Then followed the dreadful Alabama speech, — the introduction of the “Indirect Claims,” — which might have plunged two nations in war but for Mr. Forster’s effective reply; and it left no choice to Charles Sumner’s friends but to admit his absolute incapacity for political action, or — worse. I had no hope of him after that; . . . . but here is enough. It is a comfort to turn to the bright aspects presented by Mr. Curtis, not only in all sincerity, but with actual truth.

And here I should like, if my strength holds out, to give you one anecdote characteristic of two good men, in the vigour of their political life, and friends worthy of each other, — at that time. (Afterwards one lost ground, while the other continued to rise.) Charles Sumner and Lord Carlisle wished to know each other, and I brought them together. Lord Carlisle was then viceroy of Ireland, and Charles Sumner became his guest at the castle at Dublin, when he wanted to see Ireland.

Edition: current; Page: [525]

On his return to the castle, after a tour in the provinces, he found his host full of one subject, the “Westminster Review” having just appeared with the article, “The Martyr Age of the United States.”

“Have you read it?” asked Lord Carlisle.

“Yes,” said Sumner.

“Then you can tell me, — is it true?”

“I believe it is true.”

“Is it wholly true, — true, so that you could abide by it?”

“Except on two points,” said Sumner, “I could agree to it all. I believe that — would have been arrested if he had not been an abolitionist; and I do not think Mrs. Chapman so beautiful as Miss Martineau does.”

“So that is all?” said Lord Carlisle.

“That is all,” replied Sumner.

“Then may I ask, — if such is the state of things with you, — what do you propose to do?” (very emphatically.)

Sumner’s answer was, “Well! I think we cannot stand the moral blockade of the world longer than ten years.”

Charles Sumner told me this the next time we met; and it shows him as he was then (in 1839), and I like to dwell upon it rather than on later times.

Dear Mrs. Shaw, you will excuse the look of my scrawl, — if you know into what depths of illness I have sunk. My remaining days, we all think, must now be very few. There is infinite sweetness in them, from the love which surrounds me; but the fatigue does make me long for rest. So you will not be sorry when you hear that I am gone.

Mrs. Chapman still writes weekly! Only think of it! And she has sent me the two best photographs of Sumner. I like both, but much prefer the one so pathetic and full of mind, — taken a very short time before his death.

Kindly accept my warm thanks for what you have sent, and believe me,

Truly and gratefully yours,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

January 14, 1874

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

January 14, 1874

.

Now let me try to say what I like! Not that there is any thing remarkable or new to tell, but I long at times to feel as I used to do Edition: current; Page: [526] and to write as of old, — as if I were speaking. Certainly I am much altered, though I could not point to any marked change at any particular date, and could not say that my “faculties are failing,” in the popular sense of the term. But it is mere waste of strength to describe what is so indescribable as my condition. I have just discovered that I can still read as I used to do.

Edition: current; Page: [527]

WAITING FOR DEATH.

“Sunt homines qui cum patientia moriuntur: sunt autem quidam perfecti qui cum patientia vivunt.”

— St. Augustine.

“O, yet a nobler task awaits thy hand.”

— Milton.

All misliking of sudden death was taken away from them who years before had seen its approach at The Knoll in a form so consoling that they said, as did Madame de Motteville in attendance on Anne of Austria, “La mort en elle sembloit belle et agréable.”

And so it did not fail to be during the ten years succeeding her relinquishment of regular daily work, supported as she was, under the severe and various suffering that slowly wears out life, by the “still unfailing sweetness of temper” told of by all who knew her earlier years; by the imperturbable patience, the subdued self-will, and the never-ceasing disinterested devotedness to the highest purposes on the justest principles.

The necessity of the case, however, compelled the relinquishment of the “Daily News.” And to one so accomplished for sage counsel whether best to preserve peace or to uphold war, knowing what so few do know respecting civil and spiritual powers and the limitations of each, the act, however unavoidable, was a difficult one to perform. She had literally and truly sat under the palm-tree for forty years, and all Israel had come up to her for judgment; and when the judgment, ripened by experience, is at its highest perfection, the suspension of the power to wield it is the most deeply felt.

So thought Arago, when he told us of his readiness to die, with a shade of regret as he realized that till now he had never been so competent to live.

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With her this feeling was but momentary, and what it was will be better seen from her own letters than in any other way.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

LETTER TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

My dearest Friend, —

I have never before, for above two years, — never since Maria’s death, — shrunk from writing to you. I do now, though it is a comfort to myself, for I know how you will feel when you hear that my work in life — my special business — is done and over. You will have been prepared for this by what I said and asked of you about resigning my engagement at “Daily News,” but no forewarning lessens the feeling when the parting moment comes, and the signs and tokens of office and the materials of business have to be cleared away. To me it is not the great pain that my friends suppose. I am too far gone to feel it in that way; but I know what it will be to you, and I have dreaded sending this letter more than any thing. By last Tuesday week it had become impossible to doubt that I must resign all engagements, and free myself from all obligation and temptation to work. On that day, therefore, I wrote fully to the editor, resigning my engagement, and telling him exactly the state of the case about my health, and what my physician said, as an honest man, and what he anticipated: “Why, you know the stormy weather has been against you. It is possible that, with settled weather, you may rally — a little.” I believed that I had fully prepared Mr. Walker by my preceding letter; but it seems not. I am sure his reply will go to your heart, as it has done to all ours. I was always sure he was a man of deep and warm feelings, but he is so undemonstrative that even I had no conception of what he and his staff felt towards me as a comrade; and I am not sure now how much belongs to my leaving “Daily News” and how much to the closing of my career of authorship, — for these men are of an age to have been in a manner “brought up,” as they say, on my earlier works, — yet the strength of their regret and tenderness surprises almost as much as it moves me. The most emotional, penetrating, true, and exquisite letter I have received within the last remarkable week, with many more, all kind and gravely tender, while otherwise as various as possible, is from my sister Rachel. . . . .

It is a great satisfaction to me that the effort fell naturally in the time of my dear niece’s absence. Not only was it her pride and her joy to help me, but she fully believes that I cannot live without working, or at least shall languish for want of it. I am not so sure of this; and I don’t care a straw, except for her and you, whether Edition: current; Page: [529] it is so or not. But as she thinks so, I am glad she is spared all details.

All is being done in her absence, — putting the peculiar paper and envelopes out of sight, — and now I desire nothing except in the languid way which is all I ever feel since I lost Maria, — I mean as to daily life. I care as much for the great and the distant as ever.

Ever yours,

H. M.

The extracts given below are from the letter of the editor of the “Daily News,” told of in the preceding page.

T. Walker

Walker, T.

April 26, 1866

“Daily News” Office,

April 26, 1866

.

Dear Madam, — . . . .

I was very poorly yesterday, from influenza, when your letter arrived; and it had such an effect upon me that I was at the time quite unable to reply to it. The resolution you announce is one which I cannot discuss, but only bow to, after the grounds on which you put it. I showed your letter to Mr. — and to Mr. —.

There is only one feeling among us, — regret that a connection which has lasted so long under different administrations, and been so pleasant and fruitful, should terminate. But let us be thankful that it ends, as it has flowed on, in peace and mutual regard. I trust that you may have before you a more comfortable future than you apprehend. If there is any thing the office can do for you now, or at any time, pray let us know, and you may always command our services.

With kindest regards,

I am yours ever truly,

T. WALKER.

And this tender of service from the office was no mere compliment. When the time came for the publication of “The Biographical Sketches,” her excellent friend Mr. Robinson, overwhelmed as he was by office duties, took upon himself gratuitously the whole burden of putting that book through the press. His friendship found ample remuneration in the fact that it was hailed by the public as if in renewal of her early fame. The truth of her method commended it to the whole press of England and America.

I was about to say from my own knowledge what Harriet Martineau had been to the “Daily News,” when I came across Edition: current; Page: [530] the following letter from a man not accustomed to eulogize, on the occasion of her ceasing to write for it any longer.

Henry G. Atkinson

Atkinson, Henry G.

May 3, 1866

London

London,

May 3, 1866

.

My dear Friend, —

I return you Mr. Walker’s note. Nothing could be better or more satisfactory on such an occasion. They must have all felt not only your intellectual gifts, resources, and reliableness, but your great womanly kindness, as a helpmate at all times, when absent to recruit health, or really suffering from actual illness. You could not nurse them, but took extra labour on yourself to enable them to be nursed, and to give them repose. Nothing could be more admirable than your relationship with the “Daily News” and its different conductors, or more touching than the editor’s expressions on your finding it necessary to withdraw after a joint and harmonious action, enduring for such a length of time. And without doubt, in now retiring, you have done the right thing at the right time, and what was at once most prudent, just, and wise; leaving a lasting lesson to the world that even bishops might take a hint from. You have had a glorious reign of forty-five years, and now have abdicated gracefully, at your own free-will and discretion, actuated by an abiding sense of the highest law of moral action, — duty. You are one of those who have always been supremely wise and right in regard to your own actions; and your present resignation crowns the sequence it will not, I trust, terminate. And now, my dear friend, you are one of us; and I hail you amongst the noble band of lookers-on. The business of a philosopher, said Pythagoras, is to look on. However, it is not so literally, nor do I suppose you will ever be such literally; any how, you will do what is best, and be equal to the occasion, come what may. And as for Death, he is a quiet, kind, gentlemanly fellow, and will pay us all a friendly visit at his own time and leisure, though in truth he is a person we need not much concern ourselves about. At least, so preached the wise Epicurus, who said, “Death does not concern us; for whilst alive it is nothing to us, and when dead we no longer exist.” I am sure your kind and constant friends will highly approve the step you have taken.

Sincerely yours,

H. G. ATKINSON.

There was now a widespread idea that spiritualism as well as mesmerism had been studied by her. The following note upon the subject will explain her position with respect to it: —

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Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

April 17, 1866

Ambleside

Mary Carpenter

Carpenter, Mary

H. MARTINEAU TO MARY CARPENTER.

Ambleside,

April 17, 1866

.

. . . . What your friend has heard of my belief in spiritualism (so called) is not true. As far as direct personal knowledge goes, I am in a state of blank ignorance of the whole matter. I have never witnessed any of the phenomena, nor conversed with any qualified observer who had. This would be wrong if I could have helped it, but the whole thing has come up (in a popular way) since my illness began. Mr. Home endeavoured, through more than one channel, to get permission to come and show me his wonders; but I have been in no condition for watching and testing such experiments, and declined it altogether. Of course one has some impression or other from what one hears; and mine is this. From what I learned in my experience and observation of mesmerism, I am so far aware of the existence of rarely used and undeveloped powers and capacities in the brain, as to disapprove very strongly the gratuitous supposition, in the spirit-rapping case, of pure imposture on the one hand and of the presence of departed spirits on the other. I see no occasion or justification whatever for either supposition: and I observe this is the view of persons whose judgment is most respected, — persons who have waited till the first excitement had passed off, and they could look into the matter as philosophers should. About the facts of mesmerism, my position is the same that it was twenty years ago, — simply because I hold not an opinion based on any theory (for I never had any theory on it), but knowledge of facts. If Cuvier and other eminent naturalists justly insisted that no group of facts in natural history is better established on observation and experiment than those of mesmerism, it is not possible for any reasonable person who knows the facts to have variable opinions on the case.

In Harriet Martineau’s Tynemouth journal stands a passage which records the strong feeling that moved her to the service of unhappy women, and her conviction that it must be, if possible, a part of her future life. “If not,” she says, “some one else will do it.”

This feeling and purpose never left her from that time forward; and I learned from herself the mingled dread and doubt that wrought together in her mind when consulted by a sanitary commission appointed under King William IV. to consider, with regard to the case to come before it, whether the good of government Edition: current; Page: [532] regulation could overbalance the evil of government sanction.

The death of King William stayed proceedings, and they were not revived under Queen Victoria, except by a mischievous influence on the public mind through the press in 1859. Harriet Martineau felt the coming danger, and met it by correspondence with Florence Nightingale and other influential persons who had like herself been long aware of the growing evil; and in 1859 she met it by a series of powerful leading articles in the “Daily News.” The “Times” took service in opposition; and thus, in 1864, the government was committed to the wrong side.

Her early prevision that some one would arise to do the work that had taken such strong possession of her mind at Tynemouth, was now amply fulfilled in the person of her honoured and beloved friend Mrs. Josephine Butler, with whom she instantly put herself in communication; and they wrought together through all the last suffering period of her life. Her leading articles of 1863 were circulated afresh, and, all the while aiding this cause of social purity and national preservation by various efforts, she went on in its service till 1869. It was during this period that the interest she had taken in the abolition of compulsory church-rates found its reward. She had been one of Mr. Courtauld’s most active fellow-labourers, and had been threatened with distraint; she had circulated arguments and practical directions how to proceed against them; and she had worked as an individual and in conjunction with others; and now, August 11, 1868, she writes, “Accomplished at last!” It had been a severe and protracted struggle, in which the patient and self-sacrificing exertion of those who carried it on exposed them to distraint, prosecution, and imprisonment; till at length Parliament put an end to the unrighteous system throughout the kingdom.

It was during this last period of her life that the condition of the London and Brighton Railroad threatened her with a loss of her principal means of living. This she took very little notice of, merely giving the fact as news to a friend, with this remark: —

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“I am surprised that I feel it so little. I shall go into small lodgings and live by letting my Knoll, and am beyond the reach of anxiety in any event, my time being so short.”

The railroad company ultimately retrieved its affairs, and resumed payment so soon that she was not obliged to make any change in her mode of living; and the many friends in both hemispheres who had entreated her to allow them to insure her against inconvenience were met by thanks as warm as if they had been accompanied by acceptance.

Perhaps nothing will so well acquaint one with the current of Harriet Martineau’s days of waiting for death as a letter she addressed at this time to Mrs. Chapman.

“A happy new year to you and yours, my dearest friend. The wish is in time, though you will be some way into the year before you get it. We shall be almost more glad than usual to get past the anniversaries, — i. e. into the new year, — for our minds have been filled full of business and interests (some sad), and a variety of ideas too great for my now weak state. Instead of writing to you yesterday (as I like to do on Wednesdays to make sure), I had to write three other letters, as the day before and also on Sunday. It feels like a holiday to be able to pour out to you to-day in the free way which makes writing a relief. We have a rather heavy secret, — Jenny* and I, — and I am going to tell it to you. I fear it will be all out in a few days; but it will be a secret for you till you know it is all abroad.

“I told you something, but I forget how much, about the Ladies’ Association, founded to obtain the repeal of the Acts (Contagious Diseases Acts) for establishing the French and Belgian system, first in military stations, and then over nine times as large an area, comprehending a large civil population. The members, headed by Mrs. Butler, are working zealously to get up an irresistible demand to Parliament to undo its evil work; and they make great use of my name and Florence Nightingale’s. Mrs. Butler is familiar with the workingmen in town and country; her position as the wife of a working clergyman and head of a great school, and her courage, enthusiasm, and intelligence, give her great power. She has been visiting several of the great manufacturing towns and addressing the workingmen, and, by their eager request, their wives. They are, every man and woman of them, on Edition: current; Page: [534] the right side on this subject, and aware of the enormous importance of the crisis.”*

The work went on, of forming societies, calling meetings, sending out agents, and signing petitions, and its objects were promoted by her in the same fervent spirit that prompted her early energies in and for America. The labour was exhausting, as it threw upon her a weight of private correspondence that she was ill able to sustain. “But how can I refrain,” she said, “when A and B and C (all friends high in place and influence) need to have principles exhibited to them, and doubts removed?”

More than a paragraph or two should be accorded in memorial of one of the noblest among the deeds that illustrate this great life, — in nothing more radiant than in its closing years of labour for the classes whose degradation puts in peril the very existence of nations.

There were, at this time, two Acts of Parliament, — one passed in 1866 and the other in 1869, — most oppressive, insulting, and outrageous in their application to women, while men in the same conditions were wholly exempt from their penalties. A Ladies’ National Association for their repeal was formed, and a protest signed by Harriet Martineau, with Florence Nightingale, Josephine E. Butler, Martha E. Baines, Ursula Bright, Margaret Lucas, Jane Wigham, Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Eliza Wigham, Mary Estlin. But so numerous are the names following that of Harriet Martineau in protest, that it is impossible to do more on such a page as this than to crown with thanks and blessing every one of the great cloud of witnesses.

THE LADIES’ NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE REPEAL OF THE CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS.

There are two Acts of Parliament — one passed in 1866, the other in 1869 — called the Contagious Diseases Acts. These Acts are in force in some of our garrison towns, and in large districts around them. Unlike all other laws for the repression of contagious diseases, to Edition: current; Page: [535] which both men and women are liable, these two apply to women only, men being wholly exempt from their penalties. The law is ostensibly framed for a certain class of women, but in order to reach these, all the women residing within the districts where it is in force are brought under the provisions of the Acts. Any woman can be dragged into court, and required to prove that she is not a common prostitute. The magistrate can condemn her, if a policeman swears only that he “has good cause to believe” her to be one. The accused has to rebut, not positive evidence, but the state of mind of her accuser. When condemned, the sentence is as follows: To have her person outraged by the periodical inspection of a surgeon, through a period of twelve months; or, resisting that, to be imprisoned, with or without hard labour — first for a month, next for three months, — such imprisonment to be continuously renewed through her whole life unless she submit periodically to the brutal requirements of this law. Women arrested under false accusations have been so terrified at the idea of encountering the public trial necessary to prove their innocence, that they have, under the intimidation of the police, signed away their good name and their liberty by making what is called a “voluntary submission” to appear periodically for twelve months for surgical examination. Women who, through dread of imprisonment, have been induced to register themselves as common prostitutes, now pursue their traffic under the sanction of Parliament; and the houses where they congregate, so long as the government surgeons are satisfied with the health of their inmates, enjoy, practically, as complete a protection as a church or a school.

We, the undersigned, enter our solemn protest against these Acts —

1. Because, involving as they do, such a momentous change in the legal safeguards hitherto enjoyed by women in common with men, they have been passed, not only without the knowledge of the country, but unknown to Parliament itself; and we hold that neither the representatives of the people nor the press fulfil the duties which are expected of them, when they allow such legislation to take place without the fullest discussion.

2. Because, so far as women are concerned, they remove every guaranty of personal security which the law has established and held sacred, and put their reputation, their freedom, and their persons absolutely in the power of the police.

3. Because the law is bound, in any country professing to give civil liberty to its subjects, to define clearly an offence which it punishes.

Edition: current; Page: [536]

4. Because it is unjust to punish the sex who are the victims of a vice, and leave unpunished the sex who are the main cause, both of the vice and its dreaded consequences; and we consider that liability to arrest, forced surgical examination, and, where this is resisted, imprisonment with hard labour, to which these Acts subject women, are punishments of the most degrading kind.

5. Because, by such a system, the path of evil is made more easy to our sons, and to the whole of the youth of England; inasmuch as a moral restraint is withdrawn the moment the State recognizes and provides convenience for the practice of a vice which it thereby declares to be necessary and venial.

6. Because these measures are cruel to the women who come under their action, — violating the feelings of those whose sense of shame is not wholly lost, and further brutalizing even the most abandoned.

7. Because the disease which these Acts seek to remove has never been removed by any such legislation. The advocates of the system have utterly failed to show, by statistics or otherwise, that these regulations have in any case, after several years’ trial, and when applied to one sex only, diminished disease, reclaimed the fallen, or improved the general morality of the country. We have, on the contrary, the strongest evidence to show that in Paris and other Continental cities, where women have long been outraged by this forced inspection, the public health and morals are worse than at home.

8. Because the conditions of this disease, in the first instance, are moral, not physical. The moral evil through which the disease makes its way separates the case entirely from that of the plague or other scourges, which have been placed under police control or sanitary care. We hold that we are bound, before rushing into the experiment of legalizing a revolting vice, to try to deal with the causes of the evil, and we dare to believe that with wiser teaching and more capable legislation those causes would not be beyond control.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

(And a great number of others.)

But other things fell to her lot than writing petitions, summoning meetings, and raising funds. She had learned the use of placards, when Joseph Sturge, after his exchange of flatteries with the Czar of Russia, covered the walls of Birmingham with a quotation from her writings in favour of peace, wrested to promote his “peace” at any price, at a crisis when she thought that national honour demanded war; and this gave her the trouble Edition: current; Page: [537] and expense of posting a strong denial below his every affirmation.

To this means the Reform Association had recourse; and this is a copy of their placard, written and first signed by Harriet Martineau: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Ursula Bright

Bright, Ursula

Josephine Butler

Butler, Josephine

TO THE WOMEN OF COLCHESTER.

As Englishwomen loving your country, and proud of it, as many generations of women have been, listen to a word from three of your countrywomen.

The most endearing feature in our English life has been the reality of its homes. Married life is, with us, we have been accustomed to think, more natural and simple than in most other countries, youth and maidenhood at once more free and pure, and womanhood more unrestrained, more honoured and safe beyond comparison, in person and repute.

Are you aware that this eminent honour and security of our sex and our homes are at present exposed to urgent danger, and even undergoing violation? You women of Colchester ought to be aware of this fact, for the violation is going on within your own town. The story is short.

Some fifteen months ago a bill was carried through Parliament, by trick and under a misleading title, and without awakening the suspicions of the country, by which the personal violation of hundreds of thousands of Englishwomen is not only permitted, but rendered inevitable. And it is the aim and purpose of the authors of the law and its policy, to have the act extended over the whole country. It was asked for on account of our soldiers and sailors. It is now sought to be extended to the population of the whole kingdom. It was intended to mitigate the disease occasioned by debauchery; but it has aggravated it. It has not diminished the vice, but encouraged it by a false promise of impunity. It gives a distinct government sanction to profligacy, and is degrading to English society wherever it operates, to the fearful condition of health and morals existing on the continent wherever such legislation has been established long enough to show its effects.

Foremost among the promoters of this fearful system and fatal law is Sir Henry Storks, one of the candidates for the representation of Colchester. He was a candidate at the Newark election, some months since; but the Newark people knew what he had been doing, Edition: current; Page: [538] and they would not hear of him as a representative. He had no chance when the facts were understood, and he withdrew from certain defeat.

Do the people of Colchester know these facts? Let it be your work to take care that your husbands, fathers, and brothers hear of them. Sir Henry Storks’s own words are to be found in the printed evidence offered to the Committee of the Lords on the Acts. At Newark he complained of false accusations and libels; but the following words written by his own hand, in a letter produced in that evidence, are full justification for any efforts you will make to drive him from Colchester: —

“I am of opinion that very little benefit will result from the best-devised means of prevention, until prostitution is recognized as a necessity!”

This is the professed “opinion” of a man who is regarded as a Christian gentleman, who cannot but be aware how fornication is denounced in the Scriptures.

Let his evidence be further studied in regard to the operation of the legal outrage which Sir Henry Storks is endeavouring to introduce wherever the sceptre of our virtuous queen bears sway, and there can be no doubt of his rejection at Colchester by every elector who values, as an Englishman should, the sanctity of his home, the purity of his sons, and the honour and safety of his daughters.

You surely will not sacrifice greater things to less by any indulgence of prudery. The subject is painful, even hateful to every one of us; but that is not our fault, and our country is not to be sacrificed to our feelings as women. We are not fine ladies, but true-hearted Englishwomen; and there are thousands at this hour who have proved that in this cause they can sacrifice whatever is necessary to save our country from the curse of these Acts.

It is your business to lift up your voices within your homes and neighbourhoods, against being ruled by lawmakers like the authors of these Acts; in other words, against Sir Henry Storks as candidate for Colchester.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

URSULA BRIGHT.

JOSEPHINE BUTLER.

Sir Henry Storks’s election was defeated.

The same process of election-placards was repeated afterwards, abridged, as follows: —

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OLD ENGLAND! PURITY AND FREEDOM!

To the Electors of North Nottinghamshire.

We, as Englishwomen, loving our country and our Old National Constitution, entreat you, the Electors of North Nottinghamshire, in the name of Religion, of Morality, and of our National Freedom, to vote for no man who will not pledge himself to vote for the total and unconditional Repeal of those un-English Laws, that Continental abomination stealthily smuggled into our Statute-Book, called the Contagious Diseases Acts, and to oppose any Future Legislation that involves their Principles.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

JOSEPHINE BUTLER.

URSULA BRIGHT.

LYDIA E. BECKER.

Thus the kingdom was made aware of the earnestness of its women in the cause.

In 1871 a correspondent received the following words of rejoicing from Mrs. Martineau: —

“The conspiracy of silence is broken up, and the London papers have burst out. Our main point now is, to secure every variety of judgment inside and outside of the Commission. The ‘Daily News’ came out clearly and strongly on the right side before any other London paper broke the silence. The satisfaction to us all is immense, to see the paper uphold its high character — the very highest — in this hour of crisis. I feel unusually ill in consequence of heart-failure, but I must make you know something of what you shall know more of hereafter. . . . .

“Samuel J. May! — how well I remember the snowy day he came over to Hingham, to open the cause to me.”

Again, in 1871: —

“I must tell you, though so feeble to-day, that our cause is, for this time, safe. The packed Commission, supplied with packed evidence, comes out thirteen to six in our favour! The conversions under every disadvantage are astonishing. Huxley’s delights me. He and two others — Sir Walter James, military, and Admiral Collinson, naval — made speeches on the Commission, declaring that they had verily Edition: current; Page: [540] believed in the good of the C. D. Acts, but they have been compelled to see that they are thoroughly mischievous. We never could have dreamed of such a victory. As victory no matter. But what a prospect is opened for the whole sex in Old England! For the stronger and safer sort of women will be elevated in proportion as the helpless or exposed are protected.”

At about this time Mrs. Butler received the following letter from Mrs. Martineau.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Ambleside

Josephine Butler

Butler, Josephine

LETTER FROM HARRIET MARTINEAU TO MRS. BUTLER.

The Knoll,

Ambleside.

My dear Friend, —

I am truly grateful to you for taking charge of the chair which I have worked in hope of its bringing in some money — more money than I could offer in any other form — towards obtaining the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. I assure you very earnestly that no one can be more thoroughly aware than I am that this is the very lowest method of assisting the movement. I can only say that I have adopted it simply because, in my state of health, no other is open to me. While you and your brave sisters in the enterprise have been enduring exhausting toils, and facing the gravest risks that can appall the matronage and maidenhood of our country, I have been content to ply my needle when I could do no better, and thankful to witness the achievements of the younger and stronger who will live to rejoice in the retrieval of their dear nation.

It was no dream that I indulged in over my work. Nearly forty years ago I saw and felt the first stir, — saw the first steps taken in the wrong direction to suppress the evils of prostitution. After a long enforced pause the attempt was renewed eight years ago, and with a success which saddened a multitude of hearts besides my own. That triumph of wrong and ignorance has clouded the lives of some of the best men and women of England since 1864; but I have seen, for months past, from my easy-chair, as I looked abroad over your field of action, the foul vapours dispersed before the strong breeze of the popular opinion and will, and the clear light of our ancient domestic virtue spreading from roof to roof among the homes of our land. The few dark years that are past will be remembered as a warning when the Acts that disgraced them are repealed. Once understood, such legislation can never be renewed; and therefore is it reasonable for us to hope all things as we ply our task, whether our labours be as high and arduous as yours, or as humble as mine.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

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Experience is the great teacher in the conduct of reforms. The first impulse of a mind deeply impressed with their necessity is to seek the most powerful influence for their promotion, whether from politics, pulpit, or press.

But there is a preparatory work to be done, before these, as such, can take the field. The devotedness of individuals must alone bear the burden and heat of the day, and so it was with this cause of national purity. One may cite in proof the “Westminster Review” of 1876.

The editor says that in 1859 an article was prepared on this subject; but considering how strong was the repugnance felt to its general discussion, it was laid aside for ten years, as he was convinced that the time had not come for dealing with the matter to good effect. It was imperative, however, on some one to bring about that time, and therefore it was that Harriet Martineau and others — the noblest women of England — devoted themselves to “break the conspiracy of silence.” So in the nature of things must such work ever be done; and so was it made practicable for the “Westminster Review” and other periodicals to admit admirable articles, like that of the July number of 1876, combating the subtle, all-pervading, ruinous influence of government sanction and copartnery in vice.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

Writing to Mrs. Chapman in America, Mrs. Martineau proceeds: —

. . . . Day by day information reaches me which satisfies me that this question of national purity plunges us into the most fearful moral crisis the country was ever in, involving our primary personal liberties, and the very existence, except in name, of the home and the family. It struck me (and I was so cowardly as almost to wish that it had not) that some “letters” in the “Daily News,” explaining the state of the case, and the grounds (eight) of the protest of the women of England against the Acts, would do more to rouse the country to inquire and act, than any amount of agitation by individuals. It was sickening to think of such a work; but who should do it if not an old woman, dying and in seclusion, &c., &c. I felt that I should have no more peace of mind if I did not obey “the inward witness.” So I did it last week, — wrote four letters signed “An Englishwoman,” and sent them to Mr. Walker, who still manages Edition: current; Page: [542] the editing of the “Daily News” till the proprietors decide how to fill the office for which he alone seems fit. He was ill in bed when the packet arrived, and his wife read the letters to him. He says, “At first she was horrified, but she ended by demanding the instant publication of every word of them.” One of the proprietors was dead against the insertion of any part of them; but Mr. Walker writes that he approves them so strongly that he cannot but print them,” but that he doubts being able to support them by any “leader.” Still I shall not be surprised if he manages it when the opposing proprietor has seen the letters themselves. I could not have undertaken in my sick condition to write them; and, though done under impulse, they cost a dreadful effort. Happily I thought of Godiva; and that helped me through. Two have appeared, and I dare say to-morrow will finish them. Then the “Times” and the “Saturday Review” and the “Pall Mall Gazette” and others will open out against them. I do dread having to reply to the lies of opponents; perhaps Mrs. Butler and her colleagues may relieve me of this, when they know it was I; but Mr. Walker says he will not enter into any general controversy while it is possible to avoid it. I know it was a right thing to do, and that it is the fault of the other side, if modesty in others and myself is outraged; yet it turns me chill in the night to think what things I have written and put in print. The — —s are here at Fox How, and I have had a long conversation with him about these Acts. He and — are my two friends in the Ministry. This subject belongs to the department of one of them, but it is uncertain which. Both, I believe, certainly are on the right side. — — instructs me how to proceed in Parliament, and in preparation for it, and I had to write it all to Mrs. Butler yesterday, instead of writing to you. I will say no more now on the subject, of which I am compelled to think too much day and night.

One great interest just now to me is the future of that excellent paper, the “Daily News.” I cannot tell you any thing, because my knowledge is derived from confidential letters; but I may just say that the importance of these great newspapers impresses me more and more. This means chiefly, “Daily News.” The “Times” has declined a good deal, though its influence is still vast. The “Star” is dead and gone; meantime “Daily News” quietly holds its course, enlarging its circulation from day to day, and becoming a really splendid property.

I think you must be much concerned, as we all are, at the correspondence of Mr. Fish, and President Grant’s message as far as regards Edition: current; Page: [543] England. The trouble is, that the conduct of the United States government damages so fatally the character of republican government. I (and others) don’t at all believe that such utterances as Seward’s and Sumner’s and Fish’s and Grant’s are acceptable to the substantial part of the nation; but that their rulers should believe it, and should be ever repeating all this, as if it were the way to gratify the people, is the most unfavourable indication possible of the prospects of democratic government. Your citizens are well able to see and feel the discredit of being courted in such a way. They must see, as the rest of the world does, that the Washington government makes no way. Its members take up the story again and again, repeating the same complaints and reciting the same things as if they had never been answered. This time it really seems as if they must be ashamed of themselves and their country of them; Lord Clarendon’s dates and authorities and clear statement being so unquestionable as they are, from end to end.

My aged cousin, the head of the family, Peter Martineau, died on the 10th. He was eighty-four years old. He was always good to me, and I feel his departure, though I knew we should never meet again.

My dearest friend, farewell for this time and for the old year.

Ever your loving

H. M.

In another letter to the same friend she expresses her delight at a speech of Mr. Motley which she had received from America: —

“ ‘Motley’s your only wear!’ — at the present juncture. That is, I have seen nothing on your public affairs to compare with this address. It would have been extremely interesting in itself, even if we had not been all eager to hear what he had to say after he had passed the war-season in so peculiar a position. The paper of your newspaper is sadly flimsy! but we hope that with care it will hold together till it has been read by the worthy ones among our neighbours. The —s and the —s are in perfect delight about it.”

Mr. Sumner’s course gave her as much of regret as Mr. Motley’s speech had done of pleasure. In a letter to America she said: —

June 16, 1869

Ambleside

Ambleside,

June 16, 1869

.

. . . . I trust you have received the newspapers we have sent, with Forster’s speech, the “Daily News” leader, about the Confederate ships, &c, showing the process of the turning of the tables. The newspapers Edition: current; Page: [544] and the talk of Americans under the change are thoroughly bad in spirit, temper, and manners. They charged the English with gross crimes of deceit and malignity, imputed to them unbounded losses and years of war, roused hatred against them throughout the republic, clamoured for damages, called names, hoped for the future adversity of England, and proposed to wait for vengeance till England should be incapable of defence, &c.; and the most vindictive accuser was extolled with the highest enthusiasm.

As soon as possible the charges were shown to be all false, and the very reverse of truth; and what course do the accusers take? They announce that the English are coming round, that they are recovering their tempers, that there will be no war!

No word of shame or regret, no sign of consciousness that England is the injured party, has yet reached us, though your papers contain notices of the opinions of your eminent legists, and other facts damning to the speech of Sumner and his multitude. The next mail must, I think, bring some notices of Forster’s speech. . . . .

Sumner’s concealment of the fact of the English government having prevented the interference of France is a thing inexplicable to Englishmen.

I have been thinking of showing in a brief statement for some one of your newspapers, how completely the tables are turned; but somebody stronger and more in the world will do it better, I doubt not. The only thing I have done is getting the catalogue of the ships looked up and used, and reviving the fact that our government was obliged to issue orders to our sea-captains, who were perplexed by the declaration of the blockade, — but was there ever a stronger case of false accusation than that which is now in course of exposure!

1. We were proslavery, hating the North.

Answer. Our difficulty in sympathizing was that the North pertinaciously disclaimed antislavery views and intentions.

2. We encouraged the South in public and private, upheld their cause, had no interest in the Union cause, &c.

Answer. The Confederate envoys could obtain no access to our government; and while there were under a score of public meetings on behalf of the South, there were, I think, one hundred and ninety-five on behalf of the North, most of them crowded, and some enormous.

The fact is, the travelling Americans usually care to know only the aristocracy and distinguished persons; and their retribution was, finding the aristocracy highly Confederate, when put to the proof, and Edition: current; Page: [545] being unable to enjoy the hearty and general sympathy that the mass of our people felt and expressed on behalf of the Union.

3. We destroyed American commerce by maliciously letting out the Alabama, and we ought to be made to pay the value of the lost vessels and the diverted commerce.

Answer. There were four notorious privateers ravaging the Northern commerce for a year before the Alabama was built; of those one is known to have destroyed fifty-four merchant-ships.

4. We lent our ports, at home and in the colonies, to the Confederates, because they had none; and we are, therefore, answerable for all the damage done at sea.

Answer. There were four Confederate ports sending out and receiving back privateers, for a year, before any such attempt was made in England, and they were not free of our colonial ports.

5. Our “intent” to ruin the North was shown by the escape of the Alabama and others.

Answer. See the catalogue of vessels, some three escaping to about thirty-seven detained, with infinite care, pains, and trouble.

6. We furnished material aid to the South during the blockade.

Answer. The blockade-runners risked all the penalties of the law which could be provided. And the material aid afforded to the North exceeded tenfold (more likely twenty-fold) that obtained by the South.

7. “Premature proclamation of neutrality,” whereby we “cast our sword into the scale of war,” lengthened out the war by two years, — caused an expenditure which cannot be computed; disheartened the North, cheered the South, &c.

Answer. Our government was a month behind the Washington one in proclaiming; the Supreme Court having declared the blockade a month before the queen proclaimed neutrality. The act was a friendly one, urged on by W. E. Forster, because there were letters of marque known to be in England from the Confederate government; and they were thus rendered ineffectual. If the act had not been done out of friendliness, it must from necessity; from the urgency of our captains as aforesaid.

While this charge and the sum of damages have been shouted out against England from end to end of the United States for weeks past, there was a correspondence lying at Washington which shows that the very same act on the part of the queen of Spain was received with good-will and thanks. What will the American people now do about this clamorous complaint of theirs, and their charge of protracting Edition: current; Page: [546] the war, and their notion that England should pay the cost of the last half of it?

There is another question, — What do they think of the suppression of the fact, known in the United States as well as in Europe, that the English government prevented an alliance between the Confederates and France? The Confederates were first disheartened by the English proclamation of neutrality, and then thrown into despair by our holding back the French emperor from an alliance with them.

As W. E. Forster says, by this England shortened the war, doubtless by many years. Yet Mr. Sumner conceals this essential fact; and all his countrymen, as far as we see, follow his example.

And now, on beginning to find themselves in the wrong, the wrongdoers announce that the English are coming round, — are recovering their tempers!

It looks very idle to write all this to you, who have been just and calm and accurate throughout. But it is not for your sake that I write it; but partly for the chance of its being of some possible use at some time to somebody, and partly for the relief to myself of setting down in some sort of order what has been in my mind lately.

. . . . W. E. Forster writes that Sumner’s speech will turn out a good thing, as bringing out the truth. May it prove so, — but will Americans admit the truth, however plainly shown? — And it is no small matter that mischief has been done to American repute and to English feelings by the recent display of evil passions and shallow mental action, which it will take time to repair.

We are very happy to-day in the domestic direction; my three young women have all had their journey of pleasure and refreshment, and are in full vigour accordingly. Yes, — my niece’s plan goes on; — and we hope that four working governesses and artists will have a happy month of August here. We shall soon have details to tell you, as the time draws near. — Yes, — I can and do read, but I am slow, and get through no great deal.

When Lord Brougham’s memoirs of his life and times appeared, they contained several inaccurate statements about herself, which Mrs. Martineau corrected in the following note to the editor of the “Daily News.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

December 26, 1871

The Knoll, Ambleside

The Knoll, Ambleside,

December 26, 1871

.

Sir, —

It has been my practice throughout a long literary life to let pass without notice any misstatement in print of my personal Edition: current; Page: [547] affairs, for the obvious reason that to rectify any such mistakes would involve an apparent acquiescence in whatever was left unanswered.

If now, therefore, I object publicly to some statements of Lord Brougham’s in the third volume (p. 302) of his memoirs of his life and times, it is because I owe the duty to others. There are several inaccuracies in Lord Brougham’s kindly intended representation of my “case” to Lord Grey; but all that I desire to say is that my father did not fail, “in the panic” or otherwise; and that I never had the honour of supporting my mother, for the simple reason that she did not need it.

I am, sir, yours,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

It was after this time that, writing to one of her friends in America, she says: —

“I have spent the whole month struggling with an agony that I can conceal but cannot forget for a moment.”

Meanwhile her friend Samuel May wrote of her thus to their friend R. D. Webb.

“What extraordinary, almost incredible industry! What preeminent services to mankind! Most persons in her condition would have died long ago, or shelved themselves in a helpless and useless state. She is a wonder and a monument of what a human being in firm or infirm health is capable.”

At the same time her niece, Miss Jane Martineau, wrote: —

“My aunt is cheerful and bright, but I see she is not so well.”

The remainder of the year seems to have been a period of more severe illness, during which, according to the usual way in such slow decline, she became used to the lower level, and her family and friends hoped she might perhaps be gaining a little in health. It was not an agreeable idea to her. In a postscript to a letter from her niece, Miss Jane Martineau, which tells how cheerful her aunt is, she says: —

“I suffer much less, but it is a disappointment to come back to life when I seemed so nearly to have done with it.”

Edition: current; Page: [548]

This waiting for death had every possible solace, her niece’s impaired health being now so far restored that she was able to resume her loving watch, — kinsfolk and friends dividing the sinking years with her, that she might run no risk of being alone at last with death. Her servants were more and more devoted. Distant friends placed themselves at her disposition, if so they might in any way give help and comfort. There seemed so many associations with her name in the world, that every thing reminded men of her. Without troubling her with letters that she lacked strength to answer, they sent her, from wherever they stood, on hearing of her steady descent to the grave, their assurances of affectionate and admiring remembrance.

Her friend Lord Houghton when at Norwich, delivering an inaugural address at the Social Science Congress, closed thus: —

“I know no provincial city adorned with so many names illustrious in literature, the professions, and public life. Those of Taylor, Martineau, Austin, Alderson, Opie, come first to my recollection, and there are many more behind. And there is this additional peculiarity of distinction, that these are, for the most part, not the designation of individuals, but of families numbering each men and women conspicuous in various walks of life. For one of them I will ask you to permit me to pass from the expression of public esteem to that of private friendship for one who, from a sick-bed of twenty years, still looks out at the world of action with a mind interested in all that affects the well-being of humanity, — Harriet Martineau.”

In consequence of having learned through Mrs. Grote’s book of her friend’s failing condition, Mr. Gladstone hastened to inquire of others whether it were possible that she were subjected to any anxiety on account of restricted means. He was aware that she had once declined the offer of a civil-list pension, “so amply justified,” he said, “by her literary distinctions,” and if a renewal of it, after so long an interval, would be acceptable or appropriate, it was decided to make it. Her reply was as follows: —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

June 8, 1873

The Right Honourable W. E. Gladstone.

June 8, 1873

.

Sir, —

I have just received through my brother and sister your letter expressive of concern and sympathy, which are deeply moving Edition: current; Page: [549] to me. This kindness from you goes far towards compensating me for the shock with which I saw that Mrs. Grote had published expressions on personal matters which I am shocked to have written, however privately.

But this evidence of your goodness is sufficient in itself. The work of my busy years has supplied the needs and desires of a quiet old age. On the former occasions of my declining a pension I was poor, and it was a case of scruple (possibly cowardice). Now I have a competence, and there would be no excuse for my touching the public money.

You will need no assurance that I am as grateful for your considerate offer as if it had relieved me of a wearing anxiety.

Believe me, with much respect and gratitude,

Yours,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

W. E. Gladstone

Gladstone, W. E.

June 9, 1873.

Whitehall

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

MR. GLADSTONE TO MRS. H. MARTINEAU.

Whitehall,

10 Downing Street,

June 9, 1873.

Dear Madam, —

I have received your note of yesterday. It deprives me of a pleasure I had hoped to enjoy, but it enhances the respect and regard felt for your character by all who have had any acquaintance with it.

I am glad that you have construed so kindly and favourably the spirit of my inquiry.

With every good wish, I remain,

Dear madam,

Your very faithful and obedient

W. E. GLADSTONE.

Miss Martineau.

In writing to her friend in America of this offer and of her having declined it, she says, —

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

My dear Friend, —

I have to tell you a bit of a story; and now, please let me impress you with what is really of serious consequence to me, in more ways than one, — that it must no where and no how get into print in my lifetime. It was a great mischief that it did on a similar occasion thirty years ago. That it should happen again would be an irreparable misfortune. I am afraid it is difficult in the United States to talk freely about any matter without danger of its getting into the newspapers. But it is no secret; before the week is Edition: current; Page: [550] out it will be talked of all over the kingdom; yet nobody will give it to a newspaper without authority.

I need only say a few words, and leave the letters to speak for themselves. If you have Mr. Grote’s “Life,” you will have seen a letter of mine to Mrs. Grote, on his death. She ought not to have printed the last part of it without leave. . . . . Those closing lines moved Mr. Gladstone’s sympathy, and he has asked in the most delicate way whether he could remove any pressure of anxiety. . . . . But there was no agitation about the matter.* Mr. Gladstone’s share (the queen’s understood) gives me nothing but pleasure, and there was no perplexity. The former reasons for declining a pension remain; and there are two additional ones, viz. that I now have a sufficient income for my needs, and that the queen and her premier would be, though they perhaps do not know it, exposed to insult for showing friendliness to an infidel like me. I could not think of exposing the queen to such anonymous abuse as has come to me, if I were under any amount of temptation. But there is no temptation whatever.

I am yours ever,

H. MARTINEAU.

Copy of Mr. Gladstone’s note in reply to an inquiry: —

W. E. Gladstone

Gladstone, W. E.

August 19, 1876

Hawarden

Hawarden,

August 19, 1876

.

Sir, —

In reply to your considerate letter, I give my full consent to the publication of the correspondence, as far as I am a party to it, and I am glad to think of the honour it will do to the person principally concerned.

Your most faithful

W. E. GLADSTONE.

Thomas Martineau, Esq., 26 Calthorpe Road, Birmingham.

To a friend sending her a present from America she writes: —

May 29, 1872

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

“What a gift is this year’s volume of ‘Harper,’ setting New York and its affairs so wonderfully before us! It would do you good to know, if I could tell you, the enjoyment your great and glorious Nast is giving in this valley. I sent the numbers to Fox How when W. E. Forster was there, and they are borrowed again for the Stanleys and Lady Richardson. The favourite, the one supremely extolled, is that of the Romish crocodiles and the children. The Dean Edition: current; Page: [551] was delighted with it. Of course I told them of Nast’s patriotic strength against temptation. . . . .

“It seems as if all could die but me. I do long for rest more and more as the downward change goes on.”

It was in 1872 that she and five hundred others petitioned Parliament against Mr. Straight’s bill proposing the extension of flogging, for the reasons assigned below: —

THE “CAT.”

Mr. P. A. Taylor presented a petition, signed by Miss Harriet Martineau and five hundred other women, against Mr. Straight’s bill proposing the extension of the punishment of flogging to certain cases of brutal attacks upon women and children. The petitioners, while thankfully welcoming this evidence that the attention of the Legislature was being directed to the flagrant insufficiency of the punishment inflicted for such offences, utterly repudiated the proposed infliction of torture by the “Cat” as a protection to their sex, regarding it as certain to increase the brutal, cruel, and revengeful spirit from which such crimes invariably spring. The petitioners, therefore, prayed the House not to pass the bill, and to abolish entirely the infliction of torture by the “cat.” — Daily News, May 29, 1872.

Great numbers of letters were continually addressed to Mrs. Martineau, telling her of the cheer and stimulus she had given in various ways to the rising generation, and to the men and women of middle age. Let one suffice, from the Hon. Secretary of the Social Purity Association to Mrs. Harriet Martineau.

George Combe

Combe, George

April, 1873

April, 1873

.

Dear Madam, —

I wish I could express my thankfulness, which will be shared by every member of our association, for your support and the sympathy which you so generously spare us in your own suffering. It is possible that we shall print a few letters, to make known the ideas and the spirit underlying the movement. I am highly honoured by your opinion that my arguments (though I have not the right to call them my own) are worthy of a wider hearing.

Since you so kindly wish to circulate my letter, may I request you to send it to your nephew, Mr. Frank Martineau, in Birmingham, to whom I am asked by Mrs. Butler and Mr. W. Shaen to send our Edition: current; Page: [552] papers? In all my future efforts I shall feel that your recognition gives me new faith and power.

Believe me, dear madam,

Yours faithfully,

GEORGE C. WARR.

Mrs. Harriet Martineau.

During these years of painful, difficult decline, she aided by word and deed, by pen and purse, the associated effort made in Edinburgh to secure complete medical education for women, after the persecution to which the lady students had been subjected there.

The following letter explains itself.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

W. S. Reid

Reid, W. S.

November 18

Ambleside,

November 18

.

Sir, —

I venture to trouble you with a post-office order for £2 — payable from me to yourself — as my small contribution to the fund needed by the general committee for securing a complete medical education for women in Edinburgh. The question is so important, and the lady students have manifested so fine a spirit and temper under their harassing trials, that a large proportion of their countrymen will, I trust, feel the obligation of sustaining them during their conflict with jealousies and prejudices which will scarcely be credited by a future generation. Permit me to offer you my thanks for the service you render to a good cause by managing the financial concerns of the movement, and believe me, sir, with much respect,

Yours,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

W. S. Reid, Esq., Hon. Treasurer.

On the 8th of October, 1873, in reply to an inquiry about her health and another for the name of one of the professors of University College, London, she says: —

“No doubt our blessed intercourse of so many years is now drawing to a close. . . . . But to answer your question. Croome Robertson is the name of the man who holds the chair of Philosophy in University College, and he confers honour on all who had any share in the making of him.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

January 25, 1876

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

January 25, 1876

.

My dearest Friend, —

I am bent on writing to you this time; and the doubt and difficulty so rouse my self-will, that I suppose I shall indulge that same self-will which has been such a helper to me Edition: current; Page: [553] in life. I did not dare to utter it, to express it in any way when I was a child, it so happening that our mother also was strong on that point, — of self-will; but in my silent way I did scores of things of which I should not have been capable, perhaps, under any other impulse or by any other strength. The very latest and perhaps the very smallest of such enterprises is that now under my hand, — the writing of this letter. You divine what this means before I explain it, — for when do you fail to apprehend by sympathy what lies in my thought? — and in spite of myself my mind is occupied in ways which make writing almost impossible. Dearest friend, I feel and am very ill. I will leave it to J— to tell you necessary particulars; and I believe, fully, that you may confide in her sense and judgment as to how I really am. There can be no doubt of my having become more rapidly worse within a fortnight. . . . . You will understand the gravity of the case without another word, so I will leave it. I wonder whether I am stupid or narrow-minded about a thing which I do not understand; I trust not, because I believe you and I are of the same mind. I cannot see or feel what people mean by their imperative desire to live, or in death, by their “horror of annihilation,” their pity for Mr. Atkinson and me in the absence of the “Christian hope.” Mr. Atkinson says “we have not the fear,” and, judging by what we hear of that, we may well be content. For my part, I don’t wish for more life, nor does he, I believe. Moreover, I doubt whether I know any body that does. I know there are many who do not. Often, now, when so ill as to “realize” vividly what dying is like, I am unaware of any movement of a wish to live longer, — either little or much longer. I am glad not to have the choice at this moment; but if I had, I fully believe I should go to my grave at once, for other people’s sake more than for my own, but still with every inclination on my own part.

What would dear Lady Augusta say, if she knew what I am writing to you? She is now only just living, if alive. Her last hours are honoured and praised as few can be, for she has rare strength and sweetness with which to inspire her mourning husband. She animates him for his work, and talks it over with him (his Eastern Church Lectures), and gets him to read them to her; and this, while she is in a condition of great suffering, from restlessness and helplessness. It is very beautiful, and an immense comfort even already, when one is haunted by the thought of Arthur’s widowed life. . . . .

How good of Mr. Robinson to send me this gift! But the first Edition: current; Page: [554] thing that strikes him when he enjoys any thing, is how he can admit somebody else to it.

Only one thing more, for I have not sight or strength for further writing to-day. I am glad you have found a good and learned biographical dictionary. When I was young, Gorton’s was the established one; then the “Biographie,” up to a generation ago. Now it is the “Biographie” from the “Penny Cyclopædia,” expanded, corrected, and completed by Professor George Lord (South Carolinian). It is in six volumes, and very valuable. But you seem to be suited. What a legacy you are giving to your grandchildren! — a possession for life. Did I tell you we think your “Pierpont’s-head” sonnet quite beautiful? We feel it so.

But I must knit diligently. The baby has come (to a friend of my niece Harriet) before the blanket for the bassinet is ready.

My dearest friend, my best love to you!

Ever your

H. M.

Though so long unable to leave her two rooms, she was confined to one but a single fortnight; and rose and dressed, though with much effort, till within a few days of her death. She kept her household books, and gave directions for the conduct of her household, to the last; and they who were then with her tell me that she preserved through her latest hours the infantine playfulness that was so attractive in her earlier time.

The young friends about her, amid all their veneration, were ever encouraged by her kindness to the freest communication, and never found her fail to be interested in their little jeux d’esprit, or their graver undertakings; and her beloved niece, Miss Jane Martineau, tells me how cheering it was during this long tension of heart undergone for her sake, that she was always ready to be cheered by their efforts to bring before her dying eyes the little sights of domestic life she had so much loved. Every thing gratified and pleased her, from the woollen-lined basket of ducklings brought to her bedside with a comic quatrain in their bills, to the preface she undertook and accomplished, with so much difficulty on the Easter Sunday before her death, for her valued young friend and companion, Miss Goodwin, — to an English translation from the German of Dr. Pauli’s “Life of Simon de Montfort.” This was her last effort. She wrote nothing afterwards Edition: current; Page: [555] but letters to her friends and letters of introduction to her American friends for Messrs. Wilson and Gledstone, the delegates of the European Federation for Social Purity and Political Moral Reform.

All this while the newspapers of this period from time to time chronicled Mrs. Martineau’s departing life; and none with truer feeling than the (London) “Leader.”

“There is, we believe, not a soul in this country that would not be pierced with regret at hearing that the condition of Harriet Martineau is such as to leave no hope that her life can last much longer. . . . . The end may come at any moment. There is no indelicacy in mentioning the fact thus plainly, because no one is more conscious of it than herself; and of the number that will be concerned there is not one that will learn it with such equanimity. She has, we understand, busied herself unostentatiously about several final engagements; has exhibited the most thoughtful consideration for even the slight inconveniences that others might suffer; and awaits the event with calmness. The number who regard her with personal attachment is the larger since her writing has appealed to every class in the country. As the historian of England during the lifetime of most of us, she has addressed all England; as a political writer, she has had influence with influential classes; and children love her as a second Maria Edgeworth, with a genius of a larger and a more generous kind. She has taught her readers the beautiful science of bearing infirmity and suffering without losing dignity or regard for the peace of others; and the necessary result is, that the solicitude on her account partakes, throughout numerous classes, the feeling of personal affection.”

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

May 17, 1876

Ambleside

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

Ambleside,

May 17, 1876

.

My dearest Friend, —

I must try to keep up our correspondence to the latest moment, however painful the aspect of my letter may be to your eyes. J— tells me that our last letter will have prepared you for whatever we must tell you now of my condition. I hope she is right, and that it will not overtake you with a surprise if I find myself unable to pour out as I have always hitherto done. Dearest friend, I am very ill. I leave it to J— to show you how nearly certain it is that the end of my long illness is at hand. The difficulty and distress to me are the state of the head. I will only add that the condition grows daily worse, so that I am scarcely able Edition: current; Page: [556] to converse or to read, and the cramp in the hands makes writing difficult or impossible; so I must try to be content with the few lines I can send, till the few days become none. We believe that time to be near; and we shall not attempt to deceive you about it. My brain feels under the constant sense of being not myself, and the introduction of this new fear into my daily life makes each day sufficiently trying to justify the longing for death which grows upon me more and more. I feel sure of your sympathy about this. You enter into my longing for rest, I am certain; and when you hear, some day soon, that I have sunk into my long sleep, you will feel it as the removal of a care, and as a relief on my account.

On my side I have suffered much anxiety on your account; and if you can tell me that you are no longer suffering physically under the peculiar feebleness that attends bronchial mischief, you will make me happier than any thing else could make me. Farewell for to-day, dearest friend! While I live I am your grateful and loving

H. M.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

May 19, 1876

Ambleside

Henry G. Atkinson

Atkinson, Henry G.

LAST LETTER OF MRS. MARTINEAU TO MR. ATKINSON.

Ambleside,

May 19, 1876

.

Dear Friend, —

My niece J— and also my sister have been observing that you ought to be hearing from us, and have offered to write to you. You will see at once what this means; and it is quite true that I have become so much worse lately that we ought to guard against your being surprised, some day soon, by news of my life being closed. I feel uncertain about how long I may live in my present state. I can only follow the judgment of unprejudiced observers; and I see that my household believe the end to be not far off. I will not trouble you with disagreeable details. It is enough to say that I am in no respect better, while all the ailments are on the increase. The imperfect heart-action immediately affects the brain, causing the suffering which is worse than all other evils together, — the horrid sensation of not being quite myself. This strange, dreamy non-recognition of myself comes on every evening, and all else is a trifle in comparison. But there is a good deal more. Cramps in the hands prevent writing, and most other employment, except at intervals. Indications of dropsy have lately appeared: and after this, I need not again tell you that I see how fully my household believe that the end is not far off. Meantime I have no cares or troubles beyond the bodily uneasiness, (which, however, I don’t deny to be an evil). I cannot think of any future as at all probable, except the Edition: current; Page: [557] “annihilation” from which some people recoil with so much horror. I find myself here in the universe, — I know not how, whence, or why. I see every thing in the universe go out and disappear, and I see no reason for supposing that it is not an actual and entire death. And for my part, I have no objection to such an extinction. I well remember the passion with which W. E. Forster said to me, “I had rather be damned than annihilated.” If he once felt five minutes’ damnation, he would be thankful for extinction in preference. The truth is, I care little about it any way. Now that the event draws near, and that I see how fully my household expect my death pretty soon, the universe opens so widely before my view, and I see the old notions of death and scenes to follow to be so merely human, — so impossible to be true, when one glances through the range of science, — that I see nothing to be done but to wait, without fear or hope or ignorant prejudice, for the expiration of life. I have no wish for further experience, nor have I any fear of it. Under the weariness of illness I long to be asleep; but I have not set my mind on any state. I wonder if all this represents your notions at all. I should think it does, while yet we are fully aware how mere a glimpse we have of the universe and the life it contains.

Above all I wish to escape from the narrowness of taking a mere human view of things, from the absurdity of making God after man’s own image, &c.

But I will leave this, begging your pardon for what may be so unworthy to be dwelt on. However, you may like to know how the case looks to a friend under the clear knowledge of death being so near at hand. My hands are cramped, and I must stop. My sister is here for the whole of May, and she and J— are most happy together. Many affectionate relations and friends are willing to come if needed (the Browns among others), — if I live beyond July. You were not among the Boulogne theological petitioners, I suppose. I don’t know whether you can use — — there? I was very thankful for your last, though I have said nothing about its contents. If I began that, I should not know how to stop.

So good by for to-day, dear friend!

Yours ever,

H. M.

P. S. I am in a state of amazement at a discovery just made; I have read (after half a lifetime) Scott’s “Bride of Lammermoor,” and am utterly disappointed in it. The change in my taste is beyond accounting for, — almost beyond belief.

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Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

May 30, 1876

Ambleside

William Lloyd Garrison

Garrison, William Lloyd

HARRIET MARTINEAU TO WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

Ambleside,

May 30, 1876

.

My dear Friend,—

When you kindly sent me the memorial card, announcing your precious wife’s departure and burial, I asked our dear Mrs. Chapman to thank you on my behalf; and her latest letter brings me your response. With it comes the Memoir, — the picture of her beautiful life and death. I wish I could convey to you any idea of the emotion excited in my household by the reading of this narrative; but I have strength for no more than a bare acknowledgment of your valued gift, and assurance of sympathy under the pain of your bereavement. What a woman she was! I am thankful to have been in Boston at the crisis which proved that she was worthy of the honour of being your wife.

I can say no more. My departure is near, and I hold the pen with difficulty.

Accept the sympathy and reverent blessing of your old friend,

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Wm. Lloyd Garrison.

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

June 14, 1876

Ambleside

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

LAST LETTER OF MRS. MARTINEAU TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

Ambleside,

June 14, 1876

.

Dearest Friend,—

We have heartily enjoyed your couple of letters, and I enjoy your map of the family property, and am thankful that it has come in time for me to represent you, to my mind’s eye, in your home locality. It is pleasant that those letters arrived on my birthday, June 12, when I was 74.

This is all the better for this birthday being certainly my last.

Yes, my best friend! our long and loving friendship has, as to intercourse, reached its term, as we both knew it must. J— engages to give you all needful details, — to spare me; so I will say no more about health matters than that, after a constantly accelerated weakness since we wrote to you last, the sinking has become so shocking a sensation as to leave me, at least, no doubt that I am dying. But I believe no one questions the fact. Dearest friend, you will not let this distress you?

You are too disinterested not to feel for me the relief of the certainty of rest, after the weary passage of the actual days. You ask about Macaulay, and you will doubtless see the “Life.” Well! his diary and letters describe my sensations as if the symptoms were a report of my case prepared by a professional man.

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I find I must be self-sufficing, for the sake of all, — yourself, J—, myself, — all whom my life nearly concerns. I must not open up any springs of feeling. Answering your questions as to Macaulay, — only this; Trevelyan has done his work as well as an adoring nephew, no more high-souled or deep-hearted than his idol, could be reasonably expected to do it. Macaulay was a kindly natured man, generous about not only money but much else, and of a less vulgar ambition than many supposed; but he was not lofty in views, or therefore in aims; and his whole conduct in the matter of his slander of William Penn will besmirch his fame forever. W. E. Forster exposed it, giving absolute proof of the falsehood of the charge. This was done in a pamphlet, which was followed by others, from other hands. Macaulay gave no sort of answer, took no sort of notice; and, in the face of all warning even from deputations, reprinted the calumny unaltered in his second and third editions! So it was — — who raged against me about his “heart”! I knew somebody did, but not who it was. Lady Charlotte Clark writes to me in enthusiasm about the beautiful “Life of Ticknor,” begging me to read it.

You see I cannot write: I will leave this open for the chance of something better to-morrow. O my friend, I must not sink our hearts by words of farewell to-day. To be unconsciously apart is an easy matter, quite different from living and yearning apart. I believe in the first, that is, in not living at all; and I am glad if so it is to be.

Harriet Martineau

Martineau, Harriet

June 15

Thursday, June 15

.

I am glad that I wrote the foregoing while I could. To-day I could not; but you shall hear from one of us, from The Knoll, at the usual time. No duty more clear and urgent than reporting to you your loving friend’s condition. Till our next greeting, then, farewell! I will attempt no more, for you know how entirely I am, as for half a lifetime,

Your devoted

H. M.

“The last finished work,” says her niece, “was a cot blanket, knitted for a neighbour’s baby, born on the 23d of January. The baby was brought to call on a fine sunny day, March 17, 1876, and was carried into the drawing-room to be seen in her beautiful cloak and hood. To the cape was pinned an envelope containing a bent sixpence, an egg, and a pinch of salt, which Edition: current; Page: [560] had been received at the previous call; the custom of the village is for the baby to have a present of these on its first entrance of a house, as a greeting and token it shall never want. She admired the little sleepy face and tiny hand. She had sent a beautiful note to the mother (which will always be treasured) which called forth a touching and excellent reply.”

“Miss S. Greg called on Sunday, June 4 (sister to W. R. Greg), hardly expecting to see her, but most anxious to make inquiries, told an anecdote which she thought would be of interest, said she was staying at the inn just opposite to Mr. King’s (the doctor’s) house, and from her high window could get a good view of the nursery. She remarked, ‘If I were going to stay a week longer, I must have had an introduction to that charming, fascinating baby.’ Mrs. Martineau told Mr. K., who took the message home to his wife: and in this way her desire to make all she saw happy never failed. Her powers of graphic description she retained to the last. Mr. King, who was present when she gave an account of the little swing bridge in India, in connection with Lord Elgin, and the picture in Lord Mayo’s Life (one of the last books she touched), said, ‘It made me hot all over!’ This was about a fortnight before her death.”

On Tuesday, the 6th of June, came Mr. W. E. Forster, her friend of so many years; and, except the household friends, he was the last who saw her in life.

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SELF-ESTIMATE, AND OTHER.

“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before.”

— Paul to the Philippians.

“Year after year beheld the silent toil

That spread his lustrous coil;

Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

Child of the wandering sea,

Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!

While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings: —

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll!

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Chambered Nautilus.

Harriet Martineau wrote as many as fifty biographical sketches of the eminent men and women of her time, which at their death were published in the “Daily News,” the authorship being never divulged. And so, I doubt not, she thought her similar sketch of herself would appear anonymously. But so high was the general estimate of her character and services to the world, that no person living would be willing to assume the Edition: current; Page: [562] responsibility of such an estimate of the illustrious dead; and on printing it in the number of the 29th of June, two days after her death, the editor prefaces it thus: —

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHIC MEMOIR.

“We regret to announce the death of Harriet Martineau. The following memoir, though written in the third person, was from her own pen. The frankness of its self-criticism makes it necessary to guard the reader against confounding her own strict and sometimes disparaging judgment of herself with the impressions made by her upon others.”

Harriet Martineau was born in 1802, in the city of Norwich, where the first of the name settled in 1688. David Martineau, the earliest of whom any record remains, was a French Protestant, who came over on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He married a French lady, whose family emigrated in the same ship, and pursued his profession as a surgeon in Norwich, where a succession of surgeons of the name existed, till the death of the most eminent of them, Philip Meadows Martineau (the uncle of Harriet), in 1828. He was considered the most eminent provincial surgeon of his day. The eldest brother of Harriet — a man of qualifications so high as to promise to sustain the honour of his name and profession in the old city — died before the age of thirty, and only one member of the family now remains in the city where many generations grew up. Harriet was the third daughter, and the sixth of eight children of Thomas Martineau, who was a manufacturer of the Norwich staples, — bombazine and camlet. His acquaintance with Dr. Parr was kept up and signalized by the gift of a black camlet study-gown every year or so, a piece of the right length being woven expressly for the doctor and dyed with due care.

There was nothing remarkable about the childhood and youth of any of Thomas Martineau’s children, unless in the case of Thomas, the eldest son, already referred to. His scholarship was of a high quality, and his mind was altogether of the rare ripeness and richness which comes of the equable cultivation of the intellectual and moral nature. The remarkable feature of the family story, in those days, was the steady self-denial, and clear, inflexible purpose with which the parents gave their children the best education which they could, by all honourable means, command. In those times of war and middleclass Edition: current; Page: [563] adversity, the parents understood their position, and took care that their children should understand it, telling them that there was no chance of wealth for them, and about an equal probability of a competence or of poverty; and that they must, therefore, regard their education as their only secure portion. Harriet came in for her share of this advantage, being well furnished with Latin and French (to which in due time she added Italian and German), and exercised in composition as well as reading in her own language and others. The whole family, trained by parental example, were steady and conscientious workers; but there were no tokens of unusual ability in Harriet during any part of her childhood or youth. Her health was bad, her tone of spirits low, her habit of mind anxious, and her habits of life silent, and as independent as they could be under the old-fashioned family rule of strictness and the strong hand. At her entrance upon womanhood a deafness, unperceived during her childhood and slight in youth, was aggravated by a kind of accident, and became so severe as to compel (for other people’s accommodation as well as her own) the use of a trumpet for the rest of her life. This misfortune, no doubt, strengthened her habits of study, and had much to do with the marking out of her career. What other effects it produced upon her she has shown in her “Letter to the Deaf.”

Her first appearance in print was before she was out of her teens, in a religious periodical; the same in which the late Judge Talfourd had made his early attempts not very long before. Not only her contributions to the “Monthly Repository,” but her first books were of a religious character, her cast of mind being more decidedly of the religious order than any other during the whole of her life, whatever might be the basis and scope of her ultimate opinions. Her latest opinions were, in her own view, the most religious, — the most congenial with the emotional as well as the rational department of human nature. In her youth she naturally wrote what she had been brought up to believe, and her first work, “Devotional Exercises,” was thoroughly Unitarian. Of this class, and indeed of all her early writings, the only one worth mention is the little volume “Traditions of Palestine,” which first fixed attention upon her, and made her name known in the reviews. There are some even now who prefer that little volume to all her other writings. Before it was out its writer had formed the conception of the very different kind of work which at once and completely opened her career, her “Illustrations of Political Economy.” Her stimulus in all she wrote, from first to last, was simply the need of utterance. This need she had gratified early; and Edition: current; Page: [564] those who knew her best were always aware that she was not ambitious, though she enjoyed success, and had pride enough to have suffered keenly under failure. When, in 1829, she and her sisters lost their small fortunes by the failure of the house in which their money was placed, Harriet continued to write as she had written before, though under the new liability of having no money to spend upon ventures. Without capital, without any literary connections (except the editor of the “Monthly Repository”), without any visible means of accomplishing her object, she resolved to bring out a series of “Illustrations of Political Economy,” confident that the work was at that time (1831) very much needed by the working-classes, to say nothing of other persons who had influence in the community, agitated as it then was by the Reform struggle. That Reform struggle and the approach of the cholera on its first visit made the booksellers disinclined to publish any thing. Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock had all but consented to the scheme, and had in fact engaged a stitcher for the monthly volumes, when they took fright and drew back. Harriet Martineau’s forthcoming Autobiography will of course tell the story of the struggle she passed through to get her work published in any manner and on any terms. Almost every considerable publisher had refused it; the Diffusion Society had declined it, on the report of their sub-committee against it. It appeared, however, at the beginning of 1832, when its writer was worn out with anxiety and fatigue, and had met with uniform discouragement, except in her own home, where her own confidence that the book would succeed, because it was wanted, commanded the sympathy of her family. In a fortnight after the day of publication her way was open before her for life. The work reached a circulation of about ten thousand in the next few years. The difficulties under which it appeared prevented her being enriched by it; and her own unalterable view of what it could and what it could not effect prevented her expecting too much from it, either in regard to its social operation or its influence on her own fame. The original idea of exhibiting the great natural laws of society by a series of pictures of selected social action was a fortunate one; and her tales initiated a multitude of minds into the conception of what political economy is, and of how it concerns every body living in society. Beyond this, there is no merit of a high order in the work. It did not pretend to offer discoveries, or new applications or elucidations of prior discoveries. It popularized, in a fresh form, some doctrines and many truths long before made public by others. Those were the days of her success in narrative, in fiction. In about ten years from that time Edition: current; Page: [565] she had nearly ceased to write fiction, from simple inability to do it well. On the whole, perhaps, her novel of “Deerbrook” has been the most popular of her works of fiction, though some prefer her history (in the form of a romance) of Toussaint L’Ouverture (“The Hour and the Man”), and others again her story-book for children, written in illness, — “The Playfellow.” But none of her novels or tales have, or ever had, in the eyes of good judges or in her own, any character of permanence. The artistic aim and qualifications were absent; she had no power of dramatic construction; nor the poetic inspiration on the one hand, nor critical cultivation on the other, without which no work of the imagination can be worthy to live. Two or three of her Political Economy Tales, are, perhaps, her best achievement in fiction, — her doctrine furnishing the plot which she was unable to create, and the brevity of space duly restricting the indulgence in detail which injured her longer narratives, and at last warned her to leave off writing them. It was fortunate for her that her own condemnation anticipated that of the public. To the end of her life she was subject to solicitations to write more novels and more tales; but she for the most part remained steady in her refusal. Her three volumes of “Forest and Game Law Tales” and a few stories in “Household Words,” written at the express and earnest request of Mr. Dickens, and with little satisfaction to herself, are her latest efforts in that direction.*

Her popularity was, however, something extraordinary during the appearance of her “Illustrations of Political Economy.” It was presently necessary for her to remove to London, to be within reach of the sources of information rendered indispensable by the success of her scheme and the extension of her influence. She lived in a lodging in Conduit Street for some months, till her mother joined her in London. Their house was in Fludyer Street, Westminster; and there they lived till a serious and long illness compelled Harriet Martineau to leave London, to which she never returned as a resident. On her first taking up her abode there many foolish stories were afloat about the origin of her series, and the aid she received in it from Lord Brougham and others. The facts were that the enterprise was wholly her own, and the execution of it also; and that Lord Brougham in particular knew nothing whatever about her or Edition: current; Page: [566] her work till his secretary sent him the first five numbers half a year after the publication began. His lordship’s first thought was to engage her assistance in illustrating the evils of the old poor-law and the intended provisions of the new; and her four little volumes on the poor-laws appeared during the publication of her larger work. The two years which followed her first great success were the busiest of a busy life. All advocates of all schemes applied to her for co-operation. She was plunged at once into such a social whirl that she dined out every day but Sundays. New material for her work was always accumulating on her hands; and besides the production of one number, and occasionally two, of her little volumes per month, she had an unmanageable amount of correspondence always pressing upon her. It was at that time that she formed the habit which she continued for the rest of her life, — of sitting up late, while going on to rise early. She took, on an average, five hours or five and a half of sleep, going to bed at one in the morning, and being at her breakfast at half past seven, to save the precious morning hours for her most serious business. Such was her practice, with few intervals, to the date of her last illness.

Before the publication of her work was completed she had sailed for America. At first her object was simply to travel for the sake of recreation and repose; but, at the suggestion of the late Lord Henley, she turned her face in the direction of the United States, in order to examine some points of social policy and morals, honourable to the Americans and worthy of our emulation, but generally overlooked by European travellers who go to amuse themselves and return to quiz. She hoped to learn some secrets of success in the treatment of criminals, the insane, and other unhappy classes, and in the diffusion of education. She succeeded in her aims in some measure; but the interest of the antislavery question just at that time absorbed every other. She arrived just at the culmination of that reign of terror which she described after her return in the “Westminster Review,” in the narrative entitled “The Martyr Age of the United States,” which was reprinted as a pamphlet, and by which the nature and significance of the antislavery movement in America (where it involved the entire political and personal liberty of every citizen) were first made known in this country. Harriet Martineau, received with unbounded hospitality and unmeasured flatteries, though known to have written an antislavery story in her series, was not converted to the American view, as had been hoped and expected. Under circumstances in which she had no choice but to speak out she condemned Edition: current; Page: [567] slavery and its political consequences as before; and, for some months preceding her return, she was subjected to insult and injury, and was even for some weeks in danger of her life while travelling where the tar-barrel, the cowhide, and the pistol were the regimen prescribed for and applied to abolitionists, and threatened especially in her case. In her books upon America she said little or nothing of her personal share in the critical troubles of the time, because her purpose was, not to interest the public in her adventures, but to exhibit, without passion or prejudice, the actual condition of society in the United States. Its treatment of herself is rather a topic for her Autobiography, and there, no doubt, it will be found.

After an absence of two years she returned to England in August, 1836, and early in the next spring she published “Society in America.” Her own opinion of that work changed much for the worse before her death. It was written while she was in the full flow of sympathy with the theoretical American statesmen of that time, who were all à priori political philosophers to a greater or less degree, like the framers of the Declaration of Independence. Her intercourse with these may be traced in the structure and method of observation of her book, and her companionship with the adorers of Thomas Carlyle in her style. Some constitutional lawyers of the United States have declared that there is no error in her account of the political structure and relations of the Federal and State governments of that country; and the book contains the only account we have of the condition of slavery, and of the country under it, at the time of the rise of the abolition movement. But, on the whole, the book is not a favourable specimen of Harriet Martineau’s writings, either in regard to moral or artistic taste. It is full of affectations and preachments, and it marks the highest point of the metaphysical period of her mind. Little as she valued the second work on America — “Retrospect of Western Travel” — which she wrote at the request of her publishers, to bring into use her lighter observations on scenery and manners, it was more creditable to her mood, and perhaps to her powers, than the more ambitious work. The American abolitionists, then in the early days of their action, reprinted as a pamphlet the parts of these two works which relate to the slave institutions of their country, and sowed it broadcast over the land. The virulence with which the Southern press denounces her to this day, in company with Mrs. Chapman and Mrs. Stowe, seems to show that her representations were not lost on the American public. If they are Edition: current; Page: [568] operating at the end of so many years, there must be truth in them. Though the customary dispensers of hospitality in the United States passed from the extreme of courtesy to that of rudeness to the traveller, she formed valuable friendships in that country which lasted as long as her life. Her connection with the interests of America remained a close one, and its political course was a subject of action to a late period, and of study to the last.

In the interval between her return from America and her leaving London — somewhat less than three years — she wrote “How to Observe Morals and Manners,” a volume of a series published by Mr. Knight, of which Sir Henry Delabêche’s “How to Observe Geology” was the opening volume; a few of the volumes of the “Guide to Service,” issued also by Mr. Knight; and her novel “Deerbrook.” The “Guides to Service” were originated by the Poor-law Commissioners, with the object chiefly of training the ideas of children, especially in the workhouse schools, for the occupation of their lives. Harriet Martineau agreed to write the model number, provided she might take the “Maid-of-all-Work” for her subject; which she did, with the amusing result that at various turns of her life afterwards she was met by the popular belief that she had herself been a maid-of-all-work; a mistake which she regarded with some complacency whenever she encountered it. The other volumes of the Series written by her are the “Dressmaker” (in which she had some technical assistance from a professional person), the “Housemaid,” and the “Lady’s Maid.”

On the publication of “Deerbrook,” in April, 1839, she went abroad with a party of friends, partly to escort an invalid cousin, and partly for rest and refreshment to herself. She was not aware of the extent of her own illness; and she was brought home on a couch from Venice in June, in a state of health so hopeless that she left London and settled herself at Tynemouth, on the Northumberland coast, within reach of family care and tendance. There she remained, a prisoner to the couch, till the close of 1844. During her illness she wrote her second novel (“The Hour and the Man”), the four volumes of children’s tales called “The Playfellow,” and “Life in the Sick-Room;” originating also, in concert with the present Countess of Elgin and Mr. Knight, the series since so well known as “The Weekly Volume.” Of her recovery the public heard at the time much more than she desired and approved. At the instigation of several of her friends, and especially of her medical attendant, she made trial of mesmerism, for the purpose of obtaining some release Edition: current; Page: [569] from the use of opiates. To her own surprise and that of others, the treatment procured her a release from the disease itself, from which several eminent medical men had declared recovery to be impossible. In five months she was perfectly well. Meantime, doctors and strangers in various parts of the kingdom had rushed into print, without her countenance or her knowledge; and the amount of misrepresentation and mischief soon became so great as to compel her to tell the story as it really happened. The commotion was just what might have been anticipated from the usual reception of new truths in science and the medical art. That she recovered when she ought to have died was an unpardonable offence. According to the doctors who saw her enter society again from the beginning of 1845, she was in a state of infatuation, and, being as ill as ever in reality, would sink down in six months. When, instead of so sinking down, she rode on a camel to Mount Sinai and Petra, and on horseback to Damascus, they said she had never been ill. To the charge that it had been “all imagination,” her reply was that, in that case, it was the doctor’s imagination and not hers that was involved; for they had told her, and not she them, what and how serious her illness was. To the friends who blamed her for publishing her experience before the world was ripe for it, her reply was, first, that she had no option; and next, that it is hard to see how the world is to get ripened if experimenters in new departments of natural philosophy conceal their experience. The immediate consequence of the whole business — the extension of the practice of mesmerism as a curative agent, and especially the restoration of several cases like her own — abundantly compensated Harriet Martineau for an amount of insult and ridicule which would have been a somewhat unreasonable penalty on any sin or folly which she could have committed. As a penalty on simply getting well when she was expected to die, the infliction was a curious sign of the times.

Being free to choose her place of abode, on her recovery, her friends universally supposed she would return to London and its literary advantages and enjoyments. But literature, though a precious luxury, was not, and never had been, the daily bread of her life. She felt that she could not be happy, or in the best way useful, if the declining years of her life were spent in lodgings in the morning and drawing-rooms in the evening. A quiet home of her own, and some few dependent on her for their domestic welfare, she believed to be essential to every true woman’s peace of mind; and she chose her plan of life accordingly. Meaning to live in the country, she chose Edition: current; Page: [570] the most beautiful, and settled at the Lakes. She bought a field near Ambleside, opposite Fox How, and about a mile from Rydal Mount. She built a house, and tried her hand successfully on the smallest of farms, — a farm of two acres. She set on foot some remedial schemes applicable to local mischiefs; and by degrees found herself pledged to a practice of delivering a series of lectures every winter to the mechanics of the little town and their families. She and they were so well acquainted, that there was nothing odd in this in their view, and no strangers were admitted, nor even the gentry of the place, for want of room. Her subjects were Sanitary Principles and Practice, the History of England, the History of North America, and the Scenes of her Eastern Travel. In her Ambleside home she lived for ten years of health and of happiness, which, as she was wont to say, was worth all the rest of her life.

At various times since 1832 she had been sounded about accepting a pension on the Civil List; and she had repeatedly replied by objecting to receive one. Her objections remained in full force when Lord Melbourne made an express offer to her of a pension of £150, to be increased as circumstances permitted, as his last act before going out of power in 1841. Lord Melbourne was aware that she had invested her spare earnings in a deferred annuity, and that while hopelessly ill she was very poor. Her objections, however, bore no relation to this class of considerations. Her letter to Lord Melbourne found its way into the newspapers without her knowledge, and it speaks for itself. Not the less for this was she misunderstood. Nothing was further from her thoughts than passing condemnation on the literary pensioners of the time. They must judge for themselves, and their position was different. It was a matter of feeling with her quite as much as of principle; and she would have thankfully received any acknowledgment of past labours which might have been decreed, otherwise than through a method of favouritism. She felt that, once under pecuniary obligation to the sovereign and the minister, she could never again feel perfectly free on political questions, though Lord Melbourne generously deprecated any such conclusion. As it happened, she did very well without the money, and she wrote the “History of the Thirty Years’ Peace,” which she could hardly have done while in receipt of a pension.

This, the bulkiest of her works and the most laborious, was undertaken at the request of Mr. Charles Knight, who had himself written the first few chapters, then deputed the work to another, and presently found it at a stand. Harriet Martineau had no idea whatever Edition: current; Page: [571] whether she could write history; but, on Mr. Knight’s pressing his request, she went to work in August, 1848, and completed the work (after an interval of a few weeks) in the autumn of 1849. The introductory volume was written in 1850, also at Mr. Knight’s solicitation. Without taking the chronicle form this history could not, from the nature of the case, be cast in the ultimate form of perfected history. All that can be done with contemporary history is to collect and methodize the greatest amount of reliable facts and distinct impressions, to amass sound material for the veritable historian of a future day, — so consolidating, assimilating, and vivifying the structure as to do for the future writer precisely that which the lapse of time and the oblivion which creeps over all transactions must prevent his doing for himself. This auxiliary usefulness is the aim of Harriet Martineau’s history; and she was probably not mistaken in hoping for that much result from her labour. It rendered her a personal service which she had not anticipated. There was an impression abroad of her being a sort of demagogue or dangerous Radical, though it is hard to say which of her writings could have originated such an impression. The history dispelled it thoroughly; and if it proved that she belonged to no party, it showed that it was not because she transcended the extremes of all.

The work which she published on her return from her Eastern travels, which she enjoyed as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Richard V. Yates, of Liverpool, had shown that she was no longer a Unitarian nor a believer in revelation at all. “Eastern Life, Present and Past,” exhibits the history and generation of the four great faiths — the Egyptian, the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mohammedan — as they appear when their birthplaces are visited in succession. She had passed from the Nile to Sinai; and thence to Jerusalem, Damascus, and Lebanon. The work in which she gave out her views on her return ranks, on the whole, as the best of her writings; and her reputation assumed a new, a graver, and a broader character after its appearance. It was followed in 1851 by a volume which, though not for the most part written by her, was of her procuring and devising. She took the reponsibility of the “Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development,” which were for the greater part written by her friend, Mr. Atkinson, in reply to the short letters of her own which occupy a small proportion of the book. This book brought upon its writers, as was inevitable, the imputation of atheism from the multitude who cannot distinguish between the popular and the philosophical sense of the word, — between the disbelief in the popular Edition: current; Page: [572] theology which has caused a long series of religious men to be called atheists, and the disbelief in a First Cause, — a disbelief which is expressly disclaimed in the book. A full account of Harriet Martineau’s faith and philosophy will of course be found in her forthcoming Autobiography, where it is more in place than here. As to the consequences of such an expression of them, they were somewhat different from what might have been expected. The reception of the volume disclosed some curious social facts, revealing to its authors an altogether unexpected proportion between the receivers and repudiators of dogmatic theology in this country. What is called “the entire periodical press” condemned the book, without, however, in any one case meeting its argument or recognizing its main subject; and yet was it excellently received and widely sympathized with. Every body supposed that its authors would be ruined, excluded from society, stopped in their work, and so forth. But the actual result was that this open avowal of heretical opinion made all the relations of life sounder than they had ever been. As Harriet Martineau declared, it dissolved all false relations and confirmed all true ones. At no time of her life was she more occupied, more prosperous, so cheered by sympathy, or so thoroughly happy, as during the interval between the publication of that book and the close of her labours.

Besides some small works, such as “Guides to the Lakes,” it remained for her to bring out two of more general importance, — her volume on “Household Education,” which is more popular than almost any of her works, and her condensation of Comte’s “Positive Philosophy.” The story of the intention and achievement of that work is told in its prefaces. Begun in 1852, it occupied the greater part of the year 1853, and appeared in November of that year. It was her last considerable work; and there is no other, perhaps, which so well manifests the real character of her ability and proper direction of her influence, — as far as each went. Her original power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and intellectual clearness within a certain range. With small imaginative and suggestive powers, and therefore nothing approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did see, and give a clear expression to what she had to say. In short, she could popularize, while she could neither discover nor invent. She could sympathize in other people’s views, and was too facile in doing so; and she could obtain and keep a firm grasp of her own, and, moreover, she could make them understood. The function of her life was to do this, and, in as far as it was done diligently and honestly, her life was of use, however far its achievements may have Edition: current; Page: [573] fallen short of expectations less moderate than her own. Her duties and her business were sufficient for the peace and the desires of her mind. She saw the human race, as she believed, advancing under the law of progress; she enjoyed her share of the experience, and had no ambition for a larger endowment, or reluctance or anxiety about leaving the enjoyment of such as she had.

From the early part of 1852 she had contributed largely to the “Daily News,” and her “Letters from Ireland” in the summer of that year were written for this paper. As her other works left her hands the connection with the paper became closer, and it was never interrupted except for a few months at the beginning of her last illness, when all her strength was needed for her Autobiography. When she had finished that task she had the work printed, and the engravings prepared for it under her own supervision, partly to avoid delay in its appearance (because any good that it could do would be best done immediately after her death), but chiefly to spare her executors all responsibility about publishing whatever may be found in the Memoir. Her last illness was a time of quiet enjoyment to her, soothed as it was by family and social love, and care, and sympathy, and, except for one heart-grief, — the loss in 1864 of her niece Maria, who was to her as a daughter, — free from anxiety of every kind, and amused by the constant interest of regarding life and its affairs from the verge of the horizon of existence. Her disease was deterioration and enlargement of the heart, the fatal character of which was discovered in January, 1855. She declined throughout that and subsequent years, and died —

— And died in the summer sunset of her home amid the Westmoreland mountains, on the 27th of June, 1876, after twenty-one more diligent, devoted, suffering, joyful years, — attended by the family friends she most loved, and in possession of all her mental powers up to the last expiring day; aged seventy-four years.

If, instead of dying so slowly, she had died as she could have wished and thought to have done, without delay, what a treasure of wise counsels, what a radiance of noble deeds, what a spirit of love and of power, what brave victorious battle to the latest hour for all things good and true, had been lost to posterity! What an example of more than resignation, of that ready, glad acceptance of a lingering and painful death which made the Edition: current; Page: [574] sight a blessing to every witness, had been lost to the surviving generation!

During all the last one-and-twenty years death was the idea most familiar and most welcome. It was spoken of and provided for with an easy freedom that I never saw approached in any other home, yet she never expressed a wish respecting a place of burial. But a few days before her death, when asked if she would be laid in the burial-place of her family, she assented; and she lies with her kindred, in the old cemetery at Birmingham.

The grave bears this record: —

ELIZABETH MARTINEAU

widow of the late

Mr THOMAS MARTINEAU

of Norwich

Born October 8th 1771

Died August 26th 1848

also her grand-daughter

MARIA MARTINEAU

Daughter of ROBERT and JANE MARTINEAU

Born August 27th 1827

Died February 29th 1864

ROBERT MARTINEAU

Born at Norwich August 19th 1798

Died at Edgbaston June 17th 1870

also

JANE MARTINEAU

his widow

Born June 6th 1793

Died March 20th 1874

also

HARRIET MARTINEAU

daughter of

THOMAS and ELIZABETH MARTINEAU

Born at Norwich June 12th 1802

Died at Ambleside June 27th 1876

Edition: current; Page: [575]

SURVIVORSHIP.

“They take thee for their mother;

And every day do homage to thy grave”

Shakespeare.

Painful as blame was to Harriet Martineau, eulogy was more distasteful still. Truth will not, however, allow all omission of the general expression of high estimation which found utterance at her death. Admiration has been called the disease of biographers; but in a case like this, where the disease would be not to admire, it is of happy augury to find a healthful appreciation in the world at large, that she has so signally served. But the first place belongs to the personal friends by whom she was so reverenced and beloved.

Mr. Garrison writes as follows to Mrs. Chapman: —

“. . . . Yes, since you desire it, make any use of my letter to Miss Jane Martineau that you may think proper, though the tribute contained therein to her aunt is all too brief, and wholly inadequate. I have no copy of what I wrote; but if you deem it right and fitting, it will give me pleasure to see it in print, whether in whole or in part, in connection with other testimonies.

“Enclosed is my last letter from Harriet Martineau. You will see by the date that it was written but a comparatively few days before her translation; and was probably, therefore, one of her very latest efforts at writing. How serene and prophetic is the sentence, ‘My departure is evidently near’! How kind and sympathetic the expression of her feelings in view of my own bereavement! This letter is so exceptional in its purport, containing nothing she would object to any one seeing or reading, that I think you may feel entire liberty in the use of it. It reveals her tender, womanly nature to the last; and shows with what calmness she contemplated her speedy dissolution. Nay, what had she to apprehend?”

Edition: current; Page: [576]

His letter to Miss Jane Martineau, which Mr. Garrison gives permission to print, is as follows: —

William Lloyd Garrison

Garrison, William Lloyd

July 4, 1876

Boston

Jane Martineau

Martineau, Jane

Boston,

July 4, 1876

.

Dear Miss Martineau, —

On returning home recently from a visit to our great Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, I found a letter from your estimable aunt, dated May 30, acknowledging the receipt of a little memorial volume from me, pertaining to the death of my dearly beloved wife, and expressing the tenderest sympathy and the kindest personal regard, and concluding as follows: “I can say no more. My departure is evidently near, and I hold the pen with difficulty. Accept the reverent blessing of your old friend, Harriet Martineau.” Gratified as I was to receive that last precious token of her affectionate remembrance, I felt to regret that she should have made the effort to write it, as I had long been aware of her great physical prostration, and, in consequence, neither anticipated nor desired any such acknowledgment, needing no assurance of her heartfelt sympathy in my stricken condition. But though she referred to the time of her own departure as near at hand, she had been so long apparently “hovering on the brink,” and her handwriting was so firm and legible, I did not feel specially apprehensive in regard to her case, but hoped her prophetic impression might prove erroneous. To my grief, if not surprise, just as I was preparing to send her my thanks and best wishes, a telegraphic announcement of her decease appeared in our daily newspapers, but giving no particulars.

As was said of old, “Know ye not that a great man and a prince has this day fallen in Israel?” so it may be asked with equal emphasis in her case, “Know ye not that one of the noblest women of the earth has passed away?” Indeed, the civilized world will need no such interrogation; for the fame of her literary genius, her philosophic grasp of mind, her politico-economical insight, her statesmanlike sagacity, her solid understanding and well-balanced faculties, her world-embracing sympathy with suffering humanity, her fearless advocacy of the right against popular opinion, her comprehensive and varied knowledge, her untrammelled utterance of her honest convictions however deemed or denounced as heretical, has long since “rung from side to side.” Never shall I cease to remember with gratitude and admiration the sublime exemplification of her great character when she was in this country in the year 1835, the most odious and the most perilous period of the antislavery struggle, when any sympathy evinced for it, no matter how distinguished the sympathizer, was sure to be followed by social ostracism and public contempt. Edition: current; Page: [577] She might have plausibly pursued a non-committal policy on the ground that she was a transient visitor from a foreign land, and it was a matter that was so interwoven with the politics and religion of the country, nay, with the very structure of the American Union itself, that it did not become her to meddle therewith; but it was impossible for a soul like hers to resort to any such subterfuge. She met the issue modestly, bravely, uncompromisingly. What it cost her for the time being you well know. But the service she rendered to the antislavery cause was inestimable.

I am under the deepest obligations to her for the steadfast countenance she gave to me in that dark hour, and the unfaltering friendship with which she honoured me to the close of her remarkable life.

Yours in deepest sympathy,

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

This is the Centennial Anniversary of American Independence. Would that our career had been more worthy of us!

Florence Nightingale

Nightingale, Florence

June 29, 1876

Jane S. Martineau

Martineau, Jane S.

LETTER FROM MISS NIGHTINGALE TO MISS JANE S. MARTINEAU.

June 29, 1876

.

Dear Miss Martineau, —

The shock of your tidings to me of course was great; but O, I feel how delightful the surprise to her! How much she must know now, how much she must have enjoyed already!

I do not know what your opinions are about this; I know what hers were, and for a long time I have thought how great will be the surprise to her, — a glorious surprise.

She served the Right, that is, God, all her life. How few of those who cry “Lord, Lord,” served the Lord so well and so wisely! — Joy to thee, happy soul! She served the truth and the good, and worshipped them! — now they bear her on to higher and better fields. So above all petty calculations, all paltry wranglings! — now she is gone on her way to infinite purity.

We give her joy: it is our loss, not hers. She is gone to our Lord and her Lord. Made ripe for her and our Father’s house: our tears are her joy. She bids us now give thanks for her. She is in another room of our Father’s house.

Think of that Tuesday night when she rose again: — O, who could wish her back?

If you only knew how much I feel for you! but there is much to Edition: current; Page: [578] comfort you. A noble woman. Our Father arranged her life and her death. Is it well with the child? It is well. Thanks for her message. Keep the little paper if you have a mind. I shall like to think of it in your hands.* I was writing, if it ever gets done, upon the Zemindar and Ryot question in India. I had quoted from her. I thought with pleasure of her reading my tribute, which was to have been finished eighteen months ago. It was impossible.

But I do not grudge her to God.

Yours in deepest sympathy and “Aunt Ellen’s” too, if I may.

F. NIGHTINGALE.

I have thought of “The Hour and the Man” as the finest historical romance in any language. You would wonder if you knew how often I have read it over and over again, even in the last two years.

The next letter is from Mrs. Andrews — the “Martha” referred to under the preceding head, “Home and Service” — to Miss Jane S. Martineau.

Martha Andrews

Andrews, Martha

Jane S. Martineau

Martineau, Jane S.

My dear, dear Miss Jane, —

It is with deep feeling I pen these lines to you. . . . . I feel so very glad you were there. This is a sad event; for though the desire of that dear one was to be freed from suffering, yet it is sad for us after all. Such a change! no more voice to speak to us, or to feel that she enters into one’s trouble. All is over. She was a wonderful woman. With all her suffering she never forgot those who loved her and needed sympathy. . . . . I shall hope to see you some day. There is a kind of bond that seems to bind me to those who were dear to Mrs. Martineau, you and Miss Susan particularly. . . . .

Ever gratefully yours,

MARTHA ANDREWS.

And again Mrs. Andrews says: —

Martha Andrews

Andrews, Martha

Many thanks for sending me this sad news. It would be quite wrong to have wished this dear one to remain here in suffering. We cannot but rejoice so far as she is concerned. Still I cannot tell you how full my heart is, and what blank I feel now that one of my dearest and best friends is no more. I cannot say much, — I do feel it very much. Though I was looking by every post for the news, yet when it did come I felt all my spirit fail. I think of all her kind Edition: current; Page: [579] love for me and my family; for it will now soon be twenty-nine years since I first saw her. The gap is not easily filled up. But I feel so comforted and glad that you have been well enough to be there with her to the last. I have thought so much of you, knowing your anxiety, and have been with this dear one in spirit. . . . .

Ever yours most gratefully,

MARTHA ANDREWS.

Her maid at the time of her death wrote the annexed note to Miss Susan Martineau, her niece.

Marianne Matthews

Matthews, Marianne

July 2, 1876

Ambleside

Susan Martineau

Martineau, Susan

Ambleside,

July 2, 1876

.

My dear Miss Susan, —

I wish I could write as I feel. I do feel that it has been a privilege to be with such a noble woman, and I have been taught many lessons which I trust are not lost; but the first wish and feeling is, that I might have done more for her, after all her kindness and goodness to me. I shall never cease to be thankful that I was here at this time. Her kindness will never be forgotten.

To-day the rooms and the house feel very strange, and I find myself beginning to do things that need not be done. . . . .

I am ever gratefully and respectfully yours,

MARIANNE MATTHEWS.

Marianne’s father writes: —

W. Matthews

Matthews, W.

Dear Madam, —

A short time before the receipt of your kind letter of yesterday I was startled to read of the death of our dear Mrs. Martineau, in our local paper; and now that her sufferings are over, it must be said that one of the best and wisest of women has departed for her never-ending rest.

I am so pleased that my daughter has stayed and been able to give satisfaction to her late mistress and her household. Your kind remarks concerning her I am deeply thankful for, and shall cherish them in my memory as better than gold.

I hope you will be able to bear your great loss without undue injury to your health, and hope you may live as long and useful a life as your dear aunt. . . . .

In conclusion, I have but to offer you the sincere condolence of my wife and myself.

W. MATTHEWS.

In reply to my request to Lady Strangford that she would give me permission to print a letter of hers, she says: —

Edition: current; Page: [580]

E. Strangford

Strangford, E.

. . . . Your letter meets me on my way to Constantinople. I do not in the least remember any thing that I said in the one you allude to, but I wrote from my heart, and if it suits your wishes to publish it, you are welcome to do so.

Yours in great haste,

E. STRANGFORD.

Lady Strangford and her sister, Miss Beaufort, daughters of Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, made so well known to us Americans in “The Biographical Sketches,” write thus to Miss Jane Martineau: —

E. Strangford

Strangford, E.

Jane Martineau

Martineau, Jane

Dear Miss Martineau, —

Only one line — not to intrude upon your great sorrow, but to express my own deep feeling of the loss. Although I did not hope ever to see her again, yet the knowledge that she was there at Ambleside, still with us, in full human sympathy, with the ever-bright feeling and the ever-warm heart, was a reality which took the place of seeing her. But I seem now to have lost the last bit of my childhood in the knowledge that she too is gone. I know you are glad that the weariness and suffering are over, — “peace after battle,” — and we hope, while some of us believe, “night does end in day.” I wish I could have seen her more, but the feeling was a part of myself; and I do not suppose I ever knew the day when I did not wish to resemble her. I am very thankful to have had her; and I do not believe the like of her comes in one, or indeed in many centuries. The world may not historically realize what she has done for it, but her work is not the less for that; and now and then, in future times, historians will be surprised into finding the root of many after-growths in her hand.

In the terrible blank to you I feel the deepest sympathy and compassion.

Yours very truly,

E. STRANGFORD.

Rosamond E. Beaufort

Beaufort, Rosamond E.

June 29, 1876

Jane Martineau

Martineau, Jane

June 29, 1876

.

Dear Miss Martineau, —

Till it has actually occurred, we cannot realize the grief or the final separation from the dear friend and companion whose love and whose interest have made life what it is to us; and the utter loneliness of the remaining years makes life seem at first really unbearable.

What a wonderful record of work and energy and talent is that which appears in the long and interesting notice of the “Times” this morning! . . . .

Edition: current; Page: [581]

I am expecting my dear brother Francis and his wife, after thirty-nine years in India! I feel sure that he is bringing back the same sweet, loving disposition as of old; and it will be so great a pleasure to renew acquaintance, even though he may have been living in a very different groove of thought and feeling. I suppose we have grown old enough and wise enough to allow liberty and latitude to each other’s opinions. It is only the youthfully enthusiastic or the very narrow minded who imagine the truth to be only in one point or on one line. . . . .

Believe me, with much sympathy,

Affectionately yours,

ROSAMOND E. BEAUFORT.

Miss Nightingale’s letter in reply to my request that she would allow the publication of the one previously given, — which so nobly indicates the way to harmonize in life all difference of belief, — is as follows: —

Florence Nightingale

Nightingale, Florence

September 29, 1876

September 29, 1876

.

Dear Madam, —

I was glad when I heard that you were to complete Harriet Martineau’s book. Who could better understand her?

She was born to be a destroyer of slavery, in whatever form, in whatever place, all over the world, wherever she saw or thought she saw it.

The thought actually inspired her: whether in the degraded offspring of former English poor-law, of English serfdom forty years ago, — in any shape; whether in the fruits of any abuse, — social, legislative, or administrative, — or in actual slavery; or be it in Contagious Diseases Acts, or no matter what, she rose to the occasion.

I think, contradictory as it may seem, she had the truest and deepest religious feeling I have ever known. How this comes out, with her finest expression, in “Deerbrook;” in “The Hour and the Man,” which one can scarce refrain from thinking the greatest of historical romances; the central figure so sustained in the highest spirit, from first to last, — for example, Toussaint’s escape from the Spanish camp, and the shower of white amaryllis cast over him by his own negroes as he rides away; all concerning his prison and death (chapters “Almost Free” and “Free”), — that grand conception of the last thoughts of a dying deliverer reaching its highest flight.

Then in her “Eastern Life,” and in many parts of her Illustrations of Political Economy, — for example, the death of a poor drinking-woman, “Mrs. Kay,” — what higher religious feeling (or one should Edition: current; Page: [582] rather say instinct) could there be? To the last her religious feeling, — in the sense of good working out of evil, into a supreme wisdom penetrating and moulding the whole universe; — into the natural subordination of intellect and intellectual purposes and of intellectual self 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.

But through the other strong spring of her life, her abhorrence of any kind of bondage, did she not misinterpret the frequent (undoubted) servitude imposed by so-called religion on so many noble souls as something essential to it, instead of finding the only source of real freedom in a truer religion?

Was it not her chivalry which led her to say what she knew would bring obloquy, because she thought no one else would say it?

But why say this to you, — you who knew her so well!

O, how she must be unfolding now in the presence of that supreme Goodness and Wisdom before which she is not “ashamed,” and who must welcome her as one of his truest servants!

I thought I had not a moment of time when I began to answer your letter, and now I must ask your pardon for this hasty answer to your desire; to which I can only say, that I do not remember what I wrote to Miss Jane Martineau. Whatever it was, I am sure it fell miserably short of the subject.

I have a great dislike to private letters being published; at the same time I must leave it to your judgment; and I would never let my poor little dislikes interfere with any thing you judged likely, though in the least degree, to contribute towards throwing light on the character of our noble friend (or the hour of a great life’s ending), in whose name I am proud to be,

Yours most sincerely,

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

Constance Martineau

Martineau, Constance

Jane Martineau

Martineau, Jane

FROM MISS CONSTANCE MARTINEAU TO HER COUSIN.

Dear Jane, —

I must write once more before you sail, to thank you for your kind note, and wish you good-speed on your voyage.

You ask if any thing particular occurs to me that should be told to Mrs. Chapman about Cousin Harriet’s last days. I think what Edition: current; Page: [583] struck me most in that last visit was her strong sense of duty, and her thoughtfulness for others to the last. It was that which made her persevere in coming down stairs after it had become a painful effort. She thought it would make her room more wholesome for Marianne. And it was from a sense of duty that she exerted herself to rise to have her bed made when we thought she was too weak for it; and she was always so anxious lest we should not have sufficient rest. And she seemed to feel it such a comfort that there would now, after her death, be nothing to stand in the way of Marianne’s marriage.

With many good wishes for your voyage,

Believe me, dear Jane,

Your affectionate cousin,

CONSTANCE MARTINEAU.

Samuel Brown

Brown, Samuel

Helen Brown

Brown, Helen

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

FROM MRS. SAMUEL BROWN.

Dear Mrs. Chapman, —

I wish (but it would require a readier pen than mine) that I could tell you all that Harriet Martineau was to my husband, and to me and my children since his death. Her loving remembrance of him remained bright and unchanged to the last, and she often told me how much she valued his letters. I need not tell you of our unbroken intercourse during the last twenty years. She was more than a sister to me; — sharing all my cares and anxieties, and encouraging me in all my difficulties. A more generous-hearted friend never lived. You know all this and more.

Accept the assurance of my most loving sympathy and respect.

Ever faithfully yours,

HELEN BROWN.

In writing to her niece, her early and beloved friend, Mrs. Ker, whose intimacy forbade free mention of her in the Autobiography, calls back the memory of “her girlish figure, when she used to come to me from Conduit Street and Fludyer Street in those first London days, . . . . and I knew her before she came to London.”

Elizabeth B. Ker

Ker, Elizabeth B.

I doubt whether any one then knew her as I did, or could enter into all her tenderness and her susceptible feeling. . . . . I doubt whether she ever went to any one as she did to me, weary and sad and needing to be comforted. . . . .

I doubt whether in her own family they knew how merry she Edition: current; Page: [584] could be; how well she told laughable stories, and how much she liked to hear them.

Mr. Rogers said one day that hers was “the freshest laugh you could hear out of a nursery.” . . . .

I used to admire, always, how she refrained from questioning, eager as she was to learn all that was going on around her. When asked, “Why do you not inquire what was said,” she always replied, “I trust to be told, if it is worth repeating.” . . . . I only remember once her asking what was said, and it was so surprising to me that I inquired why she asked. We were a merry party, my young sisters and myself, sitting round the table after dinner, and her elastic tube flying about rapidly from one to the other. “Why,” said she, “your laugh was so joyous, and Fanny’s face so full of fun without malice, that it was irresistible.”

I regret infinitely that she desired all her letters to be destroyed. I had so large a boxful that it took some time to read and burn them. They would have been worth much to you, as you may guess when I tell you that on reading that most charming of all her publications, “Life in the Sick-Room,” about which there is but one opinion, I said, “O, but I have read it all before! — this is only my burnt letters!” And these were only the letters from Tynemouth. I had abundance of others. . . . . I see her before me in so many aspects, I could go on long.

Yours always affectionately,

ELIZABETH B. KER.

One whom Harriet Martineau had known early in his life and intimately, James Payn, the poet and novelist, wrote so appreciative a notice at her death, that he received grateful acknowledgment from surviving friends. Subjoined is his reply, addressed to her niece.

James Payn

Payn, James

Jane Martineau

Martineau, Jane

Dear Miss Martineau, —

. . . . I have known all the famous women of our own time, or about all, and I think that, taking her character all round, your aunt was the greatest among them. The side of her character which I wished to dwell upon as having been overlooked in the notices of her life was her motherliness, and her keen sense of fun. . . . .

The extract she gives in the Autobiography of the description of Ambleside (out of “Chambers’s Journal”) was written by me, — the first article I ever contributed to a periodical. She introduced me to the “Westminster Review” at once, and, I being a poet in those days, gave Edition: current; Page: [585] me “the Ballads of the People” for a subject. Alas, how many, many years that is ago! I have still the letter I received from her on the appearance of “Lost Sir Massingberd,” a criticism that I value beyond whole sheaves of newspaper reviews. . . . .

Believe me to be

Yours faithfully,

JAMES PAYN.

Again, he says, —

“No more gentle, kindly, and, if I may say so, ‘motherly’ nature ever existed than that of Harriet Martineau. She delighted in children, and in the friendship of good wives and mothers; one of her chief virtues, indeed, was a simple domesticity, that gave her a wonderful charm with those who prefer true gentlewomen to literary lionesses.”

Her old and long-tried friend, Mrs. Knight, — the widow of that Charles Knight of whom she so often said, “Literature owes him a statue,” — exclaims in a brief expression of sympathy to her niece, Miss Jane Martineau, —

“What a wonderful, noble woman you have had the honour of calling aunt, and I friend!”

Her and my dear friend, Mrs. Henry Turner of Nottingham, says, —

“How truly characteristic is the autobiography in the ‘Daily News,’ — in that confidingness with which she so often addressed the public as a band of friends! . . . . My individual loss is great. Every word of hers appeals to the lifelong interchange of thoughts which have quickened and animated me through past years.

“The Rev. Mr. Armstrong preached a funeral sermon which I heard, and I learn there have been others in Norwich, in Hope Street, and in Birmingham.”

Miss Napier, of that family of Paladins whom “The Biographical Sketches” have presented to the world as when they lived, says, —

“My memory wanders over the fifteen years that I have been a resident in this district, and the various incidents of that unbroken chain of kindly intercourse between her and myself, with grateful and tender affection. Whether illness or infirmity prevented our meeting, Edition: current; Page: [586] it made no difference, and I cannot accustom myself to the thought that she is no longer in that well-known room and chair. I miss her from the valley; and I shall long miss the interest of her respected presence and the kindly affectionate messages, or little notes, and the cordial sympathy in the events of my own life, which never failed.

“I think of her long, benevolent life; the noble work done in two hemispheres; the active energy, despite of suffering; the bright intellect; the unwearied patience and consideration for others; the warm and devoted affection inspired in relations, attendants, and friends; — and what must be the blank to you all!”

To Lady Charlotte Clarke, to whom she had expressed her dread of outliving her mental vigour, the news of her death in full use of all her faculties till the last day came with a sense of consolation. She told of the remarkably excellent appreciation of that well-known life by the “Aberdeen Free Press,” and recognized every trait of severe impartiality in the autobiographic memoir (placed in the preceding pages under the head of Self-Estimate). “I see how she enjoyed writing of H. M.’s shortcomings, — imagined only by herself. I shall never forget her, nor all the kindness she showed me from a child.”

It would be in vain to try to note all those who say, “I have lost my best and truest friend;” their name is legion.

But her friend Elizabeth Pease Nichol, devoted like herself to the antislavery cause and to the cause of national purity, cannot but be listened to with grateful love while she speaks to the survivors of the uniting bond of a common sorrow.

She will long be mourned, not merely by those who knew her personally, but by numbers who never saw her face, numbers who knew her only by her writings and the savour of her noble spirit; by those — and they are not a few — who, whilst admiring her rare intellectual gifts, honoured her most for her moral heroism, her worldwide sympathies, her abhorrence of oppression in all its forms, and her fearless sincerity in the expression of opinions and convictions which she knew would detract from and not increase her popularity. But how true to herself! — and to uphold what she believed to be the truth far outweighed in her estimation the applause of the world.

And not least is the loss sustained by the workers in the several questions of the day, those especially bearing on her own sex, to whom the aid of her influence and of her pen, as long as she was able Edition: current; Page: [587] to use it, were so fully given, while her interest and sympathy cheered and encouraged them in their up-hill labours.

But why do I say all this to one who knows it all? Simply because it seems impossible to withhold the thoughts that rise in the contemplation of a character so truly noble.

Though my aim in taking the pen was merely to tell you how truly my sympathy is yours, yet now I feel how great a privilege I esteem yours to have been, to have corresponded with our departed friend in the stirring days of the antislavery struggle. It is long since I saw her, but I have regularly heard of her through a friend of us both, by whose means (in relation to a case of suffering in which H. M. was interested) there was a renewal of our correspondence. How I treasure those letters now!

Excuse me for writing at such length, and believe me always Sincerely yours,

ELIZABETH PEASE NICHOL.

A letter from the Countess of Elgin, her so highly valued friend of thirty years, tells me of their long friendship, — one inherited from her parents, originating in the high mutual respect for character and public services which Lord and Lady Durham and Harriet Martineau entertained for each other, which she continued in unremitting sympathy and affection to their daughter, when Lord and Lady Durham died: “A touching example of the affectionate, true-hearted side of her high mind and character which added so great a charm to the more entirely intellectual view of it.”

Lady Elgin’s last note from her was written in March, 1876, to console her friend after the death of the lamented Lady Augusta Stanley.

To Dean Stanley, too, she was a friend of many years, and he speaks most feelingly of his “faithful and tender remembrance of her kindness to him always increasing in these later days.”

Henry G. Atkinson

Atkinson, Henry G.

August 11, 1876

Boulogne

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

FROM MR. ATKINSON TO MRS. CHAPMAN.

Boulogne,

August 11, 1876

.

My dear Mrs. Chapman, —

I have copied the last letter I received from our friend, about a month before she died, expressing her sentiments and feelings in respect to death; and, astonishing to say that, Edition: current; Page: [588] notwithstanding the cramp in the hands, the writing never was better, — and better than it had been for a very long time; as though her great desire to express herself clearly had for the time revived her strength; and I think you will like to insert the whole letter, to show under what circumstances it was written, — that is to say, in the certainty that death was close at hand. . . . .

That supreme common-sense of hers was manifest in all she said and all she did.

Proud, I think she was, but not in the least vain; and the pride was rather the consciousness of power, and the unconscious sense, so to speak, of absolute rectitude and truthfulness, and in the love of truth before all things. And her absolute truthfulness we see in the autobiographic article in the “Daily News;” and how modestly she estimated her own abilities and position. The clear, quick apprehension of the nature and merits of a question was her strong point, and she never talked or wrote of what she did not understand, and saw at once how to make a difficult matter intelligible to others. Hence her clearness, with broad daylight over all she wrote, not obscured by the coloured glass of pantheistic mysticism. . . . . Of all one thinks, of all one feels, and of all one has, how little is permanent and important. No doubt a discovery is something, but some one else would have found it out in due course; and the right is generally disputed, and being first is no more merit than being first born. There is only one greatness, — the sense of one’s own littleness; as of Socrates proclaiming his, and Newton the little he had done, with the vast ocean of truth undiscovered before him.

The oracle had proclaimed Socrates to be the wisest of men, which he could only understand in the fact that all men were ignorant without knowing it, but that he, also being ignorant, knew that he was so.

You wonder to what present purpose this tends: to much, — the greatness of our friend in the low estimate of her abilities and position. It was not modesty nor humility, but power over self, — supreme common-sense. . . . .

Though she apprehended things so clearly, and wrote so clearly on all matters she had given her attention to, and though to observe, acquire, demonstrate, and illustrate was her very special ability, she had plenty of thoughts of her own and a rich storehouse and treasury of matured judgment. To be useful was her great aim. She never referred much to the poets nor indulged much in quotation; not like Basil Montague, who used continually to say, “I will tell you, Atkinson, Edition: current; Page: [589] who has said that best.” . . . . It is a fine thing to be in a fog and see your own shadow cast before you; or in the night, imagining some fear, how easily is a bust supposed a bear! But our friend knew that by truth we are rid of fog and fear. . . . .

Believe me, with the highest estimation,

Yours truly,

HENRY G. ATKINSON.

Henry G. Atkinson

Atkinson, Henry G.

August 22

Maria Weston Chapman

Chapman, Maria Weston

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF MR. ATKINSON.

August 22

.

Dear Mrs. Chapman,—

A lady said the other day at the dinner here, “I always heard that Miss Martineau was insane, and her leaving her skull and brain to some one confirms it.” I replied, “Madam, it was a noble sacrifice of feeling for the cause of science, — which means the good of mankind; and it was an act that few are equal to, and an ordinary person cannot appreciate.” Silence.

(By the way, Democritus was supposed insane for trying to discover the cause of insanity in dead bodies; now every one does it.)

I ought to say that this bequest was her own thought, in consequence of our interest in phrenology, and my discoveries in relation to the functions of the brain by isolating the action of the parts in mesmeric experiments. It was also to see if the brain indicated the fact of her having no sense of taste or smell; as also in regard to her deafness. . . . . I went with Harriet Martineau to consult Mr. Toinbee, the great man for ear-knowledge; and he said, in reference to her deafness, that he would give any thing to be able to examine that ear. “Well,” said Harriet Martineau, “I shall leave my skull and brain to Mr. Atkinson, who will, I am sure, give you the opportunity.”

Mr. Toinbee is long since dead, with the others who would have helped me. Alone, and living at so great a distance, what could I do? Otherwise I should have acted in the case. But all these changes showed the need of a different disposition, and at my request she made it. The example remains. . . . . The size of her head indicated nothing remarkable, if Mr. George Combe’s theory be accepted; for the forehead was neither broad nor high; and this shows how much more tone and quality have to do in the matter than quantity. . . . .

. . . . You will not, I suppose, consider these abnormal conditions [referring to the mesmeric treatment by Mrs. —] as properly a subject of biography; but one of her sayings under mesmeric influence has been singularly fulfilled: “I shall become an apostle of pain.”

Edition: current; Page: [590]

And such she has been during those long years of suffering, — significant of unexampled fortitude and endurance.

Mr. Bray, a philosophical writer of some repute, said to me, “Do you think Miss Martineau the foremost woman of her time?” “Yes; decidedly. She has done more to spread useful truth than any other woman ever did, perhaps. She has greatly assisted in the higher education of half a century. She was always a little in advance of the public opinion of the day, and as she wrote clearly, the public would follow her.”

There is a sense in which whoever teaches us any thing may be called our master. If any one in this sense was hers, I should have said it was Malthus. But she was herself a master mind, and sat at the feet of no one.

The European press was unanimous in admiration and regret. “Le Bulletin Continental” and the “Kolnische Zeitung” on the Continent, and in England the “Times” and the “Daily News,” and innumerable others, alike gave full and appreciative accounts of her life and writings.

The “London Leader” and the “Aberdeen Journal” were eminently just and true. The “Shield,” an organ of the association in behalf of national purity, publishes the following article:—

“By far the greater number of the women who commenced the public agitation of our question at that time acted less from deliberately reasoned conviction of national peril than from a sudden impulse of outraged womanly dignity, or of Christian mercy; and by far the greater number of the men who then rallied round them were roused to support them by a similar impulse of outraged justice, or by a chivalrous sympathy with the brave women who thus sprang to the van in defence of their helpless and suffering sisters. Very few of them in any way realized the tremendous issues involved in the question, Shall the state sanction and protect prostitution? — or dreamed that in agitating, as they then believed, simply for the repeal of a cruel and indecent law, they were bringing to a crisis the whole question of the enslavement of the weak to the lust of the strong. Mrs. Martineau, however, appears to have fully realized the gravity of the situation from the very beginning. The few friends who had the privilege of seeing her at that time, and the larger circle with whom she corresponded, well know how intensely she felt the importance Edition: current; Page: [591] of the crisis, and with what eager eloquence she tried to awaken all her friends to a sense of the danger. She startled them by saying that in the whole history of our country no such moral and social crisis, nor any thing approaching to it, had been gone through. She foresaw that victory in the end was certain, but that in the meantime the battle would be fierce. She did not wish that repeal should come quietly, through the action of the government, for she regarded moral and political grounds as the only sure basis. So the growth of popular interest in the question — the gradual awakening of the national conscience — gave her keen pleasure. She foresaw that when the question was understood repeal would be demanded by the healthy moral instincts of the people. But in the meantime anxiety about what she used to call the gravest crisis which ever befell the moral life of England preyed upon her. The horrors of the subject aggravated the miseries of her illness. The writing and thinking and feeling were often too much for her.

“With all this painful effect of the agitation on her, it is pleasant to be able to mention one circumstance which was a source of unmixed gratification to her. We allude to her friendship with Mrs. Butler. Her admiration of ‘The Constitution Violated’ was unbounded; she regarded its appearance as an important event, not merely in our agitation, but of the century. The two illustrious ladies met face to face only for a short time, but it was long enough to invest the friendship, which had been begun by correspondence, with the tender charm of personal affection.

“Her interest in the cause never flagged. Her nephew informs us that the last periodicals that Harriet Martineau continued reading regularly were the ‘Nation’ (America), the ‘National Education League Paper,’ and — we are proud to add — the ‘Shield’; and even after her power of fully keeping up with the literature of the subject ceased, she was always deeply interested in hearing in conversation the progress of our movement. We may mention, as a touching illustration of this interest, that her last finished piece of wool-work (her great relaxation) was the top of an ottoman, which is being made up, and is promised to Mrs. Butler for sale, the proceeds to go to the service of our cause.

“Mrs. Butler writes to us from abroad, saying:—

“ ‘I wish I were at home, to send you some extracts from Harriet Martineau’s wonderfully powerful and beautiful letters to me on our question. Surely I might quote them now! I have only one with me, — the last, — full of vigour and hope about our cause, and of sympathy Edition: current; Page: [592] with the men and women who are working in it. After many shrewd remarks showing her characteristic scorn of some of the miserable arguments used to support the evil system, she suddenly breaks off with these touching words, — the last she wrote to me, — “But it is getting dark, and I am tired, so farewell, beloved friend. Yours to the end, Harriet Martineau.” ’

“To the end! Faithful to the end to the cause of liberty, justice, and purity, faithful to the end to the cause of the white slaves of Europe as she had been faithful to the cause of the black slaves of America, so died Harriet Martineau, full of hope about our cause and of sympathy with the men and women who are working in it. A noble life followed by a noble death!”

“The Saturday Review,” in a good obituary notice, names the “views” of Mr. Atkinson and herself as “what is now called Agnosticism”; which is, being interpreted, the truth wherever one finds it.

The American press was truly appreciative.

The Boston “Daily Advertiser” gave a column to “this illustrious woman.”

The “Nation” says:—

“One looks in vain, indeed, for a parallel to this remarkable woman as a moulder of public opinion through the press and through printed works.”

In the Harpers’ publications are many memorials.

“One of the most remarkable women that this [England] or any country has produced. . . . . She did things that have never been done by a single mind. Whatever she touched she may be said to have more or less adorned. Devotional books, poetry, fiction, travels, metaphysics, juvenile tales, philosophy, history, have all in turn occupied her mind; and she thrice refused a pension.”

From the “Christian Union,” July 5, 1876:—

“In Harriet Martineau, whose death occurred on Tuesday night, the world loses one of the most conspicuous intellects of the time. It is unnecessary to say that she was pre-eminent in her own sex, for she had but few peers intellectually in the world around. The list of her literary works is a long one, extending over almost the whole of her long life. Her first work, “Devotional Exercises for Young Persons,” Edition: current; Page: [593] was published in 1823, and until 1866, or thereabouts, she was a frequent contributor to the current literature of the day. . . . . Miss Martineau’s religious life has been identified with the Unitarian denomination. Many of her hymns have, however, found their way into the Orthodox collections, and her religious writings are full of thought, although to our thinking her conclusions were in many respects unsound. That she will be remembered as one of the most vigourous thinkers of her generation there is not the slightest doubt.”

One is surprised to find the following in the “Spiritual Magazine” of the month: —

ON THE DEATH OF HARRIET MARTINEAU.

We mourn the loss of her whose noblest powers

Were all devoted to the common good.

Whether at Ambleside in quiet hours,

Amid its lakes and mountain solitude;

In “Eastern Life, its Present and its Past,” —

The cradle of the faiths that rule the world;

Where sphinx and pyramid, and desert vast,

Temples and cities, long to ruin hurled,

Speak of the mysteries of our human fate;

The mouldering shrines deserted and forgot,

Hopes which still cling to hearts made desolate,

And powers whose purposes we fathom not; —

Dear was the truth, gathered in any clime,

To her, the foremost woman of our time.

T. S.

There was a similar tribute in the “Secular Chronicle,” and thus did all, even parties most opposed, concur in praise.

The day seemed darkened to the village of Ambleside the morning after her death. To the two delicate sisters, the Misses Backhouse, with beautiful singing voices, who used to come to The Knoll to see “Caroline” and “Marianne” on Sundays and New Year’s days, and go home cheered in their lonely life; to the four widows who made a part of the Christmas party she gave for her domestics every year; to Saul, the coachman, whom she so rejoiced to see taking the pledge and giving up drink, and who, although he knew she could not hear, used, for the gratification of his own reverential feelings, to go to her terrace to wish Edition: current; Page: [594] her a happy New Year to the sound of his violin; to Mrs. Saul, his wife, who was with her in attendance as nurse to the last, — both full of memories of her helpfulness to them in the bringing up and placing of their family in life; to Messrs. Stalker, Bell, Mason, Leighton, Newton, Hawkrigg, — all dwelling with affectionate respect on the pleasure they had as young men in helping to build and furnish her house; to the inhabitants of her cottages, one of whom never forgot to send the rare pansies he cultivated, because “she and Miss Jane loved those flowers;” and to Miss Nicholson and Mrs. Freeman, who retired from the post-office five years ago, but still kept up their attachment to her to the last day, with deepest sympathy and many an offer of thoughtful kindness, — to these and to all the region round a light seemed to have gone out of this life. And to all the surrounding neighbourhood that similarity of taste and education and the wish to do good had drawn into her society, — to them life seemed to have less to offer now that she was gone.

During that last night that she lay at The Knoll before being removed for her funeral at Birmingham, her coffin was heaped with flowers by unknown hands, even as she had filled the place with multiplied blessings.

At her funeral the Rev. Charles Clarke read the lessons and prayers contained in the service-book which is commonly used by English Presbyterians, and between the lessons and prayers, addressing the mourners and friends of the departed who were present, he said: —

“We are every one members one of another. No one can tell how great is our dependence upon, how much we receive from, and — when the influence is for our good, and is expressive of the Divine will — how much we are benefited by one another. During twenty years and more it has been known to most of us that there was a servant of God and of righteousness, whom we knew, dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Cumberland Lakes, whose health was much impaired, and who might at any moment be called from the things seen, which are temporal, to the things not seen, which are eternal. We knew that, having to suffer, and to be in a state of weakness, of waiting, and of uncertainty, and looking straight at the wonder, the mystery of death, she bore herself with sweetness, was resigned and Edition: current; Page: [595] cheerful; and that all the while, to the utmost measure of the strength which was given her, she worked, and, as had been her habit in the days of her health, filled every available moment with the signs of her love of her fellow-beings, and of her concern with whatsoever might ameliorate their lot, and give higher meanings and worth to their existence. What was thus known of her manner of life would have inexpressible value, and be treasured by those nearest her, as making the family yet more rich in the memories and things for which it is every where always lawful to strive. But there were many of her fellow-beings who, if they had any, had only a slight personal acquaintance with her, and who yet were helped by what they heard or knew of her nobleness, her fidelity to conscience, her truth, and her courage. For these things clear the air, and seem to take the mist from men’s eyes, and open a way before them. To many the days bring perplexity, occasions for self-distrust and shame; to resist evil is, they know, not easy; to meet the claims of duty is not easy; and there is perhaps no resource for these weaker ones which is so uplifting and so real as the conduct, in their own day and time, of one who strives to be, and is, through long seasons of trial, obedient, responsive, and faithful, to what to her is highest and best. We are now, at the call of God’s providence, to approach the grave which is to receive her remains; and what can we say? What do we know? There has been no unveiling. We can speak, not of our actual knowledge, but only of our trusts. The grave is at the end of much; it is, we believe, at the beginning of more. ‘Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ At this time of trial we rely on the instincts of our nature, on what our hearts do assure us; and further, we rely on the teachers whom God has commissioned to give us words of comfort, and high warrant for our trust. And our hope is in God. He is not unrighteous. He will not forget the toils and sorrows of his children. And seeing that great matters pertaining to the future are not and cannot be made plain to the capacities which we now have, what is most to be desired is that we be found, by God’s help, doing the things which are right, for we may be certain that the life more abundant — the life eternal — must be the issue and flower of the life which we now live.”

Very many of her own and of other lands, who wished that the name of this greatest Englishwoman might give an added glory to

“The temple where the dead

Are honored by the nations,”

Edition: current; Page: [596]

checked the half-formed expression of their wish, just as they forbear to plant flowers where she is buried; as knowing that for herself her feelings would have shunned such obsequies.

She lies with her kindred, and only the north-wind sheds rose-leaves upon her grave.

“But from whomsoever Persephone accepteth atonement made for an ancient woe, their souls unto the light she sendeth back. And from those souls spring noble kings, and men swift and strong, and in wisdom very great; and through the after-time such souls are called holy heroes among men.”

THE END.

Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

*

“Fear only has its seat,” says Schiller, “where heavy and shapeless masses prevail, and the gloomy outlines waver between uncertain boundaries. Man rises superior to every terror of Nature as soon as he is able to give it a form, and can make it a definite object. When he begins to assert his independence against Nature as an appearance, he also asserts his dignity against Nature as a power, and in all freedom stands up boldly before his gods. He tears away the masks from the spectres which terrified his childhood; and they surprise him with his own image; for they are merely his own imaginations.”

*

As Comte pithily puts it, the three reformers who were all living at the same time, provided among them for the total demolition of Christianity, — Luther having overthrown the discipline, Calvin the hierarchy, and Socinus the dogma.

*

Mr. G. Smith, of the firm of Smith, Elder & Co.

*

Interpretation of Nature. Chapter I.

†

Ibid.

*

Frederic Knight Hunt.

*

See Vol. I. p. 61.

*

This was the “Addresses,” the second “Book of Devotions,” 1826.

*

Vol. I. p. 1.

*

Mrs. Browning’s “Vision of the Poets.”

*

See Vol. I. p. 57.

*

I think “Pemberton and its Politics” is the “Brook Farm” of the Political Economy series.

*

The sister of her betrothed.

*

Her youngest and favourite sister.

†

Rev. Benjamin Mardon, Secretary of the Unitarian Association.

*

Vol. I. p. 100.

*

From “The Charmed Sea,” Illustrations Political Economy, Vol. V.

*

See page of resolutions, ante.

*

William Stoker, then a boy of thirteen, the only son of her landlady.

†

Elliot Cresson, who tried to deceive her about the colonization society.

*

This was the unsatisfactory full-length portrait that hung so long at Lord Londonderry’s; and which was pronounced by brother painters “an atrocity.”

†

Queen Adelaide.

*

The poor-law tale.

*

“I tell the tale as ’t is told to me.” — Note by Mrs. Gilman.

*

Except her mother. — Note by Mrs. Gilman.

*

There was great difficulty in obtaining this number of signatures. Not a single one was furnished from any theological seminary, while a counter petition was numerously and spontaneously signed by most prominent and influential men in the community. In Mr. Loring’s original draft there were two additional grounds of opposition to religious prosecutions: 1. That belief, not being voluntary, cannot rightfully be rewarded or punished; 2. That in so important a matter as what a man believes to be true, on subjects of a practical bearing, the expression of it is not only his right, but a clear duty to others. These seemed to Dr. Channing, who headed the petition, to savour too much of the metaphysics of Unitarianism to be admissible in a document intended for general signature.(!) To one neither metaphysician nor Unitarian it would certainly seem that if there ever did exist practical universal truths, making a part of the very nature of things, these are they. In deference to him, they were, however, omitted. But this was the character of that good man’s mind. He constantly needed the admonition of the French statesman, conveyed in his definition of a bétise, — “C’est oublier la chose essentielle.”

*

Essay on Moral Independence. Miscellanies, p. 179, Boston edition.

*

Three months previous.

*

“Je sais bien que batailler n’est pas mon ouvrage,” says the old chronicle, of Joan of Arc.

*

English edition.

*

David Lee Child, Esq., of the United States.

*

Westminster Review.

*

Misconduct of the agent of the firm in America.

*

Bishops of Chichester and Durham.

†

Lord Belper.

*

Editor of the Times.

*

See Miscellanies.

*

For the reform of the theatre.

*

Afterwards Sir Charles Lyell.

*

Since Mrs. Foster.

*

Daughter of Joseph Pease of Darlington, and afterwards the wife of Dr. Nichol, the astronomer.

*

The organ of the American Antislavery Society, at that time and after edited by Sydney Howard Gay, Edmund Quincy, and James Russell Lowell.

*

Mrs. Sartoris.

*

His daughter.

*

Mrs. Martineau’s farm-servant.

*

In Fraser’s Magazine.

*

That there is but one method for all subjects.

*

These gentlemen declared he had never tried; they were aghast at the appearance of the article.

*

See Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë.

*

Afterwards Mrs. Foster.

*

Professor Croome Robertson holds the chair in University College.

*

Results of the Census of 1851. Westminster Review for April, 1854. No. CXX.

*

This gallant, devoted young man said, “Ten thousand of us must fall, and all will then go right.”

*

This was her abbreviation for Louis Napoleon.

*

Mr. Councillor R. F. Martineau, of Birmingham.

*

Her niece, Miss Jane Martinean.

*

Mrs. Butler afterward said, “When I mentioned Harriet Martineau as sympathizing with them, a bright gleam passed over their faces, from town to town as I went.”

*

Her health was then so frail that precaution was needed in the examination of correspondence.

*

After the above was in the drawer of the “Daily News” office, she wrote some historical fiction for “Once a Week” against her own judgment, and only to gratify Mr. Evans and Mr. Lucas, the proprietor and editor of “Once a Week.”

*

The paper here alluded to Miss Nightingale had sent to Harriet Martineau, with an expression of reverential feeling. “She ought not to have said that,” was the instinctive utterance on receiving it.

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