EARLY WOMANHOOD: DEVELOPING INFLUENCES.
Old Norwich, in the early years of this century, was a somewhat
exceptional place. It so chanced that besides the exclusiveness
natural even now to the society of a cathedral town--besides the
insular tone of thought and manners which most towns possessed in
those pre-railway days, and while our continental wars were holding
our country-people isolated from foreign nations--besides all this,
Norwich then prided herself upon having produced a good deal of
literary ability. Her William Taylor was considered to be almost the
only German scholar in England, and other men, whose names are now
nearly forgotten, but who in their day were looked up to as lights of
learning and literature--Sayers, Smith, Enfield, Alderson, and
others,--gave a tone to the society of Norwich, which, if somewhat
pedantic, was, nevertheless, favorable to the intellectual life. It is
no small testimony to the healthy and stimulating mental atmosphere of
old Norwich that there successively came out from her, in an age when
individuality and intellect in woman were steadily repressed, three
women of such mark as Amelia Opie, Elizabeth Fry and Harriet
Martineau.
But even in Norwich the repression just alluded to was felt by women.
Even there it was held, to say the least, peculiar and undesirable for
a girl to wish to study deep subjects. "When I was young," Miss
Martineau writes, "it was not thought proper for young ladies to study
very conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand." They were
required to be always ready "to receive callers, without any sign of
blue-stockingism which could be reported abroad. My first studies in
philosophy were carried on with great care and reserve.... I won time
for what my heart was set upon either in the early morning or late at
night."
It was thus at unseasonable hours, and without the encouraging support
of that public feeling of the value and desirability of knowledge, and
the honorableness of its acquisition, by which a young man's studies
are unconsciously aided, that Harriet in her young womanhood continued
to learn. She read Latin with her brother James, and translated from
the classics by herself. Her cousin, Mr. Lee, read Italian with her
and her sister; and in course of time they undertook the translation
of Petrarch's sonnets into English verse. She read Blair's Rhetoric
repeatedly. Her Biblical studies were continued until she was in that
position which, according to Macaulay, is necessary "for a critic of
the niceties of the English language;" she had "the Bible at her
fingers' ends."
But her solitary studies went also into heavier and less frequented
paths. Dr. Carpenter had taught her to interest herself in mental and
moral philosophy. She read about these subjects at first because he
had written upon them, and afterwards because she found them really
congenial to her mind. Locke and Hartley were the authors whom she
studied most closely. Then the works of Priestley, and the study of
his life and opinions--which she naturally undertook, because Dr.
Priestley was the great apostle and martyr of Unitarianism--led her to
make a very full acquaintance with the metaphysicians of the Scotch
school.
To how much purpose she thus read the best books then available, upon
some of the highest topics that can engage the attention, soon became
apparent when she began to write; but of this I must speak in due
course later on. Two other of the most important events, or rather
trains of events, in the history of her young womanhood, must be
mentioned first.
The earlier of these was the gradual oncoming and increase of her
deafness. She began to be slightly deaf while she was at Mr. Perry's
school, and the fact was there recognized so far as to cause her to be
placed next to her teacher in the class. How keenly she even then felt
this loss, she has in part revealed in the story of Hugh Procter; and
a few lines from an essay of hers on Scott may here be added:
"Few have any idea of the all-powerful influence which the sense of
personal infirmity exerts over the mind of a child. If it were known,
its apparent disproportionateness to other influences would, to the
careless observer, appear absurd; to the thoughtful it would afford
new lights respecting the conduct of educational discipline; it would
also pierce the heart of many a parent who now believes that he knows
all, and who feels so tender a regret for what he knows that even the
sufferer wonders at its extent. But this is a species of suffering
which can never obtain sufficient sympathy, because the sufferer
himself is not aware, till he has made comparison of this with other
pains, how light all others are in comparison."
As pathetically, but more briefly, she says about herself:--"My
deafness, when new, was the uppermost thing in my mind day and night."
Her inability to hear continued to increase by slow degrees during the
next six years; and when she was eighteen "a sort of accident"
suddenly increased it. Music had, until then, been one of her great
delights, and it shows how gradual was the progress of her deafness,
that she found herself able to hear at an orchestral concert, provided
she could get a seat with a back against which she could press her
shoulder-blades, for a long time after the music had become inaudible
without this assistance. Such a gradual deprivation of a most
important sense is surely far more trying than a quick, unexpected,
and obviously irremediable loss would be. The alternations of hope and
despair, the difficulty of inducing the sufferer's friends to
recognize how serious the case is, the perhaps yet greater difficulty
to the patient to resolutely step out of the ranks of ordinary people
and take up the position of one deficient in a sense, the
mortifications which have to be endured again and again both from the
ignorance of strangers and the mistaken sympathy of friends--all these
make up the special trial of one who becomes by degrees the subject of
a chronic affliction. No sensitive person can possibly pass through
this fiery trial unchanged. Such an experience must either refine or
harden; must either strengthen the powers of endurance or break down
the mind to querulous ill-temper; must either make self the centre of
creation or greatly add to the power of putting personal interests
aside for the sake of wider and more unselfish thoughts and feelings.
Which class of influences Harriet Martineau accepted from her trial
the history of her courageous, resolute life-work, and her devotion to
truth and duty as she saw them, will sufficiently show.
How much she suffered in mind was quite unknown to her family at the
time. She was always reserved in speaking about her own feelings and
emotions to her mother, and in this particular case Mrs. Martineau,
with the kindest intentions, discouraged, as far as possible, all
recognition of the growing infirmity. The society of Norwich had never
been very attractive to the young girl, who was above the average in
natural abilities, and still further removed from the petty and
frivolous gossip of the commonplace evening party, by the extensive
and elevating course of study through which her mind had passed. Had
she been well able to hear, she could have quietly accepted what such
intercourse could give her. This would have been much. Kindliness and
good feeling, common sense, and ideas about man and his circumstances,
are to be enjoyed and gained quite as much in ordinary as in what is
commonly called intellectual society. But in the freshness of her
sensitive suffering Harriet shrank from the Norwich evening parties.
Her mother, however, insisted upon her taking her full share of
visiting.
The case was made worse by the customary errors in the treatment of
deaf persons; namely, the endeavoring to keep up the illusion that she
was not deaf, the occasional assurances that she could hear as well as
ever if it were not for her habits of abstraction, and so forth, and
the imploring her to always ask when she did not hear what was said,
followed by scoldings (kindly meant, but none the less irritating to
the object) when it was found that she had been silently losing the
larger part of a conversation. False pride, pretence, and selfish
exactions were thus sought to be nourished in her; while the blessings
of an open recognition of her trouble, and a full and free sympathy
with her pain and her difficulty in learning to bear it, were at the
same time withheld.
I have spoken of this method of treatment of such a case as erroneous.
But in such a matter only those who have gone through the experience
and have come out of it at last, as she did, with the moral nature
strengthened, and the power of self-management increased, can be really
competent to express an opinion upon the proper method of behavior to
similar sufferers. I hasten to add, therefore, that in substance the
view that I have given is that expressed in Harriet Martineau's _Letter
to the Deaf_, published in 1834. In that remarkable fragment of
autobiography she appealed to the large number of people who suffered
like herself, to insist upon the frank recognition of their infirmity,
and to themselves acquiesce with patience in all the deprivations and
mortifications which the loss of a sense must bring. The revelation in
this essay of her own sufferings is most touching; and very noble and
beautiful is the way in which she urges that the misery must be met,
and the humiliation must be turned aside, by no other means than
courage, candor, patience, and an unselfish determination to consider
first the convenience and happiness of others instead of the sufferer's
own.
"Instead of putting the singularity out of sight we should
acknowledge it in words, prepare for it in habits, and act upon it
in social intercourse. Thus only can we save others from being
uneasy in our presence, and sad when they think of us. That we can
thus alone make ourselves sought and beloved is an inferior
consideration, though an important one to us, to whom warmth and
kindness are as peculiarly animating as sunshine to the caged
bird. This frankness, simplicity, and cheerfulness can only grow
out of a perfect acquiescence in our circumstances. Submission is
not enough. Pride fails at the most critical moment. But hearty
acquiescence cannot fail to bring forth cheerfulness. The thrill
of delight which arises during the ready agreement to profit by
pain (emphatically the joy with which no stranger intermeddleth)
must subside like all other emotions; but it does not depart
without leaving the spirit lightened and cheered; and every
visitation leaves it in a more genial state than the last.... I
had infinitely rather bear the perpetual sense of privation than
become unaware of anything which is true--of my intellectual
deficiences, of my disqualifications for society, of my errors in
matter of fact, and of the burdens that I necessarily impose on
those who surround me. We can never get beyond the necessity of
keeping in full view the worst and the best that can be made of
our lot. The worst is either to sink under the trial or to be made
callous by it. The best is to be as wise as possible under a great
disability, and as happy as possible under a great privation."
It is essential, for a correct understanding of her character, that
this great trial of her youth should be presented amidst the moulding
influences of that time with as much strength as it was experienced.
But it is difficult, within the necessary limits of quotation, to
convey an idea to the reader of either the intensity and bitterness of
the suffering revealed, or of the firmness and beauty of the spirit
with which the trial was met. Nor was the advice that she gave to
others mere talk, which she herself never put in practice. If her
family did not realize at the time how deeply she suffered, still less
could her friends in later life discover by anything in her manners
that her soul had been so searched and her spirits so tried. So
frankly and candidly, and with such an utter absence of affectation,
did she accept this condition of her life, that those around her
hardly realized that she felt it as a deprivation; and a few lines in
her autobiography, in which she mentions how conscious she was of
intellectual fatigue from the lack of those distractions to the mind
which enter continually through the normal ear, came like a painful
shock to her friends, making them feel that they had been unconscious
of a need ever present with her throughout life.
For some time after the deafness began, she did not use an
ear-trumpet. Like many in a similar position, she persuaded herself
that her deafness was not sufficiently great to cause any considerable
inconvenience to others in conversation. At length, however, she was
enlightened upon this point. An account appeared in a Unitarian paper
of two remarkable cures of deafness by galvanism, and Harriet's
friends persuaded her to try this new remedy. For a brief while, hope
was revived in her; the treatment threw her into a state of nervous
fever, during which she regained considerable sensibility in the organ
of hearing. The improvement was very temporary, but it lasted
sufficiently long to let her know how much her friends had been
straining their throats for her sake. From that time she invariably
carried and used an ear-trumpet, commencing with an india-rubber tube,
with a cup at the end for the speaker to take into his hand, but
afterwards employing an ordinary stiff trumpet.
Into this existence, which had hitherto been so full of sadness, there
came at length the bright-tinted and vivid shower of light, which
means so much to a woman. Love came to brighten the life so dark
hitherto for lack of that sunshine. Much as it is to any woman to know
herself beloved by the man whom she loves, to Harriet Martineau it was
even more than to most. It was not only that her character was a
strong one, and that to such a nature all influences that are accepted
become powerful forces, but besides this she had always loved more
than she had been loved; and her self-esteem had been systematically
suppressed by her mother's stern discipline, and afterwards injured by
the mortifications to which the on-coming of her deafness gave rise.
How much, in such a case, it must have been, when the hour at last
came for the history of the heart to be written! How delightful the
time when she could cherish in her thoughts a love which was at once
an equal friendship and a vivid passion! How great the revolution in
her mind when she found that the man whom she could love would choose
her from all the world of women to be his dearest, the partner of his
life!
It would be a proof, if proof were needed at this time of day, that it
is well-nigh impossible for any person to give a candid, full and
unerring record of his own past, and the circumstances in it which
have most influenced his development, to turn from the brief and
cursory record which Harriet Martineau's autobiography gives of this
attachment, to the complete story as I have it to tell, here and in a
future chapter.
The strongest of all the family affections of her childhood and youth
was that which she felt for her brother James. He was two years
younger than herself. They had been playmates in childhood, and
companions in study later on. Harriet's first attraction to Mr.
Worthington was that he was her brother's friend. The two young men
were fellow-students at college, preparing for the Unitarian ministry.
Worthington was already well known to Harriet from her brother's
letters before she saw him. He then went on a visit to Norwich, to
spend a part of the vacation with James, and the interest which the
friend and the sister already felt in each other, from their mutual
affection for the brother, soon ripened into love. This was, I
believe, in 1822, when she was twenty years old.
Her father and mother looked not unkindly upon the dawning of this
affection. The brother, however, who knew the two so well, felt quite
certain that they were not suited for each other. Harriet was of a
strong, decided temper, even somewhat arbitrary and hasty, quick in
her judgments, and firm in her opinions. The temperament of
Worthington, on the other hand, was, I am told, gentle, impressionable
and sensitive in the extreme. He was highly conscientious, and
ultra-tender in his treatment of the characters and opinions of
others. The two seemed in many respects the antipodes of each other.
He who knew them both best was convinced that they would not be happy
together, and that opinion he has never changed.
It is above all things difficult to predict beforehand whether two
apparently antagonistic characters will really clash and jar in the
close union of married life, or whether, on the contrary, the
deficiencies of the one will be supplemented by those opposite
tendencies which are rather in excess in the other. It is notorious
that marriages are seldom perfect matches in the view of outsiders;
the incongruities in the temperaments and the habits of life and
thought, are more easily discerned than the fusing influence of ardent
love can be measured. Nor, indeed, can the changes which will be
worked in the disposition by a surrender to the free play of emotion
be accurately foreseen. Considerations such as these, however, do not
have much weight in the mind of a young man whose experience of the
mysteries of the human heart is yet to come; and James Martineau was
strongly averse to the engagement of his sister and his friend. Their
attachment was not then permitted to become an engagement. Worthington
was poor--was still only a student--Harriet was supposed, at that
time, to be well portioned; the sensitive temperament of the young
lover felt the variety of discouragements placed in the path of his
affection, and so that affection which should have brought only joy
became, in fact, to Harriet the cause of sorrow, suspense and anxiety.
Yet its vivifying influence was felt, and the true happiness which is
inseparable from mutual love, however the emotion be checked and
denied its full expression, was not lacking. For some insight into
what Harriet Martineau knew and felt of love, we must look elsewhere
than in the formal record of the Autobiography.[3] But this, like all
the other chief events of her life, has found a place in her works
under a thin veiling of her personality. Let us see from one of her
early essays how Harriet Martineau learned to regard love. The essay
is called "In a Hermit's Cave."
[3] Mr. H. G. Atkinson writes to me: "She had written much
more at length (than is published) in her Autobiography about
her courtship; but she consulted me about publishing it, and
I advised her not to do so--the matter counted for so little
in such a life as hers." The quotation which I give here
shows for what it did really count in the history of her
mental development. But so difficult must it needs be for the
writer of an autobiography to speak frankly of the more
sacred experiences of the life, that it is not surprising
that Harriet Martineau "destroyed what she had written," when
so advised by the friend whom she consulted. I need only add
that the many new details about the facts of this matter,
which I am able to give, I have received from two of her own
generation, both of whom were very intimate friends of hers
at the time when all this occurred.
"The place was not ill-chosen by the holy man, if the
circumstances could but have been adapted to that highest
worship--the service of the life.... But there is yet wanting the
altar of the human heart, on which alone a fire is kindled from
above to shine in the faces of all true worshippers for ever.
Where this flame, the glow of human love, is burning, there is the
temple of worship, be it only beside the humblest village hearth:
where it has not been kindled there is no sanctuary; and the
loftiest amphitheatre of mountains, lighted up by the ever-burning
stars, is no more the dwelling-place of Jehovah than the Temple of
Solomon before it was filled with the glory of the Presence....
"Yes, Love is worship, authorized and approved.... Many are the
gradations through which this service rises until it has reached
that on which God has bestowed His most manifest benediction, on
which Jesus smiled at Cana, but which the devotee presumed to
decline. Not more express were the ordinances of Sinai than the
Divine provisions for wedded love; never was it more certain that
Jehovah benignantly regarded the festivals of His people than it
is daily that He has appointed those mutual rejoicings of the
affections, which need but to be referred to Him to become a holy
homage. Yet there have been many who pronounce common that which
God has purified, and reject or disdain that which He has
proffered and blest. How ignorant must such be of the growth of
that within! How unobservant of what passes without! Would that
all could know how from the first flow of the affections, until
they are shed abroad in their plentitude, the purposes of creation
become fulfilled. Would that all could know how, by this mighty
impulse, new strength is given to every power; how the intellect
is vivified and enlarged; how the spirit becomes bold to explore
the path of life, and clear-sighted to discern its issues.... For
that piety which has humanity for its object--must not that heart
feel most of which tenderness has become the element? Must not the
spirit which is most exercised in hope and fear be most familiar
with hope and fear wherever found?
"How distinctly I saw all this in those who are now sanctifying
their first Sabbath of wedded love.... The one was at peace with
all that world which had appeared so long at war with him. He
feared nothing, he possessed all; and of the overflowings of his
love he could spare to every living thing. The other thought of no
world but the bright one above, and the quiet one before her, in
each of which dwelt one in whom she had perfect trust.... In her
the progression has been so regular, and the work so perfect, that
any return to the former perturbations of her spirit seems
impossible. She entered upon a new life when her love began; and
it is as easy to conceive that there is one Life Giver to the
body, and another to the spirit, as that this progression is not
the highest work of God on earth, and its results abounding to His
praise.... To those who know them as I know them, they appear
already possessed of an experience in comparison with which it
would appear little to have looked abroad from the Andes, or
explored the treasure-caves of the deep, or to have conversed with
every nation under the sun. If they could see all that the eyes of
the firmament look upon, and hear all the whispered secrets that
the roving winds bear in their bosoms, they could learn but little
new; for the deepest mysteries are those of human love, and the
vastest knowledge is that of the human heart."
Even more vividly, at a later period, she told something of her
experiences in one of her fictions, under the guise of a conversation
between a young husband and wife:--
"Do you really think there are any people that have passed through
life without knowing what that moment was, that stir in one's
heart on being first sure that one is beloved? It is most like the
soul getting free of the body and rushing into Paradise, I should
think. Do you suppose anybody ever lived a life without having
felt this?"
Walter feared it might be so; but, if so, a man missed the moment
that made a man of one that was but an unthinking creature before;
and a woman the moment best worth living for....
"It seems to me," said Effie, "that though God has kindly given
this token of blessedness to all--or to so many that we may nearly
say all--without distinction of great or humble, rich or poor, the
great and the lowly use themselves to the opposite faults. The
great do not seem to think it the most natural thing to marry
where they first love; and the lowly are too ready to love."
"That is because the great have too many things to look to besides
love; and the lowly have too few. The rich have their lighted
palaces to bask in, as well as the sunshine; and they must have a
host of admirers, as well as one bosom friend. And when the poor
man finds that there is one bliss that no power on earth can shut
him out from, and one that drives out all evils for the time--one
that makes him forget the noon-day heats, and one that tempers the
keen north wind, and makes him walk at his full height when his
superiors lounge past him in the street--no wonder he is eager to
meet it, and jogs the time-glass to make it come at the soonest.
If such a man is imprudent, I had rather be he than one that first
lets it slip through cowardice, and would then bring it back to
gratify his low ambition!"
"And for those who let it go by for conscience sake, and do not
ask for it again?"
"Why, they are happy in having learned what _the one feeling is
that life is worth living for_. They may make themselves happy upon
it for ever, after that. Oh! Effie, you would not believe, nothing
could make you believe, what I was the day before and the day after
I saw that sudden change of look of yours that told me all. The one
day, I was shrinking inwardly from everything I had to do, and
every word of my father's, and everybody I met; and was always
trying to make myself happy in myself alone, with the sense of God
being near me and with me. The other day, I looked down upon
everybody, in a kindly way; and yet I looked up to them, too, for I
felt a respect that I never knew before for all that were suffering
and enjoying; and I felt as if I could have brought the whole world
nearer to God, if they would have listened to me. I shall never
forget the best moment of all--when my mind had suddenly ceased
being in a great tumult, which had as much pain as pleasure in it.
When I said distinctly to myself, 'She loves me,' Heaven came down
round about me that minute."[4]
[4] _Illustrations of Political Economy_: "A Tale of the
Tyne," pp. 54, _et seq._ This passage is doubly interesting
from the fact that Mr. Malthus, the discoverer of the
Population Law, sent specially to thank her for having
written it.
This tells how Harriet Martineau could love in her youth. Perhaps the
stream ran all the more powerfully for its course being checked; for
it was over three years after she met and became attached to Mr.
Worthington before their love was allowed to be declared, and their
engagement was permitted--a long period for hope and fear to do their
painful office in the soul, a long test of the reality of the love on
both sides.
Her extensive and deep studies, her sufferings and inward strivings
from her deafness, and the joys and anxieties of her love, were the
chief moulding influences of her early womanhood. We shall soon see
how she came to seek expression for the results of all these in
literature.