lady, with her small household, and room for an occasional guest....
The drawing-room has two large windows, one of which descends quite
to the floor, and is provided with two or three stone steps outside,
so that the inmates may readily step forth on to the terrace. Hunters
of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not merely to walk
round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to mount the steps
and flatten the tips of their noses against her window. Objectionable
as the liability to this friendly attention would be felt by most of
us, it was doubly so to Miss Martineau because of her deafness, which
precluded her from receiving warning of her admirers’ approaches by
the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel, so that the first
intimation she would receive of their presence would be to turn her
head by chance and find the flattened nose and the peering eyes against
the window-pane.
Her principles and her practice went hand-in-hand in her domestic
arrangements, as in her life generally; and her kitchen was as airy,
light and comfortable for her maids as her drawing-room was for
herself. The kitchen, too, was provided with a bookcase for a servants’
library. There lingers no small interest about the guest-chamber, where
Harriet Martineau received such guests as Charlotte Brontë, George
Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas Jerrold.... Climbing plants soon covered
“The Knoll” on every side. The ivy kept it green through all the year;
the porch was embowered in honeysuckle, clematis, passion-flower and
Virginia creeper. Wordsworth, Macready, and other friends of note
planted trees for Harriet below the terrace.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A capable housewife.]
Her housekeeping was always well done. Her own hands, indeed, as
well as her head, were employed in it on occasion. When in her home,
she daily filled her lamp herself. She dusted her own books, too,
invariably. Sometimes she did more. Soon after her establishment at the
lakes ... a lady who greatly reverenced her for her writings, called
upon her in her new home, accompanied by a gentleman friend. As the
visitors approached the house by the carriage-drive, they saw some one
perched on a set of kitchen steps, cleaning the drawing-room windows.
It was the famous authoress herself! She calmly went for her trumpet,
to listen to their business; and, when they had introduced themselves
she asked them in, and entered into an interesting conversation on
various literary topics. Before they left she explained, with evident
amusement at having been caught at her housemaid’s duties, that the
workmen had been long about the house; that this morning, when the
dirty windows might for the first time be cleaned, one of her servants
had gone off to marry a carpenter, and the other to see the ceremony;
and so the mistress, tired of the dirt, had set to work to wash and
polish the windows for herself.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Life at “The Knoll.”]
She rose very early; not infrequently, in the winter, before daylight;
and immediately set out for a good long walk. Sometimes, I am told,
she would appear at a farm-house, four miles off, before the cows were
milked. The old post-mistress recollects how, when she was making up
her early letter-bags, in the gray of the morning mists, Miss Martineau
would come down with her large bundle of correspondence, and never
failed to have a pleasant nod and smile, or a few kindly inquiries. “I
always go out before it is quite light,” writes Miss Martineau to Mr.
Atkinson ... “and in the fine mornings I go up to the hill behind the
church--the Kirkstone road.... When the little shred of moon that is
left, and the morning star, hang over Wansfell, among the amber clouds
of the approaching sunrise, it is delicious.”... Returning home, she
breakfasted at half-past seven; filled her lamp ready for the evening,
and arranged all household matters; and by half-past eight was at her
desk, where she worked undisturbed till two, the early dinner-time.
These business hours were sacred, whether there were visitors in the
house or not. After dinner, however, she devoted herself to guests, if
there were any.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Winter evenings at Ambleside.]
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.... 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 Shakespeare, or Tennyson, or
some dear old biography, or last new book from London--historical,
moral, or political. Then, when the house and neighborhood 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 two worlds, I saw now the
magnificent 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.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Miss Martineau as a hostess.]
The coach brought me to Miss Martineau’s gate at half-past six
yesterday evening, and she was there, with a beaming face, to welcome
me.... We have been trudging about, looking at cottages and enjoying
the sight of the mountains, spite of the rain and mist.... Miss M.
is charming in her own home--quite handsome from her animation and
intelligence. She came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed me
in the prettiest way this evening, telling me she was so glad she had
got me here.
MARIAN EVANS: _Letter to the Brays_, 1852.
* * * * *
Many of the most interesting little stories in it [her ‘Autobiography’]
about herself and others she had told me, ... when I was staying with
her, and almost in the very same words. But they were all the better
for being told in her silvery voice. She was a charming talker, and a
perfect lady in her manners as a hostess.
MARIAN EVANS [LEWES]: _Letter to Mrs. Bray_, 1877. ‘George Eliot’s
Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Personal appearance.]
In the porch stood Miss Martineau herself. A lady of middle height,
“inclined,” as the novelists say, “to embonpoint,” with a smile on
her kindly face, and her trumpet at her ear. She was at that time,
I suppose, about fifty years of age; her brown hair had a little
gray in it, and was arranged with peculiar flatness over a low, but
broad forehead. I don’t think she could ever have been pretty, but
her features were not uncomely, and their expression was gentle and
motherly.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: One of her letters described.]
Aunt Charles read us a clever letter from Harriet Martineau, combining
the smoker, the moralist, the political economist, the gossip, and the
woman.
CAROLINE FOX: _Journal_ (1849). ‘Memories of Old Friends.’
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Smoking.]
The degree of deafness, as I have said, varied; and she tried all sorts
of remedies. No one who knew her would suspect her of anything “fast”
or unfeminine, but under the advice of some scientific person, or
another, she tried smoking.
[Sidenote: Cigars.]
I had the privilege of providing her privately with some very mild
cigars, and many and many a summer night have we sat together for half
an hour or so in her porch at “The Knoll,” smoking. If some of the
good people, her neighbors, had known of _that_, it would, we agreed,
have really given them something to talk about. She only tried this
remedy, if I remember right, for a few months, but she fancied it had a
beneficial effect upon her hearing. For my part, I enjoyed nothing so
much as these evenings.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A chiboque.]
Sleepless nights were a source of great suffering to her in these
latest years. Under medical advice, she tried smoking as a means of
procuring better rest, with some success. She smoked usually through
the chiboque, which she had brought home with her from the East, and
which she had there learned to use, as she relates with her customary
simplicity and directness in the appendix to ‘Eastern Life’: “I found
it good for my health,” she says there, “and I saw no more reason why I
should not take it than why English ladies should not take their glass
of sherry at home--an indulgence which I do not need. I continued the
use of my chiboque for some weeks after my return, and then only left
it off because of the inconvenience.” When health and comfort were to
be promoted by it, she resumed it.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Charlotte Brontë’s account of a visit to Ambleside.]
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 labor. 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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Letter_ in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte
Brontë.’ London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her ear-trumpet.]
[Sidenote: Sense of humor.]
Owing to her keen intelligence, I found it difficult to realize her
extreme deafness, and used often to address her when she was not
prepared for it. She never lost her sense of the absurdity of this
practice, and I can see the laughter in her kind eyes now, as she
snatched up her trumpet. She loved a good-natured pleasantry, even at
her own expense.... A ludicrous incident happened. I had got so well
accustomed to her ear-trumpet that I began to look upon it as a part of
herself. It was lying on the table, a good distance away from her, and
having some remark to make to her, I inadvertently addressed it to the
instrument, instead of her ear. Heavens, how we laughed! She had a very
keen sense of fun, of which, however, she was quite unconscious.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “Not to be judged by writings alone.”]
Of my kind hostess, I cannot speak in terms too high. Without
being able to share all her opinions--philosophical, political,
or religious--I yet find a worth and greatness in herself, and a
consistency, and benevolence, and perseverance 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 noble. 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 neighbors love as well as respect her.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Letter_ in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “Proud, not vain.”]
Proud, I think she was, but not in the least vain; and the pride was
rather the consciousness of power, and the _un_conscious sense, so to
speak, of absolute rectitude and truthfulness.... 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.
HENRY G. ATKINSON: _Letter to Maria Weston Chapman_, published in the
latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her egotism.]
[Sidenote: Her conception of heaven.]
Are not nearly all recent autobiographers egotists? A number of such
works have appeared during the last ten years, and the position of
the autobiographer has been in nearly every case the same,--namely,
that God did a good thing when he made him; but that he should have
made anybody else, and should have taken an interest in the other
individual equal to that which he manifested in the autobiographer, is
a proposition which he cannot bring himself for a moment to consider.
Two books in which this view is conspicuous are the autobiographies of
John Quincy Adams and Miss Harriet Martineau. Carlyle is a mild egotist
beside these writers. Adams does not speak of himself as an individual,
but as a cause which he has espoused. Of the two, Miss Martineau is
the more naïve. She is for arranging the world entirely from her own
point of view. For instance, she attacked the late Lord Lytton, because
he did not carry an ear-trumpet. Lord Lytton was deaf, and preferred
not to carry an ear-trumpet. Miss Martineau was deaf also, and did
carry one. She did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and was
very hard upon any one who was of a contrary opinion. Her heaven, had
her belief permitted her to have one, would have been a place where
they all sat round with ear-trumpets and derided the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul.
---- ----: ‘Zweibak: or, Notes of a Professional Exile,’ in _The
Century_, February, 1886.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her lofty stand in money matters.]
It is well known that a pension was offered to her by three
Prime-ministers in succession--Earl Grey, Lord John Russell, and Mr.
Gladstone--which, like Cæsar, she “did thrice refuse,” it being against
her principles to burden the State with any such obligation. And yet
she was entirely dependent upon that reed, the pen, for subsistence.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her needlework.]
She had a liking for the occupation [needlework] and continued to do
much of it all through her life. Many of her friends can show handsome
pieces of fancy work done by her hands. Again and again she contributed
to public objects by sending a piece of her own beautiful needlework to
be sold for the benefit of a society’s funds. Not even in the busiest
time of her literary life did she ever entirely cease to exercise her
skill in this feminine occupation. In fact, she made wool-work her
artistic recreation.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: An Ambleside story.]
A right of way was in dispute, at one time, through certain fields (a
portion, I think, of Rydal Park), in the neighborhood of Ambleside,
and the owner closed them to the public. Miss Martineau, though a
philanthropist on a large scale, could also (which is not so common
with that class) pick up a pin for freedom’s sake, and play the part
of a village Hampden. When the rest of her neighbors shrank from
this contest with the Lord of the Manor, she took up the cudgels for
them, and “the little tyrant of those fields withstood.” She alone,
not, indeed, “with bended bow and quiver full of arrows,” but with
her ear-trumpet and umbrella, took her walk through the forbidden
land, as usual. Whereupon the wicked lord (so runs the story, though
I never heard it from her own lips) put a young bull into the field.
He attacked the trespasser, or at all events prepared to attack her,
but the indomitable lady faced him and stood her ground. She was quite
capable of it, for she had the courage of her opinions, ... and, at
all events, whether from astonishment at her presumption, or terror of
the ear-trumpet (to which, of course, he had nothing to say), the bull
in the end withdrew his opposition, and suffered her to pursue her way
in peace. I wish I could add that she had the good-fortune of another
patriotic lady, “to take the tax away,” but I am afraid the wicked lord
succeeded in his designs. More than once, however, I have had pointed
out to me over the wall--for the bull was still there--the little
eminence wherefrom, with no weapon but her ear-trumpet (for she had her
umbrella over her head all the time to keep the sun off) this dauntless
lady withstood the horrid foe.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A good neighbor.]
I was pleased to find that, notwithstanding her heresies, the common
people in Ambleside held her in gentle and kindly remembrance. She was
a good neighbor, charitable to all, considerate toward the unlettered,
never cynical or ill-tempered, always cheerful and happy as the roses
and ivy of “The Knoll” she so much loved.
MONCURE D. CONWAY, in _Harper’s Magazine_, January, 1881.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her manner of working.]
I wrote a vulgar, cramped, untidy scrawl till I was past twenty; till
authorship made me forget manner in matter, and gave freedom to my
hand. After that I did very well, being praised by compositors for
legibleness first, and in course of time for other qualities.... I
found that it would not do to copy what I wrote, and discontinued
the practice forever--thus saving an immense amount of time which, I
humbly think, is wasted by other authors. There was no use in copying
it. I did not alter; and if ever I did alter, I had to change back
again; and I, once for all, committed myself to a single copy.... I
have always used the same method in writing. I have always made sure
of what I meant to say, and then written it down without care or
anxiety--glancing at it again only to see if any words were omitted
or repeated, and not altering a single phrase in a whole work. I
mention this because I think I perceive that great mischief arises
from the notion that botching in the second place will compensate for
carelessness in the first.... It has always been my practice to devote
my best strength to my work, and the morning hours have therefore been
sacred to it, from the beginning. I never pass a day without writing,
and the writing is always done in the morning. I have seldom written
anything more serious than letters by candlelight. [While at work on
the ‘Political Economy Tales’] on an average I wrote twelve pages a
day on large letter paper (quarto, I believe it is called), the page
containing thirty-three lines.
[Sidenote: Desk, etc.]
The impending war [1853] rendered desirable an 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.... 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
labor, 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, ... but it was radically uncomfortable;
and I have ever since written on a table, and with quill pens. Now I
was to begin on a new and luxurious method--just, as it happened, at
the close of my life’s work. Mr. Chapman obtained for me a first-rate
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, suitable to eyes which were now feeling the
effects of years and over-work.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Appearance of MS.]
I have seen the original manuscript of one of the ‘Political Economy
Tales.’ The writing has evidently been done as rapidly as the hand
could move; every word that will admit of it is contracted, to save
time. “Socy.,” “opporty.,” “agst.,” “abt.,” “independce.,” these were
amongst the abbreviations submitted to the printer’s intelligence;
not to mention commoner and more simple words, such as “wh.,”
“wd.,” and the like. The calligraphy, though very readable, has a
somewhat slipshod look. Thus, there is every token of extremely rapid
composition. Yet the corrections on the MS. are few and trifling; the
structure of a sentence is never altered, and there are but seldom
emendations of even principal words. The manuscript is written (in
defiance of law and order), on both sides of the paper.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Fluctuations of mind about work.]
The fluctuations of mind which I underwent about every number of
my work, were as regular as the tides. I was fired with the first
conception, and believed that I had found a treasure. Then, while at
work, I alternately admired and despised what I wrote. When finished,
I was in absolute despair; and then, when I saw it in print, I was
surprised to see how well it looked.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: George Eliot on ‘The Crofton Boys.’]
What an exquisite little thing that is of Harriet Martineau’s--‘The
Crofton Boys!’ I have had some delightful crying over it. There are two
or three lines in it that would feed one’s soul for a month. Hugh’s
mother says to him, speaking of people who have permanent sorrow, “They
soon had a new and delicious pleasure, which none but the bitterly
disappointed can feel--the pleasure of rousing their souls to bear
pain, and of _agreeing with God silently_, when nobody knows what is in
their hearts.”
MARIAN EVANS: _Letter to Mrs. Bray_, 1845. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’
edited by J. W. Cross.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Carlyle on ‘Deerbrook’.]
How do you like it [Deerbrook]? people ask. To which there are serious
answers returnable, but few so good as none.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to Emerson_, 17th April, 1839.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: On ‘The Hour and the Man.’]
The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a very courageous heart.
She lives by the shore of the beautiful blue Northumbrian Sea;
“a many-sounding” solitude which I often envy her. She writes
unweariedly.... You saw her _Toussaint l’Ouvertour_; how she has
made such a beautiful “black Washington” ... of a rough-handed,
hard-hearted, semi-articulate, gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest
phasis that ‘Sansculottism’ _can_ exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism,
a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings! It is very beautiful.
Beautiful as a child’s heart,--and in so shrewd a head as that. She is
now writing express Children’s Tales, which I calculate I shall find
more perfect.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to Emerson_, 21st February, 1841.
‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Haworth Churchyard_, by Matthew Arnold.
[2] The portrait alluded to is probably the caricature by D. Maclise,
representing Miss Martineau seated, with a cat perched upon her
shoulder, before a cooking-stove.
AURORE DUPIN (DUDEVANT).
(GEORGE SAND.)
1804-1876.
AURORE DUPIN (DUDEVANT).
(GEORGE SAND.)