Harriet Martineau
and Practice_ was so warmly received in the circle to which it was
suited that the publisher called for a sequel, which was accordingly
written early in the following year.
There was a vast quantity of writing in all these publications; and,
besides this, she was continually at work with her needle. Such
unremitting sedentary occupation, together with her sorrow, caused a
serious illness, from which she suffered during 1828. It was an
affection of the liver and stomach, for which she went to be treated
by her brother-in-law, Mr. Greenhow, a surgeon at Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Her remarkable powers of steady application, and her untiring industry,
were always[6] amongst her most noteworthy characteristics--as,
indeed, is proved by the vast quantity of work she achieved. In each
of her various illnesses, friends who had watched with wonder and
alarm how much she wrote, and how unceasingly she worked, either with
pen, or book, or needle in hand, told her that her suffering was
caused by her merciless industry. Her "staying power" was great; she
rarely felt utterly exhausted, and therefore she was impatient of
being told that she had, in fact, over-exerted her strength.
Sometimes, indeed, she admitted that she worked too much, and pleaded
only that she could not help it--that the work needed doing, or that
the thoughts pressed for utterance, and she could not refuse the call
of duty. But more often she said, as in a letter to Mr. Atkinson,
which lies before me, "My best aid and support in the miseries of my
life has been in _work_--in the intellectual labor which I believe has
done me nothing but good." So her immense industry in 1827 may have
seemed to her a relief from her heart-sorrows at the moment; but none
the less it probably was the chief cause of her partial breakdown in
the next year. A blister relieves internal inflammation; but a
succession of such stimuli too long continued will exhaust the
strength, and render the condition more critical than it would have
been without such treatment.
[6] "I should think there never was such an industrious
lady," said the maid who was with her for the last eleven
years of her life; "when I caught sight of her, just once,
leaning back in her chair, with her arms hanging down, and
looking as though she wasn't even thinking about anything,
it gave me quite a turn. I felt she _must_ be ill to sit
like that!"
At Newcastle there was a brief cessation from work, under the doctor's
orders. But in the middle of 1828 Harriet began to write again for the
_Repository_, in response to an appeal put forth by the editor for
gratuitous literary aid. That editor was the well-known Unitarian
preacher, William Johnston Fox, of South Place Chapel. Mr. Fox became
Harriet Martineau's first literary friend. He had no money with which
to reward her work for his magazine; but he paid her amply in a course
of frank, full, and generous private criticism and encouragement. "His
correspondence with me," she says, "was unquestionably the occasion,
and, in great measure, the cause, of the greatest intellectual
progress I ever made before the age of thirty." Mr. Fox was so acute a
critic that he ere long predicted that "she would be one of the first
authors of the age if she continued to write;" while, at the same
time, he offered suggestions for improvement, and made corrections in
her work upon occasion. Her advance in literary capacity was now very
rapid. Her style went on improving, as it should do, till her latest
years; but it now first became an _individual_ one, easy, flowing,
forcible, and often most moving and eloquent.
During the latter half of 1828 and the early part of the succeeding
year, she contributed, more or less, to nearly every monthly number of
the _Repository_, without receiving any payment. She wrote essays,
poems, and so-called reviews, which last, however, were really
thoughtful and original papers, suggested by the subject of a new
book. Some of these contributions were signed "V"; but others,
including all the reviews, were anonymous.
Most of these articles are on philosophical subjects, and are written
with the calmness of style suitable to logical and argumentative
essays. In the _Repository_ for February, 1829, and the succeeding
month, for instance, there appeared two papers, headed, "On the Agency
of Feelings in the Formation of Habits," which are simply an accurate,
clear, and forcibly-reasoned statement of the philosophical doctrine
of Association, with which that of Necessity is inseparably connected.
These were, it has been already observed, the theories by which she
was learning both to guide her own action and to see that society is
moulded, however unconsciously, as regards most of the individuals
composing it. A clearer statement of the doctrines, or a more forcible
indication of how they can be made to serve as a moral impulse, cannot
be imagined. Here is very different work from _Devotional Exercises_,
or _Principle and Practice_. But it brought its author neither fame
nor money.
Another piece of work done in 1828, or early in the following year,
was a _Life of Howard_, which was written on a positive commission
from a member of the Committee of Lord Brougham's "Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," who promised her thirty pounds for it.
The MS. was at first said to be lost at the office; eventually she
found that its contents were liberally cribbed by the writer of the
_Life_ which was published; but she never received a penny of the
promised payment. These were her times of stress, and struggle, and
suffering, and disappointment, in literature as in ordinary life. Her
great success, when at last it did come, was so sudden that her
previous work was obscured and pushed out of sight in the blaze of
triumph. But these years of labor, unrecognized and almost unrewarded,
must not be left out of our view, if we would judge fairly of her
character. Courage, resolution, self-reliance, determination to
conquer in a field once entered upon, are displayed by her quiet
industrious perseverance through those laborious years. Harriet
Martineau did not make a sudden and easy rush far up the ladder of
fame all at once; her climb, like that of most great men and women,
was arduous and slow, and her final success proved not only that she
had literary ability, but also the strength of character which could
work on while waiting for recognition.
Fresh trouble was yet impending. After Mr. Martineau's death, his son
Henry remained a partner in the weaving business which the father had
carried on so long; and the incomes (small, but sufficient for a
maintenance) of the widow and unmarried daughters had to be paid out
of the profits of the factory. Just three years after Mr. Martineau's
death, however, in June, 1829, the old house became bankrupt, with but
small assets. Mrs. Martineau and her daughters were thus deprived
suddenly of all means of support.
The whole family met this final blow to their fortunes with calm
courage. It was soon settled that the two girls who possessed all
their senses should go out to teach; but Harriet could not be set to
work in the same way--for pupils could not easily be found who would
say their lessons into an ear-trumpet. The husband of the lady brought
up by Mrs. Martineau with her youngest daughter tells me that upon
this occasion Harriet's mother said to her adopted child, "I have no
fear for any of my daughters, except poor Harriet; the others can
work, but, with her deafness, I do not know how _she_ can ever earn
her own bread!"
The first resource for Harriet was fancy work of different kinds. "I
could make shirts and puddings," she declares, "and iron, and mend,
and get my bread by my needle, if necessary--as it was necessary, for
a few months, before I won a better place and occupation with my pen."
During the winter which followed the failure of the old Norwich house,
she spent the entire daylight hours poring over fancy-work, by which
alone she could with certainty earn money. But she did not lay aside
the sterner implement of labor for that bright little bread-winner,
the needle. After dark she began a long day's literary labor in her
own room.
Every night, I believe, I was writing till two, or even three, in
the morning, obeying always the rule of the house of being present
at the breakfast-table as the clock struck eight. Many a time I
was in such a state of nervous exhaustion and distress that I was
obliged to walk to and fro in the room before I could put on paper
the last line of a page, or the last half-sentence of an essay or
review. Yet was I very happy. The deep-felt sense of progress and
expansion was delightful; and so was the exertion of all my
faculties; and not least, that of Will to overcome my
obstructions, and force my way to that power of public speech of
which I believed myself more or less worthy.
She offered the results of this nightly literary toil to a great
number of magazine editors and publishers, but without the slightest
success. Totally unknown in London society, having no literary friends
or connections beyond the editor of the obscure magazine of her sect,
her manuscripts were scarcely looked at. Everything that she wrote was
returned upon her hands, until she offered it in despair to the
_Monthly Repository_, where she was as invariably successful. Her
work, when published there, however, brought her not an atom of fame,
and only the most trifling pecuniary return. She wrote to Mr. Fox,
when she found herself penniless, to tell him that it would be
impossible for her to continue to render as much gratuitous service as
she had been doing to the _Repository_; but he could only reply that
the means at his disposal were very limited, and that the utmost he
could offer her was L15 a year, for which she was to write "as much as
she thought proper." With this letter he forwarded her a parcel of
nine books to review, as a commencement. A considerable portion of the
space in his magazine was filled by Miss Martineau for the next two
years on these terms.
The essay previously referred to, on the "Agency of Feelings in the
Formation of Habits," which appeared in the _Repository_ for February
and March, 1829, was Harriet Martineau's first marked work. It was
followed up by a series, commencing in the August of the same year, of
"Essays on the Art of Thinking," which were continued in the magazine
until December, when two chapters were given in the one number, in
order, as the editor remarked, that his readers "might possess entire
in one volume this valuable manual of the Art of Thought."
"V," the writer of these articles, was supposed to be of the superior
sex. In those days, Mr. Fox would have shown rare courage if he had
informed his readers that they were "receiving valuable instruction"
in how to exercise their ratiocinative faculties from the pen of a
woman. In the Index, I find the references run--"V.'s" "Ode to
Religious Liberty"; _his_ "Last Tree of the Forest"; _his_ "Essays
on the Art of Thinking," etc., etc.
The "Essays on the Art of Thinking" are nothing less than an outline
of Logic. In substance, they present no great originality; but they
display full internal evidence that the thoughts presented were the
writer's own, and not merely copied from authority. It is really no
light test of clearness and depth of thought to write on an abstruse
science in lucid, perspicuous fashion, giving a brief but complete
view of all its parts in their true relations. Only an accurate
thinker, with a mind both capacious and orderly, can perform such a
task. The highest function of the human mind is, doubtless, that of