Harriet Martineau
acquaintance. The sterner virtues in Cousin Marshall, in Lady F----,
in Ella of Garveloch, and in Mary Kay, are no less clearly and
attractively depicted than the milder and more passive ones in the
patience of Christian Vanderput, in the unconscious devotion to duty
of Nicholas, in the industry and hopefulness of Frank and Ellen
Castle, in the wifely love and agony of Hester Morrison, in the quiet
public spirit of Charles Guyon, in the proved patriotism of the Polish
exiles, and in a dozen other instances. Her feelings and her spirit
are at home in depicting these virtues of the character; but none the
less does she well succeed in realizing both vice and folly. Her real
insight into character was quite remarkable; as Dr. Martineau observed
to me, when he said, "My sister's powers of observation were
extraordinary." If, on the one hand, her deafness often prevented her
from appreciating the delicacies and the chances of verbal expression
(which really reveal so much of the nature) in those around her, so
that she was apt to draw sharper lines than most people do between the
sheep and the goats in her estimation; on the other hand, she saw more
than those whose minds are distracted by sounds, the light and play of
the countenance, and the indications of character in trivial actions.
The excellence of her character-drawing in these novels gives abundant
evidence that the disqualification was more than counterbalanced by
the cultivation of the other faculty.
The unconsciousness of her mental analysis is at once its greatest
charm and the best token of its truthfulness. Florence Nightingale
realized how fully this was so with reference to the finer qualities
of morals. In her tribute to Harriet Martineau's memory Miss
Nightingale justly observes:--
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 rather say instinct_)
could there be? To the last she had 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.
On the other side of the human character in her delineation of the bad
qualities, she as instinctively seeks and finds causes for the errors
and evils of the minds she displays. Foolishness, and ignorance, and
poverty are traced, entirely without affectation and "cant," in their
action as misleading influences in the lives of the poor sinners and
sufferers.
The stories told in the _Illustrations_ are frequently very
interesting. In this respect, there is a notable advance in the course
of the series. The earlier tales, such as _Life in the Wilds_ and
_Brooke Farm_, are not to be compared, as mere stories, with even
those written later on by only eight or nine stirring eventful months,
such as _Ireland_ and _The Loom and the Lugger_. Still better are the
latest tales. The _Illustrations of Taxation_ and _Illustrations of
Poor-Laws and Paupers_ are, despite the unattractiveness of their
topics, of the highest interest. _The Parish_, _The Town_, _The
Jerseymen Meeting_, _The Jerseymen Parting_; and _The Scholars of
Arnside_, would assuredly be eagerly read by any lover of fiction
almost without consciousness that there was anything in the pages
except a deeply interesting story.
Archbishop Whately pronounced _The Parish_ the best thing she had
done. _Vanderput and Snook_, the story dealing with bills of exchange,
was the favorite with Mr. Hallam. Lord Brougham, on whose engagement
she did the five "Poor-Law" stories, wrote most enthusiastically that
they surpassed all the expectations that her previous works had led
him to form. Coleridge told her that he "looked eagerly every month"
for the new number; and Lord Durham recounted to her how one evening
he was at Kensington Palace (where the widowed Duchess of Kent was
then residing, and devoting herself to that education which has made
her daughter the best sovereign of her dynasty), when the little
Princess Victoria came running from an inner room to show her mother,
with delight, the advertisement of the "Taxation" tales; for the young
Princess was being allowed to read the _Illustrations_, and found them
her most fascinating story-books.
Harriet's experiences, however, were not all quite so agreeable. Mrs.
Marcet, who "had a great opinion of great people--of people great by
any distinction, ability, office, birth, and what not--and innocently
supposed her own taste to be universal," formed a warm and generous
friendship for Miss Martineau, and used to delight in carrying to her
the "homages" of the savants and the aristocratic readers of the
_Illustrations_ in France, where Mrs. Marcet's acquaintance was
extensive. She one day told Miss Martineau, with much delight, that
Louis Philippe, the then King of the French, had ordered a copy of the
series for each member of his family, and had also requested M. Guizot
to have the stories translated, and introduced into the French
national schools. This was presently confirmed by a large order from
France for copies, and by a note from the officially-appointed
translator requesting Harriet Martineau to favor him with some
particulars of her personal history, for introduction into a
periodical which was being issued by the Government for the promotion
of education amongst the French people. The writer added that M.
Guizot wished to have Miss Martineau's series specially noticed in
connection with her own personality, since she afforded the first
instance on record of a woman who was not born to sovereign station
affecting practical legislation otherwise than through a man.
At the very time that she received this flattering note, Harriet was
engaged in writing her twelfth number, _French Wines and Politics_.
The topic treated in this story is that of value, with the subsidiary
questions relating to prices and their fluctuations. The tale takes up
the period of the great French Revolution, and shows how the fortunes
of certain wine-merchants near Bordeaux, and of the head of the Paris
house in connection, were affected by the course of that great social
convulsion. The scene was unquestionably happily chosen. The
circumstances were abnormal, it is true; but the causes which created
such vast fluctuations in prices, and such changes in the value of
goods, were, in fact, only the same fundamental causes as are always
at the basis of such alterations in price and value; it was merely the
rapidity and violence of the movement which were peculiar. The story
was well put together; and the "Illustration" was in every way
admirable for every possible desirable object, except only for the one
of being pleasant to the ruling powers in the France of 1833.
Harriet Martineau's constant sympathy with democracy, her hatred of
oppression and tyranny, and her aversion to class government, all
became conspicuous in this story. "The greatest happiness of the
greatest number" of mankind was her ideal of the aim of legislation;
and she well knew, as Bentham saw, that only the democratic form of
government can produce a body of laws approximating to this ideal. Her
efforts were constant, therefore, to prepare the people to demand, and
to afterwards wisely use, the power of governing themselves. Now,
though Louis Philippe was the citizen-king, though he was the head of
a republican monarchy, though his legislative chamber rejected in that
same year a ministerial document because it spoke of the people as
"subjects," yet it may be easily understood that this king and his
ministers did not care to stimulate the democratic feeling of the
nation any more than they found inevitable. The whole tone of this
work would be objectionable to them; and a dozen passages might be
readily quoted to show why royal and aristocratic rulers were little
likely to aid its circulation amongst the people whom they governed.
Here, for instance, is a portion of the passage on the storming of the
Bastile:--
The spectacles of a life-time were indeed to be beheld within the
compass of this one scene.... Here were the terrors which sooner
or later chill the marrow of despotism, and the stern joy with
which its retribution fires the heart of the patriot. Here were
the servants of tyranny quailing before the glance of the
people.... The towers of palaces might be seen afar, where princes
were quaking at this final assurance of the downfall of their
despotic sway, knowing that the assumed sanctity of royalty was
being wafted away with every puff of smoke which spread itself
over the sky, and their irresponsibility melting in fires lighted
by the hands which they had vainly attempted to fetter, and blown
by the breath which they had imagined they could stifle. They had
denied the birth of that liberty whose baptism in fire and in
blood was now being celebrated in a many-voiced chant with which
the earth should ring for centuries. Some from other lands were
already present to hear and join in it; some free Britons to aid,
some wondering slaves of other despots to slink homewards with
whispered tidings of its import; for from that day to this, the
history of the fall of the Bastile has been told as a secret in
the vineyards of Portugal, and among the groves of Spain, and in
the patriotic conclaves of the youth of Italy, while it has been
loudly and joyfully proclaimed from one end to the other of Great
Britain, till her lisping children are familiar with the tale.
Besides such passages as this, scarcely likely to please the French
king, there was the special ground for his objection that his
immediate ancestor, Egalite, was introduced into the story, and
depicted in no favorable light his efforts to inflame the popular
violence for his selfish ends, his hypocrisy, his cowardice, and so
on, being held up to contempt. Mrs. Marcet, when she read all this,
came breathless to Harriet Martineau to ask her how she could have
made such a blunder as to write a story that plainly would (and, of
course, in fact, did) put an end to the official patronage of her
series in France, and would destroy for ever any hopes that she might
have entertained of being received at the Court of Louis Philippe?
Greatly surprised was the good lady at finding Harriet's reverence for
that monarch so limited in extent. She replied to her kind friend that
she "wrote with a view to the people, and especially the most
suffering of them; and the crowned heads must for once take their
chance for their feelings."
At the very moment that Mrs. Marcet's remonstrance was made, Miss
Martineau was writing a story of a character likely to be even more
distasteful to the Emperor of Russia than this one to the King of the
French. She had found it difficult to illustrate the theory of the
currency in a story treating of the existence of civilized people. The
only situation in which she could find persons, above the rank of
savages, transacting their exchanges by aid of a kind of money which
made the business only one remove from bartering, was amongst the
Polish exiles in Siberia. She therefore wrote _The Charmed Sea_, a
story founded upon the terrible facts of the lives of the exiled Poles
"in the depths of Eastern Siberia," working in "a silver-mine near the
western extremity of the Daourian Range, and within hearing of the
waters of the Baikal when its storms were fiercest." Had the
melancholy tale been written in the service of the Poles, it could not