Harriet Martineau
facts and invented part of her story; and so it all ends, and they
live happily ever after!
Feeble and untrue as are plot and characters in this "poor novel" (as
Carlyle without injustice called it), yet many scenes are well
written, the details are truly colored, and every page is illuminated
with thought of so high an order and language so brilliant, so
flowing, so felicitous, that one forgives, for the sake of merits such
as these, the failure of the fiction to be either true or interesting.
This seemed to show, nevertheless, that Harriet could write essays,
and travels, and didactic and philosophical works, but could not write
a novel except "with a purpose," when the accomplishment of the
purpose might excuse any other shortcomings. But when one considers
the great excellence of many of the _Illustrations_, the decided
drawing of the characters, the truthful analysis of the springs of
human action, the manner in which the incidents are combined and
arranged to develop and display dispositions and histories, it becomes
clear that she _had_ great powers as an imaginative depicter of human
nature and social life, and that there must have been other causes
than sheer incapacity for the faults and the feebleness of
_Deerbrook_.
The first cause was what seems to me a mistaken theory about plots in
fiction, which she had adopted since writing the _Illustrations_. She
now fancied that a perfect plot must be taken from life, forgetting
that we none of us know the whole plot of the existence of any other
creature than ourselves, and that the psychological insight of the
gifted novelist is displayed in arguing from what is known to what is
unknown, and in combining the primary elements of human character into
their necessary consequences in act and feeling. This error she would
have been cured from by experience had she gone on writing fiction.
She might have been aided in this by what she naively enough avows
about _Deerbrook_: that she supposed that she took the story of Hope's
marriage from the history of a friend of her family, and that she
afterwards found out that nothing of the sort had really happened to
him! She might then have asked herself whether the story as she had
told it was more possible than it was possible that gunpowder should
be put to flame without an explosion. A girl in her teens might have
been forgiven for playing with the history of the wildest passions of
the human heart; but Harriet Martineau erred because she tried to
enslave herself to fact in a matter in which she should have inferred,
judged from psychological principles, and trusted to the intuitions of
her own mind for the final working out of her problem. As it was, if
her "fact" had been a reality we should have been compelled to account
for the placid progress of events by the supposition that she had
utterly misrepresented the characters of the persons involved.
This bondage to (supposed) fact was one cause of her failure. A
lesser, but still important reason for it, was that she tried to
imitate Jane Austen's style. Her admiration of the works of this
mistress of the art of depicting human nature was very great.
Harriet's diary of the period when she was preparing to write
_Deerbrook_, shows that she re-read Miss Austen's novels, and found
them "wonderfully beautiful." This judgment she annexed to _Emma_;
and again, after recording her new reading of _Pride and Prejudice_,
she added, "I think it as clever as before; but Miss Austen seems
wonderfully afraid of pathos. I long to try." When she did "try," she,
either intentionally or unconsciously, but very decidedly, modelled
her style on Miss Austen's. But the two women were essentially
different. Harriet Martineau had an original mind; she did wrong, and
prepared the retribution of failure for herself, in imitating at all;
and Jane Austen was one of the last persons she should have imitated.
The principal reasons for the inferiority of _Deerbrook_, however, are
found in her personal history. Three months after its publication, she
was utterly prostrated by an illness which had undoubtedly been slowly
growing upon her for long before. Thus, she wrote her novel under the
depression and failure of strength caused by this malady. The illness
itself was partly the result of what further tended to make her work
poor in quality--the domestic anxieties, miseries and heart-burnings
of that period.
The three anxious members of her family were at this time upon her
hands. That brother who had succeeded to the father's business, and in
whose charge it had failed, was at this time in London. Before the
weaving business stopped, Henry Martineau was engaged; but the girl
broke off the affair in consequence of the downfall of his pecuniary
prospects. Henry then undertook a wine-merchant's business, and
wretched with the mortification of his double failure in purse and in
heart, he yielded to the temptations of his new employment, and became
intemperate. During the time that _Deerbrook_ was being written, he
was living with his mother and sister in London. At the same time
Mrs. Martineau, now nearing seventy years old, was becoming blind.
The natural irritability of her temper was thus increased. The
heart-wearing trials of a home with two such inmates were made greater
to Harriet by the fact that an aged aunt also lived with them, who,
besides the many cares exacted for the well-being of age, added to
Harriet's troubles by the necessity of shielding her from the tempers
and depressions of the other two.
It was in this home that Harriet Martineau did all the work that has
now been recorded after her return from America. No one who has the
least conception of how imperatively necessary domestic peace and
comfort are for the relief of the brain taxed with literary labor,
will be surprised to hear that Harriet's strength and spirits failed
during all that summer and winter in which she was writing
_Deerbrook_, and that presently her health completely broke down.
CHAPTER VII.
FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS AND THE MESMERIC RECOVERY.
Almost immediately after the publication of _Deerbrook_ Harriet
started for a Continental tour. She was to escort an invalid cousin to
Switzerland, and afterwards to travel through Italy with two other
friends. But her illness became so severe by the time that she reached
Venice that the remainder of the journey had to be abandoned. Under
medical advice, a couch was fitted up in the travelling carriage, and
upon it, lifted in and out at every stage, she returned to England and
was conveyed to her sister's at Newcastle-on-Tyne. In the autumn of
that same year (1839) she took up her abode in Front street,
Tynemouth, in order to remain under the medical care of her
brother-in-law, Mr. Greenhow of Newcastle.
Her physical sufferings during the next five years were very severe,
and almost incessant. She could not go out of the house, and
alternated only between her bed in one room and her couch in another.
From her sick-room window she overlooked a narrow space of down, the
ruins of the priory, the harbor with its traffic, and the sea. On the
farther side of the harbor she could discern through the telescope a
railroad, a spreading heath, and, on the hills which bounded the view,
two or three farms. To this outlook she, whose life had been hitherto
spent so actively, and in the midst of such a throng of society, found
herself confined for a term of five years. At the same time her pain
was so great that she was compelled to take opiates daily. "I have
observed, with inexpressible shame, that with the newspaper in my
hand, no details of the peril of empires, or of the starving miseries
of thousands, could keep my eye from the watch before me, or detain my
attention one second beyond the time when I might have my opiate. For
two years, too, I wished and intended to dispense with my opiate for
once, to try how much there was to bear, and how I should bear it; but
I never did it, strong as was the shame of always yielding. I am
convinced that there is no more possibility of becoming inured to
acute agony of body, than to paroxysms of remorse--the severest of
moral pains. A familiar pain becomes more and more dreaded, instead of
becoming more lightly esteemed in proportion to its familiarity. The
pain itself becomes more odious, more oppressive, more feared in
proportion to the accumulation of experience of weary hours, in
proportion to the aggregate of painful associations which every
visitation revives."[9]
[9] _Life in the Sick-Room._
Some indication of what she endured in those weary years is given in
this quotation. If we had to rely upon the inferences to be drawn from
the amount of work which she did in her sick-room, we should naturally
suppose the suffering not to have been very great; for she produced,
in the midst of her illness, as much and as noble work as we look for
from the most active persons in ordinary health.
The first business of the sick-room life was to write both an article
for publication, and a number of letters of personal appeal to
friends, on behalf of Oberlin College, an institution which was being
founded in America for the education of persons of color of both
sexes, and of the students who had been turned out of Lane College for
their advocacy of anti-slavery principles.
The next undertaking was another novel; or, rather, a history,
imaginatively treated, of the negro revolution in San Domingo.
Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader of the revolution and the president
of the black Republic of Hayti, was the hero of this story. _The Hour
and the Man_, as a mere novel, is vastly superior to _Deerbrook_.
Harriet wrote it, however, rather as a contribution to the same
anti-slavery cause for which she had written her preceding article,
believing that it would be useful to that cause to show forth the
capacity and the high moral character which had been displayed by a
negro of the blackest shade when in possession of power. The work was
begun in May, 1840, and published in November of the same year.
Lord Jeffrey, in a familiar private letter to Empson, his successor in
the editorship of the _Edinburgh Review_, wrote 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.... The book is calculated to make its readers better,
and does great honor 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 honor; 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.
Even the morose and ungracious Carlyle, writing to Emerson of this
book, is obliged to say "It is beautiful as a child's heart; and in so
shrewd a brain!" While Florence Nightingale declares that she "can
scarcely refrain from thinking of it as the greatest of historical
romances."
The allusion in the latter part of Lord Jeffrey's letter was to a
proposal just then made to give Harriet Martineau one of the Civil
List literary pensions. This idea had been mooted first during the
progress of her _Illustrations_, and again after her return from
America; but upon each occasion she had stated privately that she