Harriet Martineau
as it would be to fetter the freedom of the limbs. Mothers who have
labored and suffered through long years for the welfare of their
children, are often grieved and pained in after days to find themselves
regarded with respect rather than with fondness; but it was they
themselves who put the seal upon the fountains of affection at the time
when they might have been opened freely--and whose fault is it if,
later, the outflow is found to be checked for evermore?
The pity of it is that such mischief is often wrought by parents who
love their children intensely, but who err in the management of them
for want of the wisdom of the heart, the power of sympathetic feeling,
which is seen so much stronger sometimes in comparatively shallow
natures than in the deeper ones that have really more of love and of
self-sacrifice in their souls. Those who lack tenderness either of
manner or feeling, those to whom the full and free expression of
affection is difficult or seems a folly, may perhaps be led to reflect,
by the story of Harriet Martineau's childhood, on the suffering and
error that may result from a neglect of the moral command: "Parents,
provoke not your children to wrath."
"My life has had no spring," wrote Harriet Martineau, sadly; yet there
was nothing in the outer circumstances of her childhood and youth to
justify this feeling. Her mother's temper and character were largely
responsible for what Harriet calls her "habit of misery" during
childhood. It is right to explain, however, that this unhappiness was
doubtless partly due to physical causes. She was a weakly child, her
health having been undermined by the dishonesty of the wet nurse
employed for her during the first three months of her life. The woman
lost her milk, and managed to conceal the fact until the baby was found
to be in an almost dying condition from the consequences of want of
nourishment. How far her frequent ill-health, during many succeeding
years, was to be ascribed to this cannot be known; but her mother
naturally attributed all Harriet's delicacy of health to this cause,
even the deafness from which she suffered, although this did not become
pronounced till she was over twelve years of age.
Her deafness, which was the most commonly known of her deficiencies of
sensation, was not her earliest deprivation of a sense. She was never
able to smell, that she could remember; and as smell and taste are
intimately joined together, and a large part of what we believe to be
flavor is really odor, it naturally followed that she was also nearly
destitute of the sense of taste. Thus two of the avenues by which the
mind receives impressions from the outer world were closed to her all
her life, and a third was also stopped before she reached womanhood.
The senses are the gates by which pleasure as well as pain enter into
the citadel where consciousness resides. Of all the senses, those which
most frequently give entrance to pleasure and seldomest to pain, were
those which she had lost. "When three senses out of five are
deficient," as she said, "the difficulty of cheerful living is great,
and the terms of life are truly hard."
She suffered greatly, even as a little child, from indigestion. Milk
in particular disagreed with her; but it was held essential by Mrs.
Martineau that children should eat bread and milk, and for years poor
Harriet endured daily a lump at her chest and an oppression of the
spirits, induced by her inability to digest her breakfast and supper.
Nightmares and causeless apprehensions in the day also afflicted the
nervous and sensitive girl, and she had "hardly any respite from
terror."
A child so delicate in health could not have been very happy under any
home conditions. Only a truly wise and tender maternal guardianship
could have made the life of such an one at all tolerable; but Harriet
Martineau was one of the large family of a sharp-tempered, masterful,
stern, though devoted mother, whose cleverness found vent in incessant
sarcasm, and in whom the love of power natural to a capable, determined
person degenerated, as it so often does in domestic life, into a severe
despotism.
Mrs. Martineau's circumstances were such as to increase her natural
tendency to stern and decided rule. Dr. Martineau tells me that all
who knew his mother feel that Harriet does not do justice in her
"Autobiography" to that mother's nobler qualities, both moral and
intellectual, and especially the latter. Harriet and James Martineau,
like so many other men and women of mark, were the children of a mother
of uncommon mental capacity. Her business faculties were so good, and
her judgment so clear, that her husband (a man of a sweet and gentle
disposition) invariably took counsel with her about all his affairs,
and acted by her advice. There are still inhabitants of Norwich who
remember Mrs. Martineau, and their testimony of her is identical with
her son's. "She was the ruling spirit in that house," says one of them.
"Whatever was done there, you understood that it was she who did it."
The way in which this gentleman came to know so much of her
corroborates Dr. Martineau's declaration that "she was really devoted
to her children, and would do anything for them; if we were miserable
in our childhood (a fact which he does not dispute) it could not be
said to be consciously her fault." Mr. ---- was the husband of a lady
who had been reared from early childhood by Mrs. Martineau, having been
adopted by her simply in order to provide her little daughter, Ellen,
who was nine years younger than Harriet, with a child companion
somewhat about her own age. This lady, her widowed husband tells me,
retained a most warm admiration and affection for Mrs. Martineau.
Mothers who have brought up eight children of their own can appreciate
the self-devotedness of this mother in receiving a ninth child by
adoption in order to increase the well-being of her own little
daughter.
Several other instances were told to me of Mrs. Martineau's benevolence
and kindness of disposition. Young men belonging to her religious body,
and living in lodgings in Norwich, were uniformly made welcome to her
house, as a home, every Sunday evening. One of the Norwich residents,
with whom I have talked about her, received a presentation from her to
the Unitarian Free School, and afterwards, in his school life, met with
constant encouragement and patronage at her hands. He tells me that he
has never forgotten the stately and impressive address with which she
gave him the presentation ticket, concluding with a reminder that if he
made good use of this opportunity he might even hope one day to become
a member of the Town Council of that city,--and at that giddy eminence
her _protege_ now stands.
For the sake of the lesson, it should be understood that she was thus
truly benevolent and kindly, and no vulgar termagant or scold. It is
for us to see how such a nature can be spoiled for daily life by too
unchecked a course of arbitrary rule, and by repression of outward
signs of tenderness.
Not the least evil which a stern parent, who maintains a reserve of
demeanor, and who requires strictness of discipline within the home,
may do to himself and his children, is that by denying expression to
the children's feelings he closes to himself the possibility of knowing
what goes on in their young minds. Thus, a child so restrained may for
years suffer under a sense of injustice, and of undue favoritism shown
to another, or under a belief that the parent's love is lacking, when a
few words might have cleared away the misapprehension, and given the
child the natural happiness of its age.
Speaking of her childhood, Harriet says: "I had a devouring passion
for justice; justice, first, to my own precious self, and then to
other oppressed people. Justice was precisely what was least understood
in our house, in regard to servants and children. Now and then I
desperately poured out my complaints; but in general I brooded over
my injuries and those of others who dared not speak, and then the
temptation to suicide was very strong."
The most vivid picture that she has drawn of the discipline under which
such emotions were induced in her is found in a story, _The Crofton
Boys_, which she wrote during a severe illness, and under the
impression that it would contain her last words uttered through the
press. Mrs. Proctor, in _The Crofton Boys_, is depicted with remarkable
vividness by a series of little touches, and in a succession of trivial
details, with an avoidance of direct description, that reminds us of
the method of Jane Austen. Harriet never achieved any other portrait of
a character such as this one; for this is treated with such minute
fidelity, and such evident unconsciousness, that we feel sure, as we
sometimes do with a picture, that the likeness must be an exact one. So
distinct an individuality is shown to us, and at the same time, the
evidences of the artist's close and careful observation of his model
are so obvious, that, without having seen the subject, we _feel_ the
accuracy of the likeness. So does the "portrait of a mother" in that
tale which Harriet wrote for her last words through the press, show us
the nature of Mrs. Martineau in her maternal relation.
"Mrs. Proctor so seldom praised anybody that her words of esteem went a
great way.... Everyone in the house was in the habit of hiding tears
from Mrs. Proctor, who rarely shed them herself, and was known to think
that they might generally be suppressed, and should be so."
If any person were weak enough to express emotion in this way in
her presence, Mrs. Proctor would promptly and sternly intimate her
disapproval of such indulgence of the feelings. When the little lad was
leaving home for the first time, all the rest of the household became a
little unhappy over the parting.
"Susan came in about the cord for his box, and her eyes were red,--and
at the sight of her Agnes began to cry again; and Jane bent down over
the glove she was mending for him, and her needle stopped.
"'Jane,' said her mother, gravely, 'if you are not mending that glove,
give it to me. It is getting late.'
"Jane brushed her hand across her eyes, and stitched away again. Then
she threw the gloves to Hugh without looking at him, and ran to get
ready to go to the coach."
So little allowance was ordinarily made in that house for signs of
affection, or manifestations of personal attachment, that the child who
was going away for six months was "amazed to find that his sisters were
giving up an hour of their lessons that they might go with him to the
coach." Even when Hugh got his foot so crushed it had to be amputated,
though his mother came to him and gave him every proper attention, yet
"Hugh saw no tears from her"; nothing more than that "her face was very
pale and grave." His anticipations of her coming had not been warm; his
one anxiety had been that he might bear his pain resolutely before her.
"As Hugh cried, he said he bore it so very badly he did not know what
his mother would say if she saw him." And it was well that he had not
anticipated any outburst of pity or expression of sympathy from her,
for, when she did come, "she kissed him with a long, long kiss; but she
did not speak." Her first words in the hearing of her agonized child
were spoken to give him an intimation that the surgeons were waiting to
take off his foot. The boy's reply was--not to cling to her for
support, and to nestle in her bosom for comfort in the most terrible
moment of his young life, but--"Do not stay now; this pain is so bad! I
can't bear it well at all. Do go, now, and bid them make haste, will
you?"
Later, when the leg was better, the poor boy's mental misery once
overpowered him, even in his mother's presence. Sitting with her and