Harriet Martineau
nowhere find it. The next best security is turning back to the
statement, "Letters" in the _Athenaeum_ of the autumn of 1844.
Those "Letters" went through two editions when reprinted, after
having carried those numbers of the _Athenaeum_ through three
editions. One would think the narrative must be accessible enough.
Above all things, let there be no mistake in our statements.
It ought to be enough for observers that I had ten years of robust
health after that recovery, walking from sixteen to twenty miles
in a day, on occasion, and riding a camel in the heart of Nubia,
and hundreds of miles on horseback, through Palestine to Damascus,
and back to the Levant.
I have written so much because I could not help it. I shall hardly
do it again. I will add only that the mesmerizing began in June,
1844, and the cure was effected before the following Christmas.
Dear friend,
I am yours ever,
H. M.
[13] I find there is a widespread impression that she
eventually died of the same tumor that she supposed to have
been cured at this time. It should be distinctly stated,
however, that if this were the case, Mr. Greenhow and Sir C.
Clarke were both _utterly_ wrong in their diagnosis in
1840. I have read Mr. Greenhow's _Report of the Case of
Miss H. M._, and the notes of the post-mortem lie before
me--kindly lent me by the surgeon, Mr. King, now of Bedford
Park, who made the autopsy. I find that the organ which Mr.
Greenhow and his consultant both stated to be the seat of the
disease, enlargement and tumor, in 1840, is described as
being found "particularly small and unaffected" after death.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE HOME LIFE.
At forty-two years old, Harriet Martineau found herself free for the
first time to form and take possession of a _home of her own_. Now,
for the first time, she could have the luxury which many girls obtain
by marriage so young that they spoil it to themselves and others, and
which it is as natural for each grown woman to desire, irrespective of
marriage, as it is for a fledged bird to leave the old nest--a house
and a domestic circle in which she could be the organizing spirit,
where the home arrangements should be of her own ordering, and where
she could have the privacy and self-management which can no otherwise
be enjoyed, in combination with the exercise of that housewifely skill
to which all women more or less incline.
The beauty of the scenery led her to fix upon the English lakes for
the locality in which to make her home, and, finding no suitable house
vacant, she resolved to build one for herself. She purchased two acres
of land, within half-a-mile of the village of Ambleside; borrowed some
money on mortgage from a well-to-do cousin; had the plans drawn out
under her own instructions, and watched the house being built so that
it should suit her own tastes.
It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray stone, and stands
upon a small rocky eminence--whence its name "the Knoll." There is
enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the formation of a terrace
about twenty feet wide in front of the windows; then there comes the
descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of the rock is the
garden. Narrow flights of steps at either end of the terrace lead down
to the greensward and the flower-beds; in the centre of these is a
gray granite sun-dial, with the characteristic motto around it--"Come
Light! Visit me!" To the left is the gardener's cottage, with the
cow-house, pig-stye and root-shed. The front of the house looks across
the garden, and over the valley to Loughrigg. Its back is turned to
the road, and concealed from passers-by, partly by the growth of
greenery, and partly by the Methodist Chapel. A winding path leads up
from the road to the house, and a small path forking off from this
goes round past the cottage to the field where the cows used to graze,
and to the piece of land that was appropriated to growing the roots
for the cows and the household fruit and vegetables.
Within, "The Knoll" is just a nice little residence for a maiden lady,
with her small household, and room for an occasional guest. You enter
by a covered porch, and find the drawing-room on the right hand of the
hall. It is a fairly large room, and remarkably well-lighted; there
was a window-tax when she built, but she showed her faith in the
growth of political common-sense abrogating so mischievous an impost,
by building in anticipation of freedom of light and air from taxation.
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. This
window, by the way, exposed her to another tax than the Government
one. Hunters of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not
merely to walk round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to
mount these 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 from the crunching of their footsteps on the
gravel--so that the first intimation that 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. There is a special
record of one occasion, when her bell rang in an agitated fashion, and
the maid, on going, found her mistress much disturbed. "There is a
_big_ woman, with a _big_ pattern on her dress, beckoning to me to
come to the window--go, and tell her to go away." But similar
incidents were manifold, and her servants had to be trained to guard
their mistress as if she were the golden apples of the Hesperides.
Indeed, for several years (till she became too ill to travel) she used
to leave her lake-side home altogether during the tourist season.
In her latest years she commonly wrote in the drawing-room, as the
sunniest and most cheerful apartment, and where, too, she could sit by
the fire, and yet get plenty of daylight. Her proper study, however,
was the room on the opposite side of the hall. This is a long room
with a bay window at the other end of the fire-place, and the door in
the centre. Book-cases lined the whole of these walls; but her library
was an extensive one, and there were books all over the house. This
room served as dining-room and study, both; the writing table was near
the window, the dining-table further towards the fire.
The only other room on the ground floor is the kitchen, which runs
parallel with the drawing-room. 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 book-case for a servants' library. A scullery, dairy, etc., are
annexed to the kitchen, and the entrance to the cellars below is also
found through the green baize door which shuts off the cooking region
from the front of the house.
Up-stairs, that which was her own room is large and cheerful, and
provided with two windows, a big hanging cupboard, and a good sized
dressing-room--the latter indeed, fully large enough for a maid to
sleep in. The next was the spare-room; and there lingers no small
interest about the guest-chamber, where Harriet Martineau received
such guests as Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas
Jerrold. A small servants' room is next to this, and a larger one is
over the kitchen, so that it comes just at the head of the stairs.
Such is the size and arrangement of Harriet Martineau's home.
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. The making of all these arrangements was a source of
satisfaction and delight to her such as can only be imagined by those
who have felt what it is to come abroad after a long and painful
confinement from illness, and to find life and usefulness freely open
again under agreeable conditions and prospects.
While her house was being built, she lodged in Ambleside; and in that
time, during the autumn and winter of 1845-6, she wrote her _Forest
and Game Law Tales_, with the object of showing how mischievous the
game laws were in their operation upon society at large, and more
particularly upon the fortunes of individual farmers, and upon the
laborers who were led into poaching. These tales occupy three volumes
of the ordinary novel size. They had a sale which would have been very
good for a novel; two thousand copies were disposed of, and doubtless
did some service for the cause for which she had worked. So far as her
own pecuniary interests were concerned, however, these tales made her
first failure. It was the only work which never returned her any
remuneration. The publisher had reckoned on a very large circulation,
and so had put out too much capital in stock, stereotypes, and the
like, to leave any profit on the sale that actually took place; and
the publication unfortunately coincided with the agitation of the
political world about the repeal of the corn laws. But one pleasing
incident arose out of them for her personally. She had been in
difficulties as to how to obtain turf to lay down upon the land under
her terrace. One fine morning, soon after her entrance on her home,
her maid found a great heap of sods under the window, when she opened
the shutters in the morning. A dirty note, closed with a wafer, was
stuck upon the pile, and this was found to state that the sods were "a
token of gratitude for the _Game Law Tales_, from a Poacher." Harriet
never discovered from whom this tribute came.
She took possession of her home on April 7th, 1846. During the summer
she wrote another story for young people--one of her most interesting
tales, and instructive in its moral bearing--_The Billow and the
Rock_. It must here be noted, in passing, that this is the last of
her works in which the theism that she had, up to this time, held for
religious truth, makes itself visible. A new experience was about to
lead her to think afresh upon the theological subjects, and to revise
her opinions about the genesis of faiths, and their influence upon
morals.
In the autumn of 1846, she accepted an invitation from her friends,
Mr. and Mrs. R. V. Yates, of Liverpool, to join them in a journey to
the East, they bearing the expense. The party left England in October,
and were met at Malta by Mr. J. C. Ewart, afterwards M.P. for
Liverpool. Together, these four travellers sailed up the Nile to the
second cataract, studied Thebes and Philae, went up and into the Great
Pyramid, visited bazaars, mosques and (the ladies) harems, in Cairo.
Then they travelled in the track of Moses in the desert, passing Sinai
and reaching Petra. Next, they completely traversed Palestine; and
finally, passed through Syria to Beyrout, where they took ship again
for home. This journey occupied eight months.
In October, 1847, Harriet reached "The Knoll" again, and settled
herself in her permanent course of home life. As the same habits were
continued, with only the interruptions of occasional visits to other
parts of the country, day by day, for many years, I may as well
mention what was the course of that daily home life.