Harriet Martineau
She rose very early: not infrequently, in the winter, before daylight;
and immediately set out for a good, long walk. Sometimes, I am told,
she would appear at a farm-house, four miles off, before the cows were
milked. The old post-mistress recollects how, when she was making up
her early letter-bags, in the gray of the morning mists, Miss
Martineau would come down with her large bundle of correspondence, and
never failed to have a pleasant nod and smile, or a few kindly
inquiries, for her humble friend. "I always go out before it is quite
light," writes Miss Martineau to Mr. Atkinson, in November, 1847; "and
in the fine mornings I go up the hill behind the church--the Kirkstone
road--where I reach a great height, and see from half way along
Windermere to Rydal. When the little shred of moon that is left and
the morning star hang over Wansfell, among the amber clouds of the
approaching sunrise, it is delicious. On the positively rainy
mornings, my walk is to Pelter Bridge and back. Sometimes it is round
the south end of the valley. These early walks (I sit down to my
breakfast at half-past seven) are good, among other things, in
preparing me in mind for my work."
Returning home, she breakfasted at half-past seven; filled her lamp
ready for the evening, and arranged all household matters; and by
half-past eight was at her desk, where she worked undisturbed till
two, the early dinner-time. These business hours were sacred, whether
there were visitors in the house or not. After dinner, however, she
devoted herself to guests, if there were any; if not, she took another
walk, or in bad weather, did wool-work--"many a square yard of which,"
she says, she "all invisibly embossed with thoughts and feelings
worked in." Tea and the newspaper came together, after which she
either read, wrote letters, or conversed for the rest of the evening,
ending her day always, whatever the weather, by a few moments of
silent meditation in the porch or on the terrace without.
She was not one of those mistresses who cannot talk to their servants,
any more than she was one to indulge them in idle and familiar gossip.
If there were any special news of the day, she would invite the maids
into her sitting-room for half an hour in the evening, to tell them
about it. During the Crimean War, and again during the American
struggle, in particular, the servants had the frequent privilege of
tracing with her on the map the position of the battles, and learning
with her aid to understand the great questions that were at stake.
The servants thus trained and considered[14] were not, certainly,
common domestics. She kept two girls in the house, besides the
laboring man and his wife at the cottage; and, as the place was small,
and her way of living simple, the work did not require that she should
choose rough women for servants merely because of their strength. On
the contrary, she made special efforts to secure young girls of a
somewhat superior order, whom she might train and attach to herself.
She got servants whom she had to dismiss now and again, of course; but
the time that most of her maids stopped with her and the warm feelings
that they showed towards her, are a high testimony to the domestic
character of their "strong minded" mistress. At the time of which we
are now speaking, her maids were "Jane," who had been cured from
chronic illness by Miss Martineau's mesmerizing, and who was in her
service for seven years, when the girl emigrated; and "Martha," who
had been trained for teaching, and had to resign it from ill-health,
but who later on married the master of Miss Carpenter's Bristol Ragged
Schools, and returned to teaching, after serving Miss Martineau for
some eight years.
[14] Henry Crabbe Robinson writes to Miss Fenwick on January
15, 1849:--
"Miss Martineau makes herself an object of envy by the
success of her domestic arrangements.... Mrs. Wordsworth
declares she is a model in her household economy, making
her servants happy, and setting an example of activity to
her neighbors."
Of the servants who came after this, "Caroline" was there twenty
years, till she was removed by death; and "Mary Anne" served Miss
Martineau eleven years, till the mistress's death closed the long term
of attendance and almost filial love.
Indications of how different the relationship was in this home from
what it only too often is, are found in many of Miss Martineau's
letters. When "Martha" married, she had the rare honor of having
Harriet Martineau and Mary Carpenter for her bridesmaids. The mistress
gave the wedding breakfast, and partook of it, too, in company with
the bride and bridegroom and their friends; and when she had seen them
all off, she sat down to write to her family about her loss "with a
bursting heart." References to her feelings for her "dear friend,
Caroline," will be seen presently in her letters to Mr. Atkinson; and
her care and affection for this valued servant are expressed yet more
frequently in letters which I may not quote, to more domestic friends.
As to "Mary Anne," she has travelled a long way while in delicate
health, to see me, to tell me all she could of her mistress, and to
express how glad she was "to know of anything being done to make Miss
Martineau's goodness better understood." "Mary Anne" is now a married
woman. She was engaged for three or four years before Miss Martineau's
death, but would not leave her mistress in her old age and her
ill-health. That mistress, on her part, when told of the engagement,
not only admitted the lover to an interview with herself, but even
generously urged that the wedding should not be delayed for her sake,
although at this time she had an almost morbid shrinking from
strangers, and the loss of the personal attendant who knew her ways,
would have been one of the greatest calamities of the commoner order
that could have befallen her. But "Mary Anne" did not leave her; and
when, at last, it became quite certain that death was at hand, the
generous lady said to a relative that it made her "so glad to think
that, when it was over, there could be nothing to stand in the way of
Mary Anne's marriage." I have thus anticipated in order to show that
the domestic peace which existed under her household rule was no
special thing dependent upon the character of a single servant, but
was maintained through all the years of her home life, and therefore
unquestionably was the result of the mistress's qualities of heart and
mind.
What may be called her external home-life--that is to say, what she
was to her poorer neighbors--during that ten years of activity, may
also be best noticed before the mental progress and literary work of
the period come under further review.
Every winter, for several years, she gave a course of lectures to the
working-people and tradesfolk of the place, in the Methodist
school-room at the back of her house. Many of the gentry desired to
attend, but she would have none of them, on the double ground that
there was no room for them, and that the lectures were designed for
people who had little access to books or other educational resources.
The subjects that she treated were as various as those of her books,
but all chosen with what I have previously observed seems to me to
have been the object of all her works--to influence conduct through
knowledge and reasoning. There was a course on sanitary matters,
others on her travels (and we know from her books on the same topics
from what point of view these were treated), some on the history of
England, another on the history and constitution of the United States;
and, finally, the last course for which she had health and strength
was given in November and December, 1854, and was on the Crimean War
and the character of the government of Russia.
I have seen some of the older inhabitants of Ambleside who attended
these lectures, and who now speak of them in the warmest terms of
admiration. "They were so clear; and she never stopped for a word; and
so interesting!--one could have listened to them over and over again."
But there is no one who could tell, with the aid of a cultivated
taste, what she was as a public speaker. So eloquent is some of her
writing that one holds one's breath as one reads it; and the evident
rapidity of the penmanship of her MS.[15] shows that such passages were
produced with all the improvisatory impulse and flow of the orator.
If, besides this, her delivery was fervent and impressive, one cannot
but think how great a statesman and parliamentary leader she might
have been, with these essential qualifications for modern public life
added to all that knowledge, judgment, strength of principle, and
political capacity which made men willing (as we shall see soon) to
accept her as their political teacher in the daily and quarterly
press. That she had the orator's stirring gifts, the personal
magnetism which compels the minds of a mass to move with the words of
a speaker, and the reciprocal power of receiving stimulus from an
audience, when
The hearts of many fires the lips of one,
there is one shadowy incident left to show, besides the testimony of
her local hearers who survive. It is this: in 1849 Charlotte Bronte,
then in the first flush of her fame, sought Harriet Martineau's
acquaintance, saying that she desired "to see one whose works have so
often made her the subject of my thoughts." In the following year
Charlotte visited Harriet at "The Knoll," and heard one of the English
History lectures. Her bright eyes were fixed on the lecturer all
through; and as Harriet stood on her low platform, while the audience
dispersed, she heard Charlotte say, in the very voice of the lecturer,
what Edward said in the wind-mill at Cressy: "Is my son dead?" They
walked silently to the house together--about three hundred paces--and
when Harriet turned up her lamp in the drawing-room, the first thing
she saw was Charlotte looking at her with wide, shining eyes, and
repeating, in the same tone, "Is my son dead?" To those who know the
dramatic quality of Charlotte Bronte's imagination, there is a beam of
light reflected from this trifling anecdote upon the force and the
manner of the speaker who had so impressed her.
[15] In speaking of her eloquent writings I refer specially
to the _History of the Peace_; and I have seen the
manuscript of this, bearing evidence that the hand could not
keep pace with the flow of words and thoughts.
The opinion which this keenly observant and candid woman formed of
Harriet Martineau is of peculiar interest, and, as it specially refers
to the period and the relations of which we are now treating, I quote
it from Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_. It is given in
some private letters, written from "The Knoll" (not, as Mrs. Chapman
absurdly says, to Emily Bronte, who was dead, but) to Charlotte's
life-long and most confidential friend, Miss Ellen Nussey:--
"I am at Miss Martineau's for a week. Her house is very pleasant
both within and without; arranged at all points with admirable
neatness and comfort. Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty;
what she claims for herself she allows them.... She is a great and
good woman.... The manner in which she combines the highest mental
culture with the nicest discharge of feminine duties filled me
with admiration; while her affectionate kindness earned my
gratitude. I think her good and noble qualities far outweigh her
defects. It is my habit to consider the individual apart from his
(or her) reputation, practice independent of theory, natural
disposition isolated from acquired opinion. Harriet Martineau's