Harriet Martineau
task of writing the history of the time in which she had herself lived
was one of extreme delicacy. Honest contemporary judgments about
still-living or lately-dead persons, and about actions which have been
observed with all the freshness of feeling of the passing moment, must
often seem unduly stern to those who look back through the softening
veil of the past, and to whom the actors have always been purely
historic personages. Moreover, I have before mentioned her tendency,
which seems to me to have arisen from her deafness, to give
insufficient _shading off_ in depicting character. But wonderfully
little allowance is, after all, required on such grounds from the
reader at the present day of Harriet Martineau's history of the years
between 1815 and 1845. The view taken by her of O'Connell, Brougham,
and some others is perhaps too stern; the picture has too many dark
shades, and not a due proportion of light tints; but it can scarcely
be questioned that the outline is accurate, and the whole drawing
substantially correct. The earnest endeavor after impartiality, and
the success with which the judicial attitude of the historian is on
the whole maintained, are very remarkable.
This appears so to one who looks upon the book with the eyes of the
present generation; but the recognition of the fact at the moment when
she wrote is perhaps more conclusive, and the following quotation may
serve to show the opinion of those who (with her) had lived through
the time of which she treats.
Miss Martineau has been able to discuss events which may almost be
called contemporary as calmly as if she were examining a remote
period of antiquity. She has written the history of a rather
undignified reign with a dignity that raises even the strifes of
forgotten and exploded parties into philosophic importance. She
exhibits warm sympathies for all that is noble, honorable, or
exalted--and a thorough disdain of every paltry contrivance
devised to serve a temporary purpose, or gain an unworthy end. The
principles which she enunciates are based on eternal truths, and
evolved with a logical precision that admits rhetorical ornament
without becoming obscure or confused. There are few living authors
who may be so implicitly trusted with the task of writing
contemporary history as Miss Martineau. She has spared no pains in
investigating the truth, and allowed no fears to prevent her from
stating it.[17]
[17] _Athenaeum_, March, 31st, 1849.
Though all her other books should die, and be buried utterly under the
dust of time, this one will never be entirely lost. It is as accurate
and as careful in its facts as the driest compendium, while yet its
pages glow with eloquence, and are instinct with political wisdom. She
really did here what she had designed to do in _Society in America_;
but here she did it in the right method, there in a wrong one. The
great growth of her mind in twelve years of maturity could not be
better gauged than by a comparison of these two works. Her political
principles did not change in the time; she was a true believer in
popular government all her life--her love of justice caused her to be
a hater of class rule, and of every kind of privilege; her sympathies
were boundless, and made her in earnest for the freedom and progress
of the democracy; her conscience was active so that she loved truth
for its own sake; and her sense of duty never failed to keep alive in
her large mind a feeling of personal concern in the progress of public
affairs. All this was true of her when she wrote her American book; it
was equally true when she treated the history of her own land and her
own times. But in the latter case, she writes on political philosophy
like a statesman--in the former there is much of the doctrinaire. In
the latter work, principles underlie the whole fabric; but the actions
of politicians are made the means of judging their own professed
creeds, the value of those creeds being easily appraised by the
results seen to follow on actions in conformity with them. In the
earlier work, as we saw, the theories were postulated first, and the
actions were measured against those self-derived standards of right
and wrong. For political sagacity, for nobility of public spirit, for
effective thought, for knowledge of facts, for clear presentation of
them, for accuracy in judging of their permanent importance, for
candor, and impartiality, for insight into character, and for vivid
and glowing eloquence, _The History of the Thirty Years' Peace_ stands
forth unmatched amongst books of its class. This, I take it, will be
the most enduring and valuable of all her works, and the one by which
chiefly posterity will learn what were her powers and how estimable
was her character.
In the two works last mentioned, _Eastern Life_ and _The Thirty
Years' Peace_, it seems to me that she touched the high-water mark
of her permanent achievements. We have nearly reached the end of the
long catalogue of her books, though by no means the end of her
writings. Very much more work she did in her life, as will presently
be told, but it was that kind of work which is (with the single
exception of oratory) the most powerful at the moment, but the most
evanescent--journalism. She was soon to begin to apply her ripe wisdom
and her life-long study of the theory of government to the concrete
problems of practical politics. The influence of an active and
powerful journalist cannot be measured; the work itself cannot be
adequately surveyed and criticized; and thus what is, perhaps, the
most useful, capable and important work which Harriet Martineau did,
eludes our detailed survey. We can best judge what was her power as a
leader-writer and review and magazine essayist by noting how
progressively her mind improved, and to what a high moral and
intellectual standpoint she had attained in her latest volumes, just
before she exchanged such sustained labors for the briefer though not
less arduous efforts of leading and teaching through the periodical
press.
_The History of the Peace_ was completed in 1850, and was so
immediately successful that the publisher asked Miss Martineau to
write an introductory volume on the history of the first fifteen years
of this century. While at work upon this "Introduction" she did also
some short articles on various subjects for Charles Dickens'
periodical, _Household Words_, and was likewise proceeding with the
preparation of another volume of a very different kind. This last was
published in January, 1851 (before the introductory volume of the
_History_), under the title of _Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature
and Development_, by Henry George Atkinson, F.G.S., and Harriet
Martineau.
The contents of the book were actual letters which had passed between
the friends. It will be remembered that Harriet did not meet Mr.
Atkinson during the progress of her mesmeric treatment and recovery
from illness under his written advice. But soon after she got better,
they were visiting together at the house of a cousin of hers, and
during the six years or so which had since then passed, they had often
met, and their correspondence had grown to be very frequent. Mr.
Atkinson had gradually become the friend dearest to Harriet Martineau
in all the world. He gained her affection (I use the word advisedly)
by entirely honorable roads--by the delight which she took in
observing his scientific knowledge, his originality of thought and his
elevated tone of mind. But I cannot doubt that long before this volume
of _Letters_ was published, he had become dear to her by virtue
of that personal attraction which is not altogether dependent upon
merit, but which enhances such merits as may be possessed by the
object of the attachment, and somewhat confuses the relationship on
the intellectual side. This condition of things is in no way
especially feminine; John Stuart Mill bowed down to Mrs. Taylor, and
Comte erected his admiration of Clotilde into a _culte_. Mr.
Atkinson was many years younger than his friend, and very likely she
never fully realized the depth of her own feelings towards him. But
still the attraction had its influence, though unacknowledged in
words, and unreciprocated in kind.
Miss Martineau was really taught by Mr. Atkinson much of science that
she had not previously studied; but yet it was an error, from every
point of view, for her to present to the world a book in which she
avowed herself his pupil. Her letters are mainly composed of
questions, upon which she seeks enlightenment. The answers cannot, in
the nature of the case, give forth a connected system of thought upon
"Man's Nature and Development." No one was more ready than she herself
to recognize that, as she says, "in literature, no mind can work well
upon the lines laid down by another"; yet this was what she required
Mr. Atkinson to do in replying to her questions and taking up her
points. The errors that one would expect are found in the results of
this mistaken form; the facts and the inferences are neither
sufficiently separated, nor properly connected; and the real value
which the book had as a contribution to science and philosophy is lost
sight of in the disorder. In fact, no form could be less suitable than
the epistolary for such work--either for the writers to arrange and
analyze what they were doing, or for the reader to see and understand
what they have done. Besides this, the public had long consented to
learn from Harriet Martineau; but Mr. Atkinson, though highly
respected by his own circle, was not known to the general public, and
it was therefore an error in policy for Miss Martineau to show herself
sitting as a pupil at his feet, and to call on those who believed in
her to believe in him as her teacher and guide. Her fine tact and long
experience must have led her to perceive all this in an ordinary case;
and only the personal reason of a desire to win for her friend the
recognition from the public which she herself had already given him so
fully in her own head and heart, could have led an experienced and
able woman of letters to so blunder in her selection of the literary
form of the book.
As to the substance of the _Letters_, but little need be said, because
the bulk of the volume is not her writing, but Mr. Atkinson's. The
ideas which she had then accepted, however, were those by which she
lived the rest of her life, and must have their due share of notice
for that reason.
The fundamental point in the book is its insistance on the Baconian,
or experiential, or scientific, method of inquiry being adopted in
studying man and his mental constitution, just as much as in studying
inanimate nature. A great First Cause of all things is not denied, but
declared unknown and unknowable, as necessarily beyond the
comprehension of the senses of man. Supernatural revelation is, of
course, entirely rejected; indeed, the very word supernatural is held
to involve a fallacy, for only natural things can be known. Mr.
Atkinson pointed out that the whole of the facts which are around us
can be observed, analyzed, and found to occur in an invariable
sequence of causes and effects, which form natural laws; and that the
mind of man is no exception to this general truth, that all events
spring from causes, and are themselves in turn causes of other
effects. It follows from these conclusions that the "First Cause"
(which, as Miss Martineau said, the constitution of the human mind
requires it to suppose) never intervenes in the world as an errant
influence, disturbing natural law; and all speculations about its
nature, character, and purposes are put aside as out of the field of
inquiry.
Passing on from method to results, Mr. Atkinson gave the first hints