Harriet Martineau
she went up to London to consult physicians. Dr. Latham and Sir Thomas
Watson both came to the conclusion that she was suffering from
enlargement and enfeeblement of the heart; and, in accordance with her
wish to hear a candid statement of her case, they told her that her
life would probably not be much prolonged. In short they gave her to
understand that she was dying; and her own sensations confirmed the
impression. She had frequent sinking fits; and every night when she
lay down, a struggle for breath began, which lasted sometimes for
hours. She received her death sentence then, and began a course of
life as trying to the nerves and as searching a test of character as
could well be imagined. That trial she bore nobly for twenty-one long
suffering years. She was carefully carried home, and at once occupied
herself with making every preparation for the departure from earth
which she supposed to be impending. The first business was to make a
new will; and this was a characteristic document. After ordering that
her funeral should be conducted in the plainest manner, and at the
least possible cost, she continued thus:--"It is my desire, from an
interest in the progress of scientific investigation, that my skull
should be given to Henry George Atkinson, of Upper Gloucester Place,
and also my brain, if my death take place within such distance of the
said Henry George Atkinson's then present abode as to enable him to
have it for purposes of scientific investigation." Her property was
then ordered to bear various small charges, including one of L200 to
Mrs. Chapman for writing a conclusion to the testator's autobiography,
over and above a fourth share of the profits on the sale of the whole
work after the first edition. "The Knoll" was bequeathed to her
favorite "little sister," Ellen. The remainder of her possessions were
divided amongst all her brothers and sisters, or their heirs, with as
much impartiality as though she held, with Maggie Tulliver's aunt
Glegg, that "in the matter of wills, personal qualities were
subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood." Although
mesmerism had estranged her from a sister, and theology from a
brother, she made no display of bitter feelings towards them and
theirs in her last will.
All her personal affairs being made as orderly as possible, she
proceeded to write her _Autobiography_. Readers of that interesting
but misleading work must bear in mind that it was a very hasty
production. The two large volumes were written in a few months; the
MS. was sent to the printer as it was produced, the sheets for the
first edition were printed off, then the matter was stereotyped, and
the sheets and plates were packed up in the office of the printer,
duly insured, and held ready for immediate publication after her
death. She wrote in this hot haste with "the shadow cloaked from head
to foot" at her right hand. So much reason had she to believe that her
very days were numbered, that she wrote the latter part of her
_Autobiography_ before the first portion. She had already given forth,
in _Household Education_ and _The Crofton Boys_, the results of her
childish experiences of life; and she was now specially anxious not to
die without leaving behind her a definite account of the later course
of her intellectual history.
No one who knew her considers that she did herself justice in the
_Autobiography_. It is hard and censorious; it displays vanity,
both in its depreciation of her own work, and in its recital of the
petty slights and insults which had been offered to her from time to
time; it is aggressive, as though replying to enemies rather than
appealing to friends; and no one of either the finer or the softer
qualities of her nature is at all adequately indicated. It is, in
short, the least worthy of her true self of all the writings of her
life.
The reasons of this unfortunate fact was not far to seek. Her
rationalism, and the abuse and moral ill-usage which she had incurred
by her avowal of her anti-theological opinions, were still new to her.
Her very thoughts, replacing as they did the ideas which she held
without examination for some twenty years (the time which intervened
between her devotional writings and her _Eastern Life_) were still so
far new that they had not the unconsciousness and the quiet placidity
which habit alone gives; for new ideas, like new clothes, sit
uneasily, and are noticeable to their wearer, however carefully they
may have been fitted before adoption. Again, the announcement in the
press that her illness was fatal revived the discussion of her
infidelity, and brought down upon her a whole avalanche of signed and
anonymous letters, of little tracts, awe-inspiring hymns, and manuals
of divinity. The letters were controversial, admonishing, minatory, or
entreating; but whatever their character they were all agreed upon one
point, viz., that her unbelief in Christianity was a frightful sin, of
which she had been willfully guilty. They all agreed in supposing that
it was within her own volition to resume her previous faith, and that
she would not only go to eternal perdition if she did not put on again
her old beliefs, but that she would richly deserve to do so for her
willful wickedness.
Thus, as Miss Arnold remarked to me, the moment at which she wrote
the _Autobiography_ was the most aggressive and unpleasant of her
whole life. Conscious as she was of the purity of her motives in
uttering her philosophical opinions, she found herself suddenly spoken
to by a multitude, whom she could not but know were mentally and
morally incapable of judging her, as a sinner, worthy of their pity
and reprobation. Knowing that she had long been recognized as a
teacher, in advance of the mass of society in knowledge and power of
thought, here was a crowd of people talking to her in the tones which
they might have adopted towards some ignorant inmate of a prison. What
wonder that her wounded self-esteem seemed for a little while to pass
into vanity, when she had to remind the world, from which such insults
were pouring in, of all that she had done for its instruction in the
past? What wonder that the strength which was summed up to bear with
fortitude this species of modern martyrdom, seemed to give a tone of
coldness and hardness to writing of so personal a kind? Then the
extreme haste with which the writing and printing were done gave no
time for the subsidence of such painful impressions; and great
physical suffering and weakness, together with the powerful depressing
medicines which were being employed, added to the difficulty of
writing with calmness, and with a full possession of the sufferer's
whole nature. In short, an autobiography could not have been written
under less favorable conditions. All things taken into account, it is
no wonder that those who knew and loved her whole personality were
shocked and amazed at the inadequate presentation given of it in those
volumes. The sensitive, unselfish, loving, domestic woman, and the
just, careful, disinterested, conscientious and logical author, were
alike obscured rather than revealed; and the biographer whom she chose
to complete the work had neither the intimate personal knowledge, the
mental faculty which might have supplied its place, nor the literary
skill requisite to present a truer picture.
Her _Autobiography_ completed, the plates engraved, and all publishing
arrangements made, she might, had she been an ordinary invalid, have
settled down into quiet after so hard-working a life. Harriet
Martineau could not do this. Her labors continued uninterruptedly, and
were pursued to the utmost limit which her illness would allow. She
did not cease (except during the few months that the _Autobiography_
was in hand) writing her "leaders" for the _Daily News_. Every week it
contained articles by her, instructing thousands of readers. Yet she
was _very_ ill. She never left her home again, after that journey to
London early in 1855. Sometimes she was well enough to go out upon her
terrace; and she frequently sat in her porch, which was a bower, in
the summer time, of clematis, honeysuckle, and passion-flowers,
intermingled with ivy; but she could do no more. She was given, as
soon as she became ill, the daughterly care of her niece, Maria, the
daughter of her elder brother, Robert Martineau, of Birmingham; and no
mother ever received tenderer care or more valuable assistance from
her own child than Harriet Martineau did from the sensible and
affectionate girl whose life was thenceforth devoted to her service.
Maria once tried if her aunt could be taken out of her own grounds in
a bath-chair; but before they reached the gates a fainting fit came
on, with such appalling symptoms of stoppage of the heart that the
experiment was never repeated. Sometimes Miss Martineau would be well
enough to see visitors; more frequently, however, those whom she would
most have liked to talk with had to be sent away by the doctor's
orders. But, through it all, her work continued.
Soon after the _Autobiography_ was finished, she wrote a long paper
upon a most important subject, and one which she felt to be a source
of the gravest anxiety for the future of English politics--the true
sphere of State interference with daily life. The common ignorance and
carelessness upon this point she believed to be the most painful and
perilous feature of our present situation.
It has been brought to light by beneficent action which is, in
another view, altogether encouraging. Our benevolence towards the
helpless, and our interest in personal morality, have grown into a
sort of public pursuit; and they have taken such a hold on us that
we may fairly hope that the wretched and the wronged will never
more be thrust out of sight. But, in the pursuit of our new
objects, we have fallen back--far further than 1688--in the
principle of our legislative proposals--undertaking to provide by
law against personal vices, and certain special social contracts.
Her devotion to freedom, and her belief in personal liberty, led her
to write an article on "Meddlesome Legislation" for the _Westminster
Review_.
Her pecuniary sacrifices for the _Review_ had been made because she
looked upon it as an organ for free speech. Her feelings may be
imagined when the editor refused to insert this article, not on any
ground of principle, but merely because it spoke too freely of some of
the advocates of meddlesome factory laws. The essay was published
however, as a pamphlet, and had such influence upon a bill then before
Parliament that the Association of Factory Occupiers requested to be
allowed to signalize their appreciation of it by giving one hundred
guineas in her name to a charity. A somewhat similar piece of work
followed in the next year, a rather lengthy pamphlet _On Corporate
Traditions and National Rights_. She offered nothing more to the
_Westminster Review_, however, for some time; not, indeed, until that
subject in which she took so profound an interest, the welfare of the
United States, and the progress of the anti-slavery cause, seemed to
require of her that she should avail herself of every possible means
of addressing the public upon it. Then, in 1857, she wrote an article
on _The Manifest Destiny of the American Union_, which appeared in the
_Westminster_ for July of that year.
Having thus signalized her forgiveness of that _Review_, she went on
writing again for it for a little while. In the October number of
the same year there was a paper by her on _Female Dress_ in 1857.
Crinoline had then lately been introduced by the Empress of the
French. If one good, rousing argument could have stood in the path of
fashion, this amusing and vigorous paper from Harriet Martineau's