Harriet Martineau
companions in study later on. Harriet's first attraction to Mr.
Worthington was that he was her brother's friend. The two young men
were fellow-students at college, preparing for the Unitarian ministry.
Worthington was already well known to Harriet from her brother's
letters before she saw him. He then went on a visit to Norwich, to
spend a part of the vacation with James, and the interest which the
friend and the sister already felt in each other, from their mutual
affection for the brother, soon ripened into love. This was, I
believe, in 1822, when she was twenty years old.
Her father and mother looked not unkindly upon the dawning of this
affection. The brother, however, who knew the two so well, felt quite
certain that they were not suited for each other. Harriet was of a
strong, decided temper, even somewhat arbitrary and hasty, quick in
her judgments, and firm in her opinions. The temperament of
Worthington, on the other hand, was, I am told, gentle, impressionable
and sensitive in the extreme. He was highly conscientious, and
ultra-tender in his treatment of the characters and opinions of
others. The two seemed in many respects the antipodes of each other.
He who knew them both best was convinced that they would not be happy
together, and that opinion he has never changed.
It is above all things difficult to predict beforehand whether two
apparently antagonistic characters will really clash and jar in the
close union of married life, or whether, on the contrary, the
deficiencies of the one will be supplemented by those opposite
tendencies which are rather in excess in the other. It is notorious
that marriages are seldom perfect matches in the view of outsiders;
the incongruities in the temperaments and the habits of life and
thought, are more easily discerned than the fusing influence of ardent
love can be measured. Nor, indeed, can the changes which will be
worked in the disposition by a surrender to the free play of emotion
be accurately foreseen. Considerations such as these, however, do not
have much weight in the mind of a young man whose experience of the
mysteries of the human heart is yet to come; and James Martineau was
strongly averse to the engagement of his sister and his friend. Their
attachment was not then permitted to become an engagement. Worthington
was poor--was still only a student--Harriet was supposed, at that
time, to be well portioned; the sensitive temperament of the young
lover felt the variety of discouragements placed in the path of his
affection, and so that affection which should have brought only joy
became, in fact, to Harriet the cause of sorrow, suspense and anxiety.
Yet its vivifying influence was felt, and the true happiness which is
inseparable from mutual love, however the emotion be checked and
denied its full expression, was not lacking. For some insight into
what Harriet Martineau knew and felt of love, we must look elsewhere
than in the formal record of the Autobiography.[3] But this, like all
the other chief events of her life, has found a place in her works
under a thin veiling of her personality. Let us see from one of her
early essays how Harriet Martineau learned to regard love. The essay
is called "In a Hermit's Cave."
[3] Mr. H. G. Atkinson writes to me: "She had written much
more at length (than is published) in her Autobiography about
her courtship; but she consulted me about publishing it, and
I advised her not to do so--the matter counted for so little
in such a life as hers." The quotation which I give here
shows for what it did really count in the history of her
mental development. But so difficult must it needs be for the
writer of an autobiography to speak frankly of the more
sacred experiences of the life, that it is not surprising
that Harriet Martineau "destroyed what she had written," when
so advised by the friend whom she consulted. I need only add
that the many new details about the facts of this matter,
which I am able to give, I have received from two of her own
generation, both of whom were very intimate friends of hers
at the time when all this occurred.
"The place was not ill-chosen by the holy man, if the
circumstances could but have been adapted to that highest
worship--the service of the life.... But there is yet wanting the
altar of the human heart, on which alone a fire is kindled from
above to shine in the faces of all true worshippers for ever.
Where this flame, the glow of human love, is burning, there is the
temple of worship, be it only beside the humblest village hearth:
where it has not been kindled there is no sanctuary; and the
loftiest amphitheatre of mountains, lighted up by the ever-burning
stars, is no more the dwelling-place of Jehovah than the Temple of
Solomon before it was filled with the glory of the Presence....
"Yes, Love is worship, authorized and approved.... Many are the
gradations through which this service rises until it has reached
that on which God has bestowed His most manifest benediction, on
which Jesus smiled at Cana, but which the devotee presumed to
decline. Not more express were the ordinances of Sinai than the
Divine provisions for wedded love; never was it more certain that
Jehovah benignantly regarded the festivals of His people than it
is daily that He has appointed those mutual rejoicings of the
affections, which need but to be referred to Him to become a holy
homage. Yet there have been many who pronounce common that which
God has purified, and reject or disdain that which He has
proffered and blest. How ignorant must such be of the growth of
that within! How unobservant of what passes without! Would that
all could know how from the first flow of the affections, until
they are shed abroad in their plentitude, the purposes of creation
become fulfilled. Would that all could know how, by this mighty
impulse, new strength is given to every power; how the intellect
is vivified and enlarged; how the spirit becomes bold to explore
the path of life, and clear-sighted to discern its issues.... For
that piety which has humanity for its object--must not that heart
feel most of which tenderness has become the element? Must not the
spirit which is most exercised in hope and fear be most familiar
with hope and fear wherever found?
"How distinctly I saw all this in those who are now sanctifying
their first Sabbath of wedded love.... The one was at peace with
all that world which had appeared so long at war with him. He
feared nothing, he possessed all; and of the overflowings of his
love he could spare to every living thing. The other thought of no
world but the bright one above, and the quiet one before her, in
each of which dwelt one in whom she had perfect trust.... In her
the progression has been so regular, and the work so perfect, that
any return to the former perturbations of her spirit seems
impossible. She entered upon a new life when her love began; and
it is as easy to conceive that there is one Life Giver to the
body, and another to the spirit, as that this progression is not
the highest work of God on earth, and its results abounding to His
praise.... To those who know them as I know them, they appear
already possessed of an experience in comparison with which it
would appear little to have looked abroad from the Andes, or
explored the treasure-caves of the deep, or to have conversed with
every nation under the sun. If they could see all that the eyes of
the firmament look upon, and hear all the whispered secrets that
the roving winds bear in their bosoms, they could learn but little
new; for the deepest mysteries are those of human love, and the
vastest knowledge is that of the human heart."
Even more vividly, at a later period, she told something of her
experiences in one of her fictions, under the guise of a conversation
between a young husband and wife:--
"Do you really think there are any people that have passed through
life without knowing what that moment was, that stir in one's
heart on being first sure that one is beloved? It is most like the
soul getting free of the body and rushing into Paradise, I should
think. Do you suppose anybody ever lived a life without having
felt this?"
Walter feared it might be so; but, if so, a man missed the moment
that made a man of one that was but an unthinking creature before;
and a woman the moment best worth living for....
"It seems to me," said Effie, "that though God has kindly given
this token of blessedness to all--or to so many that we may nearly
say all--without distinction of great or humble, rich or poor, the
great and the lowly use themselves to the opposite faults. The
great do not seem to think it the most natural thing to marry
where they first love; and the lowly are too ready to love."
"That is because the great have too many things to look to besides
love; and the lowly have too few. The rich have their lighted
palaces to bask in, as well as the sunshine; and they must have a
host of admirers, as well as one bosom friend. And when the poor
man finds that there is one bliss that no power on earth can shut
him out from, and one that drives out all evils for the time--one
that makes him forget the noon-day heats, and one that tempers the
keen north wind, and makes him walk at his full height when his
superiors lounge past him in the street--no wonder he is eager to
meet it, and jogs the time-glass to make it come at the soonest.
If such a man is imprudent, I had rather be he than one that first
lets it slip through cowardice, and would then bring it back to
gratify his low ambition!"
"And for those who let it go by for conscience sake, and do not
ask for it again?"
"Why, they are happy in having learned what _the one feeling is
that life is worth living for_. They may make themselves happy upon
it for ever, after that. Oh! Effie, you would not believe, nothing
could make you believe, what I was the day before and the day after
I saw that sudden change of look of yours that told me all. The one
day, I was shrinking inwardly from everything I had to do, and
every word of my father's, and everybody I met; and was always
trying to make myself happy in myself alone, with the sense of God
being near me and with me. The other day, I looked down upon
everybody, in a kindly way; and yet I looked up to them, too, for I
felt a respect that I never knew before for all that were suffering
and enjoying; and I felt as if I could have brought the whole world
nearer to God, if they would have listened to me. I shall never
forget the best moment of all--when my mind had suddenly ceased
being in a great tumult, which had as much pain as pleasure in it.
When I said distinctly to myself, 'She loves me,' Heaven came down
round about me that minute."[4]
[4] _Illustrations of Political Economy_: "A Tale of the
Tyne," pp. 54, _et seq._ This passage is doubly interesting
from the fact that Mr. Malthus, the discoverer of the
Population Law, sent specially to thank her for having
written it.
This tells how Harriet Martineau could love in her youth. Perhaps the
stream ran all the more powerfully for its course being checked; for
it was over three years after she met and became attached to Mr.