Harriet Martineau
marriage, in any way, except in the chance of motherhood, a yet
greater fact than love itself to a woman. On the other hand, her work
must have been hindered by the duties of married life, even if her
marriage had been thoroughly happy, and her lot free from exceptional
material cares. Matronage is a profession in itself. The duties of a
wife and mother, as domestic life is at present arranged, absorb much
time and strength, and so diminish the possibilities of intellectual
labor. Moreover, the laws regulating marriage are still, and fifty
years ago were far more, in a very bad state; and, leaving a woman
wholly dependent for fair treatment, whether as a wife or mother, upon
the mercy and goodness of the man she marries, justify Harriet
Martineau's observation: "The older I have grown, the more serious
have seemed to me the evils and disadvantages of married life, as it
exists among us at this time." The wife who is beloved and treated as
an equal partner in life, the mother whose natural rights in the
guardianship of her family are respected, the mistress of a home in
which she is the sunshine of husband and children, must ever be the
happiest of women. But far better is it to be as Harriet Martineau
was--a widow of the heart by death--than to have the affections torn
through long years by neglect and cruelty, springing less from natural
badness than from the evil teaching of vile laws and customs. Fifty
years ago marriage was a dangerous step for a woman; and Harriet
Martineau had reason for saying at last: "Thus, I am not only entirely
satisfied with my lot, but think it the very best for me."
For a while, however, the happy prospect of a beloved wifehood cheered
her struggling and anxious life. But it was not for long. Her actual
and acknowledged engagement lasted, I believe, only a few months. Mr.
Worthington had, at this time, but lately completed his course as a
Divinity student; and he had been appointed to the joint charge of a
very large Unitarian Church at Manchester. Conscientiousness was one
of the most marked features of his character, according to his college
friend; and Harriet herself declares that she "venerated his moral
nature." He had thrown himself into the very heavy pastoral work
committed to him with all the devotion of this high characteristic.
Moreover, the long doubt and suspense of his love for her before their
engagement, had, doubtless, worked unfavorably upon his nervous
system. The end of it was, that he was suddenly seized with a brain
fever, in which he became delirious. He was removed to his father's
home in Leicestershire, to be nursed; and in process of time, the
fever was subdued. But the mind did not regain its balance. He was
still, as she says, "insane"; but from one of her dear and early
friends, I hear that "his family did not call it insanity,"--only a
feeble and unhinged state, from which recovery might have been
expected hopefully.
In this state of things it was thought desirable that the woman he
loved should be brought to see him. The beloved presence, his
physician believed, might revive old impressions and happy
anticipations, and might be the one thing needful to induce a
favorable change in his condition. His mother wrote to beg Harriet
Martineau to come to him; Harriet eagerly sought her mother's
permission to hasten to his side; and Mrs. Martineau forbade her
daughter to go. The old habit of obedience to her mother, and the
early implanted ideas of filial duty, were too strong for Harriet at
once to break through them; she did not defy her mother and go; and in
a few more weeks--terrible weeks of doubt and mental storm they must
have been, between her love and her obedience dragging her different
ways--Worthington died, and left her to her life of heart-widowhood,
darkened by this shadow of arbitrary separation to the last. "The
calamity was aggravated to me," she says, "by the unaccountable
insults I received from his family, whom I had never seen. Years
after, the mystery was explained. They had been given to understand,
by cautious insinuation, that I was actually engaged to another while
receiving my friend's addresses." They had not appreciated how
submissive she was as a daughter; and their belief that her love was
insincere was not an unnatural one in the circumstances.
Had those relatives of the dead lover lived to read Harriet Martineau's
Autobiography, they would not have been made to think differently of
her feelings towards him; for there she goes calmly on, after the
passage above quoted, to say only: "Considering what I was in those
days, it was happiest for us both that our union was prevented." As we
have had to look outside the Autobiography for a record of what love
was to her, and what it did for her, so we must seek elsewhere for the
cry of agony which tells how she felt her loss. But the record exists;
it is found in an essay entitled _In a Death Chamber_, one of that
autobiographical series published in _The Monthly Repository_, from
which I have previously quoted.
This beautiful piece of writing--far more of a poem in essence than
anything which she ever published in verse--is spoiled as a
composition by mutilation in quoting. But its length leaves me no
option but to select from it only a few of the more confessional
passages, to aid us in our psychological study:
This weary watch! In watching by the couch of another there is no
weariness; but this lonely tending of one's own sick heart is more
than the worn-out spirit can bear. What an age of woe since the
midnight clock gave warning that my first day of loneliness was
beginning--to others a Sabbath, to me a day of expiation.
All is dull, cold and dreary before me, until I also can escape to
the region where there is no bereavement, no blasting root and
branch, no rending of the heart-strings. What is aught to me, in
the midst of this all-pervading, thrilling torture, when all I
want is to be dead? The future is loathsome, and I will not look
upon it; the past, too, which it breaks my heart to think
about--what has it been? It might have been happy, if there is
such a thing as happiness; but I myself embittered it at the time,
and for ever. What a folly has mine been! Multitudes of sins now
rise up in the shape of besetting griefs. Looks of rebuke from
those now in the grave; thoughts which they would have rebuked if
they had known them; moments of anger, of coldness; sympathy
withheld when looked for; repression of its signs through selfish
pride; and worse, far worse even than this ... all comes over me
now. O! if there be pity, if there be pardon, let it come in the
form of insensibility; for these long echoes of condemnation will
make me desperate.
But was there ever human love unwithered by crime--by crime of
which no human law takes cognizance, but the unwritten everlasting
laws of the affections? Many will call me thus innocent. The
departed breathed out thanks and blessing, and I felt them not
then as reproaches. If, indeed, I am only as others, shame, shame
on the impurity of human affections; or, rather, alas! for the
infirmity of the human heart! For I know not that I could love
more than I have loved.
Since the love itself is wrecked, let me gather up its relics, and
guard them more tenderly, more steadily, more gratefully. This
seems to open up glimpses of peace. O grant me power to retain
them--the light and music of emotion, the flow of domestic wisdom
and chastened mirth, the life-long watchfulness of benevolence,
the thousand thoughts--are these gone in their reality? Must I
forget them as others forget?
If I were to see _my_ departed one--that insensible, wasted
form--standing before me as it was wont to stand, with whom would
I exchange my joy?... But it is not possible to lose all. The
shadows of the past may have as great power as their substance
ever had, and the spirit of human love may ever be nigh, invested
with a majesty worthy to succeed the lustre of its mortal days.
This is the poem of Harriet Martineau's love. This is what remains to
show that the girl whose intellect was so powerful, and who had
habitually and of choice exercised her mind upon the most abstruse
studies and the most difficult thoughts which can engage the
attention, could nevertheless feel at least as fervently, and deliver
herself up to her emotions at least as fully, as any feeble, ignorant,
or narrow-minded creature that ever lived. Surely, with the truth
emphasized by such an example, the common but stupid delusion that the
development of the intellect diminishes the capacity for passion and
tenderness, must fade away! This girl's mental power and her mental
culture were both unusually large; but here is the core of her heart,
and is it not verily womanly?
This experience did more than give her hours of happiness; it did more
than bring to her that enlargement of the spirit which she so well
described; for it taught her to appreciate, and to properly value, the
influence of the emotions in life. Never in one of her works, never in
a single phrase, is she found guilty of that blasphemy against the
individual affections, into which some who have yet sought to pose as
high priests of the religion of humanity have fallen and lost
themselves. In all her writings one finds the continual recognition of
the great truth which was in the mind of him who said: "If a man love
not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath
not seen?"--a truth of the very first consequence to those who aim at
expressing their religion by service to the progress of mankind.
The year 1826, to Harriet crowded so full of trouble, came to an end
soon after Mr. Worthington's death. In the following year, though she
was in very bad health, she wrote a vast quantity of manuscript. Some
of it was published at once. Other portions waited in her desk for a
couple of years, when her contributions to _The Monthly Repository_
recommenced, after a change in its editorship.
She wrote in the year 1827 various short stories, which were published
by Houlston, of Shrewsbury, without her name on their title-pages.
Their character may be guessed by the fact that they were circulated
as Mrs. Sherwood's writings! In tone, they resemble the ordinary
Sunday-school story-book; but there is a fire, an earnestness, and an
originality often discoverable in them which are enough to mark them
out from common hack-writing. Two of them, _The Rioters_ and _The Turn
Out_, deal with topics of political economy; but the questions were
thought out (very accurately) in her own mind, for at that time she
had never read a book upon the subject.
These little stories were so successful that the publisher invited her
to write a longer one, which should have her name attached to it. She
went to work, accordingly, and produced a good little tale, of one
hundred and fifty pages of print, which she called _Principle and
Practice_. It recounts the struggles of an orphan family in their
efforts after independence. As in all her writings of this kind, her
own experience is interfused into the fiction. No part of this story
is so interesting as that where a young man who has met with an
accident has to reconcile his mind to the anticipation of life-long
lameness--as she to deafness. The sisters of this orphan family, too,
make money by a kind of fancy-work by which she herself was earning a
few guineas from the wealthier members of her family, namely, by
cutting bags and baskets out of pasteboard, fitting them together with
silk and gold braid, and painting plaques upon their sides. _Principle