Harriet Martineau Part 8

[Extract.]

September 18, 1874.

My malady was absolutely unlike cancer, and it never had any sort of relation to "malignant" disease. The doctors called it "indolent tumor--most probably polypus." Don't you remember how, at that very time, the great dispute on Elliotson's hands was whether any instance could be adduced of cure of organic disease by mesmerism? Elliotson was nearly certain, but not quite, of the cure of a cancer case in his own practice. The doctors were full of the controversy, and some of them wrote both to me and to Mr.

Greenhow to inquire the nature of my case, whether malignant or not. Of course we both replied "No." It would be a dreadful misfortune if now anybody concerned should tell a different story.

Greenhow is still living (aged 82) and all alive; and he would like nothing better than to get hold of it, and bring out another indecent pamphlet. If I could but lay hands on the diary of the case, written at the time, what a security it would be? But I can nowhere find it. The next best security is turning back to the statement, "Letters" in the _Athenaeum_ of the autumn of 1844.

Those "Letters" went through two editions when reprinted, after having carried those numbers of the _Athenaeum_ through three editions. One would think the narrative must be accessible enough.

Above all things, let there be no mistake in our statements.

It ought to be enough for observers that I had ten years of robust health after that recovery, walking from sixteen to twenty miles in a day, on occasion, and riding a camel in the heart of Nubia, and hundreds of miles on horseback, through Palestine to Damascus, and back to the Levant.

I have written so much because I could not help it. I shall hardly do it again. I will add only that the mesmerizing began in June, 1844, and the cure was effected before the following Christmas.

Dear friend,

I am yours ever,

H. M.

[13] I find there is a widespread impression that she eventually died of the same tumor that she supposed to have been cured at this time. It should be distinctly stated, however, that if this were the case, Mr. Greenhow and Sir C.

Clarke were both _utterly_ wrong in their diagnosis in 1840. I have read Mr. Greenhow's _Report of the Case of Miss H. M._, and the notes of the post-mortem lie before me--kindly lent me by the surgeon, Mr. King, now of Bedford Park, who made the autopsy. I find that the organ which Mr.

Greenhow and his consultant both stated to be the seat of the disease, enlargement and tumor, in 1840, is described as being found "particularly small and unaffected" after death.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE HOME LIFE.

At forty-two years old, Harriet Martineau found herself free for the first time to form and take possession of a _home of her own_. Now, for the first time, she could have the luxury which many girls obtain by marriage so young that they spoil it to themselves and others, and which it is as natural for each grown woman to desire, irrespective of marriage, as it is for a fledged bird to leave the old nest--a house and a domestic circle in which she could be the organizing spirit, where the home arrangements should be of her own ordering, and where she could have the privacy and self-management which can no otherwise be enjoyed, in combination with the exercise of that housewifely skill to which all women more or less incline.

The beauty of the scenery led her to fix upon the English lakes for the locality in which to make her home, and, finding no suitable house vacant, she resolved to build one for herself. She purchased two acres of land, within half-a-mile of the village of Ambleside; borrowed some money on mortgage from a well-to-do cousin; had the plans drawn out under her own instructions, and watched the house being built so that it should suit her own tastes.

It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray stone, and stands upon a small rocky eminence--whence its name "the Knoll." There is enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the formation of a terrace about twenty feet wide in front of the windows; then there comes the descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of the rock is the garden. Narrow flights of steps at either end of the terrace lead down to the greensward and the flower-beds; in the centre of these is a gray granite sun-dial, with the characteristic motto around it--"Come Light! Visit me!" To the left is the gardener's cottage, with the cow-house, pig-stye and root-shed. The front of the house looks across the garden, and over the valley to Loughrigg. Its back is turned to the road, and concealed from pa.s.sers-by, partly by the growth of greenery, and partly by the Methodist Chapel. A winding path leads up from the road to the house, and a small path forking off from this goes round past the cottage to the field where the cows used to graze, and to the piece of land that was appropriated to growing the roots for the cows and the household fruit and vegetables.

Within, "The Knoll" is just a nice little residence for a maiden lady, with her small household, and room for an occasional guest. You enter by a covered porch, and find the drawing-room on the right hand of the hall. It is a fairly large room, and remarkably well-lighted; there was a window-tax when she built, but she showed her faith in the growth of political common-sense abrogating so mischievous an impost, by building in antic.i.p.ation of freedom of light and air from taxation.

The drawing-room has two large windows, one of which descends quite to the floor, and is provided with two or three stone steps outside, so that the inmates may readily step forth on to the terrace. This window, by the way, exposed her to another tax than the Government one. Hunters of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not merely to walk round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to mount these steps and flatten the tips of their noses against her window. Objectionable as the liability to this friendly attention would be felt by most of us, it was doubly so to Miss Martineau because of her deafness, which precluded her from receiving warning of her admirers' approaches from the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel--so that the first intimation that she would receive of their presence would be to turn her head by chance and find the flattened nose and the peering eyes against the window-pane. There is a special record of one occasion, when her bell rang in an agitated fashion, and the maid, on going, found her mistress much disturbed. "There is a _big_ woman, with a _big_ pattern on her dress, beckoning to me to come to the window--go, and tell her to go away." But similar incidents were manifold, and her servants had to be trained to guard their mistress as if she were the golden apples of the Hesperides.

Indeed, for several years (till she became too ill to travel) she used to leave her lake-side home altogether during the tourist season.

In her latest years she commonly wrote in the drawing-room, as the sunniest and most cheerful apartment, and where, too, she could sit by the fire, and yet get plenty of daylight. Her proper study, however, was the room on the opposite side of the hall. This is a long room with a bay window at the other end of the fire-place, and the door in the centre. Book-cases lined the whole of these walls; but her library was an extensive one, and there were books all over the house. This room served as dining-room and study, both; the writing table was near the window, the dining-table further towards the fire.

The only other room on the ground floor is the kitchen, which runs parallel with the drawing-room. Her principles and her practice went hand-in-hand in her domestic arrangements as in her life generally; and her kitchen was as airy, light and comfortable for her maids as her drawing-room was for herself. The kitchen, too, was provided with a book-case for a servants' library. A scullery, dairy, etc., are annexed to the kitchen, and the entrance to the cellars below is also found through the green baize door which shuts off the cooking region from the front of the house.

Up-stairs, that which was her own room is large and cheerful, and provided with two windows, a big hanging cupboard, and a good sized dressing-room--the latter indeed, fully large enough for a maid to sleep in. The next was the spare-room; and there lingers no small interest about the guest-chamber, where Harriet Martineau received such guests as Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas Jerrold. A small servants' room is next to this, and a larger one is over the kitchen, so that it comes just at the head of the stairs.

Such is the size and arrangement of Harriet Martineau's home.

Climbing plants soon covered "The Knoll" on every side. The ivy kept it green through all the year; the porch was embowered in honeysuckle, clematis, pa.s.sion-flower, and Virginia creeper. Wordsworth, Macready, and other friends of note, planted trees for Harriet below the terrace. The making of all these arrangements was a source of satisfaction and delight to her such as can only be imagined by those who have felt what it is to come abroad after a long and painful confinement from illness, and to find life and usefulness freely open again under agreeable conditions and prospects.

While her house was being built, she lodged in Ambleside; and in that time, during the autumn and winter of 1845-6, she wrote her _Forest and Game Law Tales_, with the object of showing how mischievous the game laws were in their operation upon society at large, and more particularly upon the fortunes of individual farmers, and upon the laborers who were led into poaching. These tales occupy three volumes of the ordinary novel size. They had a sale which would have been very good for a novel; two thousand copies were disposed of, and doubtless did some service for the cause for which she had worked. So far as her own pecuniary interests were concerned, however, these tales made her first failure. It was the only work which never returned her any remuneration. The publisher had reckoned on a very large circulation, and so had put out too much capital in stock, stereotypes, and the like, to leave any profit on the sale that actually took place; and the publication unfortunately coincided with the agitation of the political world about the repeal of the corn laws. But one pleasing incident arose out of them for her personally. She had been in difficulties as to how to obtain turf to lay down upon the land under her terrace. One fine morning, soon after her entrance on her home, her maid found a great heap of sods under the window, when she opened the shutters in the morning. A dirty note, closed with a wafer, was stuck upon the pile, and this was found to state that the sods were "a token of grat.i.tude for the _Game Law Tales_, from a Poacher." Harriet never discovered from whom this tribute came.

She took possession of her home on April 7th, 1846. During the summer she wrote another story for young people--one of her most interesting tales, and instructive in its moral bearing--_The Billow and the Rock_. It must here be noted, in pa.s.sing, that this is the last of her works in which the theism that she had, up to this time, held for religious truth, makes itself visible. A new experience was about to lead her to think afresh upon the theological subjects, and to revise her opinions about the genesis of faiths, and their influence upon morals.

In the autumn of 1846, she accepted an invitation from her friends, Mr. and Mrs. R. V. Yates, of Liverpool, to join them in a journey to the East, they bearing the expense. The party left England in October, and were met at Malta by Mr. J. C. Ewart, afterwards M.P. for Liverpool. Together, these four travellers sailed up the Nile to the second cataract, studied Thebes and Philae, went up and into the Great Pyramid, visited bazaars, mosques and (the ladies) harems, in Cairo.

Then they travelled in the track of Moses in the desert, pa.s.sing Sinai and reaching Petra. Next, they completely traversed Palestine; and finally, pa.s.sed through Syria to Beyrout, where they took ship again for home. This journey occupied eight months.

In October, 1847, Harriet reached "The Knoll" again, and settled herself in her permanent course of home life. As the same habits were continued, with only the interruptions of occasional visits to other parts of the country, day by day, for many years, I may as well mention what was the course of that daily home life.

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 antic.i.p.ated 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 const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sages 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.n.u.script 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 grat.i.tude. I think her good and n.o.ble 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 person, practice, and character inspire me with the truest affection and respect.