Harriet Martineau Part 9

"I find a worth and greatness in herself, and a consistency and benevolence and perseverance in her practice, such as win the sincerest esteem and affection. She is not a person to be judged by her writings alone, but rather by her own deeds and life, than which nothing can be more exemplary or n.o.bler. She seems to me the benefactress of Ambleside, yet takes no sort of credit to herself for her active and indefatigable philanthropy. The government of her household is admirably administered; all she does is well done, from the writing of a history down to the quietest feminine occupation. No sort of carelessness or neglect is allowed under her rule, and yet she is not over-strict, or too rigidly exacting; her servants and her poor neighbors love as well as respect her.

"I must not, however, fall into the error of talking too much about her, merely because my mind is just now deeply impressed with what I have seen of her intellectual power and moral worth."

Some of her lectures were given with the express object of inducing the people to form a building society. Rents were excessively high for the working cla.s.ses from the scarcity of cottages; and therefore they lived and slept crowded together, while the open country extended all around them. The moral screw was turned upon them, too, about politics and religion, by the threat of the landlord that, if they offended him, he would turn them out of the only cottages they could get. With that true philanthropy which her studies in political economy had taught, Miss Martineau went to work to aid the people to improve their own condition. She obtained a loan of 500 from her old friend, Mrs.

Reid, of London (to whom the foundation of Bedford college is mainly due), with which she purchased a field just above the village at Ellercross, and parcelled it out, drained it, and made the road. Then, by her lectures, she showed the people how they could "buy a house with its rent"; and she undertook all the infinite trouble that devolved upon her when the society was formed, as the only member of it with legal and general knowledge, and, therefore, the only one able to guide its affairs. Before me there lies a package of the notes that she sent at different times on this business to Mr. Bell, the Ambleside chemist, who was the nominal chairman--though she was the real one--of the society. "Jealousy and ridicule went to work against the scheme"; but her philanthropic energy and wisdom were fully successful. The cottages are healthily planned and well built, and remain there as a monument to the efforts which she made for the good of her poor neighbors.

Besides these more general undertakings for their benefit, there yet live many amongst them who are grateful to her for personal kindness and a.s.sistance. While her strength lasted, she was ever ready to try to relieve others from illness by the means which she believed to have cured herself; and seven mesmerized patients were sometimes asleep at one time in her drawing-room. She was a powerful mesmerist. Most of her patients were at least relieved--some cured. A present resident of Ambleside, who owes his success in business life to her kindness, told me how she mesmerized him for nearly an hour every day for a year; and to show that she did not do this without very decided results to herself, he remembers that her fingers used to swell during the process, so as to almost hide her rings, if she forgot to take them off before beginning.

Again, her library was placed freely at the service of deserving young men in the village, and only book-lovers will be able to appreciate the generosity of this neighborly kindness. Old Miss Nicholson tells me of Miss Martineau's kindness to her invalid sister; sharing with her the luxuries which were not to be bought in Ambleside, but which the famous writer frequently received from some of her many friends.

Nor was the mere personal human sympathy wanting in her; those who needed no gifts or material aid from her knew her as a kind friend, ready to think for them and advise with them in their troubles or perplexities.

In mentioning her activities other than literary, during those ten busy and healthy years of home life, I must not omit her "farming"--her farm of two acres. She had no intention, at first, of embarking in such an enterprise. She let on hire that portion of her land which she did not wish to have in her garden, and her maids and herself, with the occasional help of a man, kept the garden in order.

But this plan did not answer well. The tenant allowed the gra.s.s to get untidy, and his sheep broke into the garden to eat the cabbages.

Neither the vegetable nor the flower garden could be kept so nicely as might be wished. Milk, b.u.t.ter, eggs, and hams, all had to be bought at high prices; and so small was the supply at times that these articles of country produce were actually unattainable by purchase.

The energetic lady of the small domain was profoundly dissatisfied with this state of affairs. So to work she went to study the science of agriculture and practical farming; and soon a Norfolk laborer was established on her land, and this small farm was under her own management. She set up a cross-pole fence around her estate, the first one ever seen in the Lake District; and, like a true woman, she planted roses all along the fence, to wreathe and decorate it in summer. Then she initiated her fellow-farmers into the mysteries of high farming, and stall feeding. "A cow to three acres" was the Lake rule; but she hired another half-acre of land, to add to her own, and showed that upon this total of two acres she could _almost_ keep two cows. Fowls and pigs were, of course, kept also; and all the household comforts which cows, hens, and pigs supply were obtained from her land at, practically, no cost at all. The subsistence of the laborer and his wife was created out of the soil; and the house had a constant supply of vegetables, milk, eggs, and hams, at a less expense than buying had previously been, and with a much nicer and always certain supply.

The experiment became famous in a small way. "People came to see how we arranged our ground, so as to get such crops out of it,"[16] and one of the Poor-Law Commissioners, having asked her for a private account of how she had managed her little farm, printed her letter in the _Times_, without asking her consent. This brought such a flood of correspondence on her that she was compelled to write on the subject for publication, and so the farm superintendence resulted in a piece of literary work for the mistress.

[16] _Health, Husbandry and Handicraft_, p. 269, "Our Farm of Two Acres."

Now we will see what her pen was doing while all these activities were helping to fill her days.

CHAPTER IX.

IN THE MATURITY OF HER POWERS.

The book, published early in 1848, in which Harriet described her Egyptian, Desert and Palestine travels, was ent.i.tled _Eastern Life, Past and Present_. If I were required to give from some one only of her works a series of extracts which should ill.u.s.trate the special powers of her mind and the finest features of her style, it would be this book that I should choose. I do not mean to say that the most eloquent and vivid pa.s.sage that I might find in all her writings is here; nor that her deepest and n.o.blest qualities as a thinker are more forcibly displayed here than elsewhere. But I mean that in _Eastern Life, Past and Present_, all her best moral and intellectual faculties were exerted, and their action becomes visible, at one page or another, in reading the book from the first to the last chapters.

The keen observation, the active thought, the vigorous memory, the power of deep and sustained study, the mastery of language, giving the ability to depict in words and to arouse the reader's imagination to mental vision--all these requisites for the writing of a good book of travel she showed that she possessed. But there is even more than all this in _Eastern Life_. There is the feeling for humanity in all its circ.u.mstances, which can sympathize no less with the slave of the harem at this moment alive in degradation, than with the highest intelligences that ceased from existence unnumbered thousands of years ago. The most interesting and characteristic feature distinguishing this work is, however, the openness and freedom of its thought combined with the profound reverence that it shows for all that is venerable.

It was _Eastern Life_ which first declared to the world that Harriet Martineau had ceased to have a theology. She had learned in travelling through Egypt, how much of what Moses taught was derived from the ancient mythology of Egypt. Pa.s.sing afterwards through the lands where the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Mohammedan faiths in turn arose, observing, thinking, and studying, the conclusion at which she arrived at last was, in brief, this: That men have ever constructed the image of a Ruler of the Universe out of their own minds; that all successive ideas about the Supreme Power have been originated from within, and modified by the surrounding circ.u.mstances; and that all theologies, therefore, are baseless productions of the human imagination, and have no essential connection with those great religious ideas and emotions by which men are constrained to live n.o.bly, to do justly, and to love what they see to be the true and the right.

Her conviction that the highest moral conduct, and the most unselfish goodness, and the n.o.blest aspirations, are in no degree connected with any kind of creed, was aided and supported, no doubt, by her warm personal affection for Mr. Atkinson, and some other of her friends of his way of thinking, in whom she found aspirations as lofty and feelings as admirable as ever she had enjoyed communion with, together with a complete rejection, on scientific grounds, of all theology. Her belief now was that--

The best state of mind was to be found, however it might be accounted for, in those who were called philosophical atheists....

I knew several of that cla.s.s--some avowed, and some not; and I had for several years felt that they were among my most honored acquaintances and friends; and now I knew them more deeply and thoroughly, I must say that, for conscientiousness, sincerity, integrity, seriousness, effective intellect, _and the true religious spirit_, I knew nothing like them.

Her own "true religious" earnestness was unabated. _Eastern Life_ contains abundance of evidence that the spirit in which she now wrote against all theological systems was exactly at one with that in which she had twenty years before written _Addresses, Prayers and Hymns_.

Her intellectual range had become far wider; her knowledge of human nature and of the history and conditions of mankind had vastly increased; but her religious earnestness--that is to say, her devotion to truth, and her emotional reverence for her highest conceptions of goodness and duty--was as fervent as ever.

Notwithstanding the boldness and heterodoxy of _Eastern Life_, it did not cause much outcry; and her two next books were amongst the most successful of all her works. The first of these was _Household Education_; the second, _A History of the Thirty Years' Peace_.

The former was partly written for periodical publication during 1847 in the _People's Journal_, for which magazine she wrote also a few desultory articles.

The _History of the Peace_ was a voluminous work of the first order of importance. Its execution is in most respects entirely admirable. Her 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 pa.s.sing 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 att.i.tude 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 n.o.ble, 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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.bility 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 cla.s.s. 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 d.i.c.kens'

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 t.i.tle 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 const.i.tution, 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, a.n.a.lyzed, 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 const.i.tution 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.

Pa.s.sing on from method to results, Mr. Atkinson gave the first hints of many doctrines now fully accepted: as that of unconscious cerebration, or that of more senses than five, for instance; and many others (based mainly on phrenology and mesmerism) not held, up to the present time, even by the scientists of his own school. For the rest the book has much that is interesting; it has much that is true; but it has, also, much that might well have been put forward as speculation, but should not have been stated so dogmatically as it was on the evidence available.[18]

[18] It is right that I should say that I alone am responsible for the above (necessarily imperfect) digest of the contents of the book. I at first thought of asking Mr.

Atkinson to do me the favor of reading my account of his work in proof; but I ultimately concluded that it would be better that in this instance, as in the case of all Harriet Martineau's other books, I myself should be wholly responsible to the public for my own substantial accuracy and fairness.

It was received in 1851 with a howl from the orthodox press which would seem strange indeed in these days. But of competent criticism it had very little. Miss Martineau's name, of course, secured attention for it; and small though her share in the book was, it was quite enough to make the fact perfectly clear that she was henceforth to be looked upon as a "materialist" and a "philosophical atheist," and the rest of the names by which it was customary to stigmatize any person who rejected supernaturalism and revelation.

The motives with which this book was written and published could hardly be misunderstood. There could be no idea of making money out of a work on philosophy--even if either of the authors had been in the habit of writing merely to make money; while as to fame and applause, everyone is more or less acquainted with the history of the reception given in all ages to those who have questioned the popular beliefs of their time! The sole motive with which Harriet Martineau wrote and issued this book was the same that impelled her to do all her work--the desire to teach that which she believed to be true, and to be valuable in its influence upon conduct. With regard to the latter point, it seemed to her that one great cause for the slow advance of civilization is the degree to which good men and women have occupied themselves with supernatural concerns, neglecting for these the actual world, its conditions, and its wants, and giving themselves over to the guidance of a spiritual hierarchy instead of exercising all their own powers in freedom. She struck at this error in publishing the _Letters_. At the same time she felt doubtful if her future writings would ever be read after her bold utterances, and even, as the following letter shows, whether she might not find herself the occupant of a felon's dock for the crime of which Socrates, and Jesus, and Galileo were each in turn accused--blasphemy:

LETTER TO MR. ATKINSON.

[Extract.]

August 10, 1874.

One thing more is worth saying. Do you remember how, when we were bringing out our "Letters," I directed your attention to our Blasphemy Law, and the trial of Moxon, under that law, for publishing Sh.e.l.ley's "Queen Mab" among his _Poems_? You ridiculed my statement, and said Mr. Procter[19] denied there being such a law, or Moxon having been tried, in the face of the fact that I had corresponded with Moxon on the occasion, on the part of certain personal friends. The fact appeared afterwards in the _Annual Register_, but it seemed to produce no effect. Well, now you can know the truth by looking at the _Life of Denman_, by Sir Joseph Arnould. If you can lay your hands on the book, please look at vol. ii. p. 129, where there is an account of the trial, Judge Denman being the judge who tried the case. The narrative ends thus:--"The verdict was for the Crown" (conviction for blasphemy), "but Mr. Moxon was never called up for sentence." It is too late for Mr. Procter to learn the truth, but it is surely always well for us, while still engaged in the work of life, to be accurately informed on such matters as the laws we live under, and our consequent responsibilities. Is it not so?

[19] "Barry Cornwall."

It was, then, with the full antic.i.p.ation, not only of social obloquy, but also of legal penalty, that the brave thinker fulfilled (to quote her own words in the preface to the _Letters_) "that great social duty, to impart what we believe, and what we think we have learned.

Among the few things of which we can p.r.o.nounce ourselves certain is the obligation of inquirers after truth to communicate what they obtain." The heroic soul fulfilled now, as before and afterwards, what she held to be her duty, as simply and unwaveringly as ever a soldier on the battlefield charged the cannon's mouth.

Five times in her life did Harriet Martineau write and publish that which she believed would ruin her prospects, silence her voice for ever, and close her career. Far from her was that common paltering with the conscience by which so many men confuse their minds--the poor pretence that truth must not be spoken for fear that the speaker's influence for future worthy work may be injured by his boldness. This is how the devil tempts, saying, "Fall down, and worship me, and I will give thee all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them."

Harriet Martineau never worshipped evil even by silence, when silence was sin, playing fast and loose with her conscience by a promise to use the power so obtained for higher objects hereafter. The truth that appeared to her mind she spoke frankly; the work that was placed for her to do she did simply; and so the quagmire of the expedient never engulfed her reputation, her self-respect and her usefulness, as it has done that of so many who have been lured into it from the straight path of right action and truthful speech in public life, by will-o'-the-wisp hopes of greater power and glory for themselves in the future--which they hope they may use for good when they shall be smothered in cowardice and lies. She had much to suffer, and did suffer. Martyrs are not honored because they are insensate, but because they defy their natural human weaknesses in maintaining that which they believe to be true. Probably the keenest grief which she experienced on the occasion now before us came from the complete separation which took place between her and the dearest friend of her youth, her brother James. Dr. Martineau was, at that time, one of the editors of the _Prospective Review_. Philosophy was his department, and in the natural order the _Letters_ came to him for review. He reviewed the book accordingly and in such terms that all intercourse between him and his sister was thenceforward at an end. They had long before drifted apart in thought; but this final separation was none the less felt as a wrench. Dr. Martineau's attack was almost exclusively aimed against Mr. Atkinson. But with Harriet's loyalty of nature she was more impelled to resent what was said about her friend and colleague than if it had been directed against herself. The brother and sister never met or communicated with each other again.