"Instead of putting the singularity out of sight we should acknowledge it in words, prepare for it in habits, and act upon it in social intercourse. Thus only can we save others from being uneasy in our presence, and sad when they think of us. That we can thus alone make ourselves sought and beloved is an inferior consideration, though an important one to us, to whom warmth and kindness are as peculiarly animating as sunshine to the caged bird. This frankness, simplicity, and cheerfulness can only grow out of a perfect acquiescence in our circ.u.mstances. Submission is not enough. Pride fails at the most critical moment. But hearty acquiescence cannot fail to bring forth cheerfulness. The thrill of delight which arises during the ready agreement to profit by pain (emphatically the joy with which no stranger intermeddleth) must subside like all other emotions; but it does not depart without leaving the spirit lightened and cheered; and every visitation leaves it in a more genial state than the last.... I had infinitely rather bear the perpetual sense of privation than become unaware of anything which is true--of my intellectual deficiences, of my disqualifications for society, of my errors in matter of fact, and of the burdens that I necessarily impose on those who surround me. We can never get beyond the necessity of keeping in full view the worst and the best that can be made of our lot. The worst is either to sink under the trial or to be made callous by it. The best is to be as wise as possible under a great disability, and as happy as possible under a great privation."
It is essential, for a correct understanding of her character, that this great trial of her youth should be presented amidst the moulding influences of that time with as much strength as it was experienced.
But it is difficult, within the necessary limits of quotation, to convey an idea to the reader of either the intensity and bitterness of the suffering revealed, or of the firmness and beauty of the spirit with which the trial was met. Nor was the advice that she gave to others mere talk, which she herself never put in practice. If her family did not realize at the time how deeply she suffered, still less could her friends in later life discover by anything in her manners that her soul had been so searched and her spirits so tried. So frankly and candidly, and with such an utter absence of affectation, did she accept this condition of her life, that those around her hardly realized that she felt it as a deprivation; and a few lines in her autobiography, in which she mentions how conscious she was of intellectual fatigue from the lack of those distractions to the mind which enter continually through the normal ear, came like a painful shock to her friends, making them feel that they had been unconscious of a need ever present with her throughout life.
For some time after the deafness began, she did not use an ear-trumpet. Like many in a similar position, she persuaded herself that her deafness was not sufficiently great to cause any considerable inconvenience to others in conversation. At length, however, she was enlightened upon this point. An account appeared in a Unitarian paper of two remarkable cures of deafness by galvanism, and Harriet"s friends persuaded her to try this new remedy. For a brief while, hope was revived in her; the treatment threw her into a state of nervous fever, during which she regained considerable sensibility in the organ of hearing. The improvement was very temporary, but it lasted sufficiently long to let her know how much her friends had been straining their throats for her sake. From that time she invariably carried and used an ear-trumpet, commencing with an india-rubber tube, with a cup at the end for the speaker to take into his hand, but afterwards employing an ordinary stiff trumpet.
Into this existence, which had hitherto been so full of sadness, there came at length the bright-tinted and vivid shower of light, which means so much to a woman. Love came to brighten the life so dark hitherto for lack of that sunshine. Much as it is to any woman to know herself beloved by the man whom she loves, to Harriet Martineau it was even more than to most. It was not only that her character was a strong one, and that to such a nature all influences that are accepted become powerful forces, but besides this she had always loved more than she had been loved; and her self-esteem had been systematically suppressed by her mother"s stern discipline, and afterwards injured by the mortifications to which the on-coming of her deafness gave rise.
How much, in such a case, it must have been, when the hour at last came for the history of the heart to be written! How delightful the time when she could cherish in her thoughts a love which was at once an equal friendship and a vivid pa.s.sion! How great the revolution in her mind when she found that the man whom she could love would choose her from all the world of women to be his dearest, the partner of his life!
It would be a proof, if proof were needed at this time of day, that it is well-nigh impossible for any person to give a candid, full and unerring record of his own past, and the circ.u.mstances in it which have most influenced his development, to turn from the brief and cursory record which Harriet Martineau"s autobiography gives of this attachment, to the complete story as I have it to tell, here and in a future chapter.
The strongest of all the family affections of her childhood and youth was that which she felt for her brother James. He was two years younger than herself. They had been playmates in childhood, and 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d 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 p.r.o.nounce common that which G.o.d 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 un.o.bservant of what pa.s.ses without! Would that all could know how from the first flow of the affections, until they are shed abroad in their plent.i.tude, 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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-gla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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] _Ill.u.s.trations of Political Economy_: "A Tale of the Tyne," pp. 54, _et seq._ This pa.s.sage 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.
Worthington before their love was allowed to be declared, and their engagement was permitted--a long period for hope and fear to do their painful office in the soul, a long test of the reality of the love on both sides.
Her extensive and deep studies, her sufferings and inward strivings from her deafness, and the joys and anxieties of her love, were the chief moulding influences of her early womanhood. We shall soon see how she came to seek expression for the results of all these in literature.
CHAPTER III.
EARLIEST WRITINGS.
Harriet Martineau"s first attempt to write for publication was made in the same year that her acquaintance with Mr. Worthington was formed; in 1822, when she was twenty years old. It was, apparently, at the close of the vacation in which Worthington had visited his friend Martineau at Norwich, that she commenced a paper with the design of offering it to the Unitarian magazine, _The Monthly Repository_. She had told James that when he had returned to college she should be miserable, and he had, with equal kindness and sense, advised her to try to forget her feelings about the parting by an attempt at authorship. On a bright September morning, therefore, when she had seen him start by the early coach, soon after six, she sat down in her own room with a supply of foolscap paper before her to write her first article.
The account which she--writing from memory--gives in her autobiography, of this little transaction, is curiously inaccurate, as far as the trifling details are concerned. Her own statement is that she took the letter "V" for her signature, and that she found her paper printed in the next number of the magazine, "and in the "Notices to Correspondents" a request to hear more from "V" of Norwich." Her little errors about these facts must be corrected, because the truth of the matter is at once suggestive and amusing.
The article may be found in the _Monthly Repository_ for October, 1822.
It is signed, not "V," but "Discipulus." This, it need hardly be pointed out, is the _masculine_ form of the Latin for learner, or apprentice. The note in the correspondents" column is not in that same month"s magazine; but in the number for the succeeding month, the editor says in his answers to correspondents: "The continuation of "Discipulus" has come to hand. _His_ other proposed communications will probably be acceptable." If more proofs than these were required that the youthful auth.o.r.ess had presented herself to her editor in a manly disguise, it would be furnished by a pa.s.sage in one of these "Discipulus" articles, in which she definitely figures herself as a masculine writer, speaking of "our s.e.x" (_i.e._ the male s.e.x) as a man would do. The interesting fact is thus disclosed that Harriet Martineau adds another to the group of the most eminent women writers of this century who thought it necessary to a.s.sume the masculine s.e.x in order to obtain a fair hearing and an impartial judgment for their earliest work. Surely, as our "Discipulus" takes her place in this list with George Eliot, George Sand, and Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, a great deal is disclosed to us about how women in the past have had to make their way to recognition _against the tide_ of public opinion.
That first printed essay is interesting because it was the precursor of so long a course of literary work, rather than for itself. Yet it is not without its own interest, and is very far indeed from being the crude, imperfect performance of the ordinary amateur. The subject is "Female Writers of Practical Divinity." Here are the first words that Harriet Martineau uttered through the press:
"I do not know whether it has been remarked by others as well as myself, that some of the finest and most useful English works on the subject of practical Divinity are by female authors. I suppose it is owing to the peculiar susceptibility of the female mind, and its consequent warmth of feeling, that its productions, when they are really valuable, find a more ready way to the heart than those of the other s.e.x; and it gives me great pleasure to see women gifted with superior talents applying those talents to promote the cause of religion and virtue."
There is nothing remarkable in the literary form of this first article. How soon she came to have a style of her own, vivid, stirring, and instinct with a powerful individuality, may have been gathered already from the quotations given in our last chapter. But in her first paper the style is coldly correct; imitative of good but severe models, and displaying none of the writer"s individuality. Two points as regards the matter of the essay are of special interest, and thoroughly characteristic. It is interesting, in the first place, to know that she who was destined to do probably more than any other one woman of her century for the enlargement of the sphere of her s.e.x in the field of letters, should have written her first article on the subject of the capacity of women to teach through their writings. The second point worth noticing is that her idea of "practical Divinity"
is simply, good conduct. Theological disputation and dogma do not disturb her pages. Her view of practical Divinity is that it teaches morals; and it is largely because the women to whose writings she draws attention have occupied themselves with the attempt to trace out rules of conduct, that she is interested in their writings, and rejoices in their labors. Indeed, she only alludes once to the opinions on dogmatic theology of the writers whom she quotes, and then she does it only to put aside with scorn the idea that morality and teaching should be rejected because of differences upon points of theology.
Encouraged by the few stately words with which the editor of the _Repository_ had received the offer of more contributions, "Discipulus"
continued his literary labors, and the result appeared in a paper on "Female Education," published in the _Monthly Repository_ of February, 1823. This is a n.o.ble and powerful appeal for the higher education of girls and the full development of all the powers of our s.e.x. It is written with gentleness and tact, but it courageously a.s.serts and demands much that was strange indeed to the tone of that day, though it has become quite commonplace in ours.
The author (supposed to be a man, be it remembered,) disclaimed any intention of proving that the minds of women were equal to those of men, but only desired to show that what little powers the female intellect might possess should be fully cultivated. Nevertheless, the fact was pointed out that women had seldom had a chance of showing how near they might be able to equal men intellectually, for while the lad was at the higher school and college, preparing his mind for a future, "the girl is probably confined to low pursuits, her aspirings after knowledge are subdued, she is taught to believe that solid information is unbecoming her s.e.x; almost her whole time is expended on low accomplishments, and thus, before she is sensible of her powers, they are checked in their growth and chained down to mean objects, to rise no more; and when the natural consequences of this mode of treatment are seen, all mankind agree that the abilities of women are far inferior to those of men." Having shown reasons to believe that women would take advantage of higher opportunities if such were allowed them, "Discipulus" maintained in detail that the cultivation of their minds would improve them for all the accepted feminine duties of life, charitable, domestic and social, and that the consequent elevation of the female character would react beneficially on the male; cited the works of a cl.u.s.ter of eminent auth.o.r.esses, as showing that women could think upon "the n.o.blest subjects that can exercise the human mind;"
and closed with the following paragraph, wherein occurred the phrases by which it is shown that our "Discipulus" of twenty is masquerading as a man, more decisively even than by the termination of the Latin _nom de guerre_:
"I cannot better conclude than with the hope that these examples of what may be done may excite a n.o.ble emulation in _their own_ s.e.x, and in _ours_ such a conviction of the value of the female mind, as shall overcome _our_ long-cherished prejudices, and induce _us_ to give _our_ earnest endeavors to the promotion of _women"s_ best interests."
It is most interesting to thus discover that Harriet Martineau"s first writings were upon that "woman question" which she lived to see make such wonderful advances, and which she so much forwarded, both by her direct advocacy, and by the indirect influence of the proof which she afforded, that a woman may be a thinker upon high topics and a teacher and leader of men in practical politics, and yet not only be irreproachable in her private life, but even show herself throughout it, in the best sense, truly feminine.
Harriet contributed nothing more to the _Monthly Repository_ after this (so far as can now be ascertained), for a considerable time. Encouraged by the success of her first attempts with periodicals, she commenced a book of a distinctly religious character, which was issued in the autumn of the same year, 1823, by Hunter, of St. Paul"s Churchyard.
The little volume was published anonymously. Its t.i.tle-page runs thus: "_Devotional Exercises_; consisting of Reflections and Prayers for the use of Young Persons. To which is added an Address on Baptism. By a lady."
The character of the work is perhaps sufficiently indicated by the t.i.tle. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the book is a commonplace one. It contains a good deal of dogmatism and many plat.i.tudes. It contains, likewise, however, many a n.o.ble thought and many a high aspiration, expressed in words equally flowing and fervent.
A "Reflection" (something like a short sermon) and a prayer are supplied for each morning and each evening of the seven days of the week. She had already attained to such an insight into the human mind as to recognize that religious devotion is an exercise of the emotions.
Proof, too, is given in this little work of the fullness with which she realized that true religion must be expressed by service to mankind; to those nearest to one first, and afterwards to others; and indeed, that a high sense of social duty, with a fervent and unselfish devotion to it, _is_ religion, rather than either the spiritual dram-drinking, or the dogmatic irrationality to which that name of high import is frequently applied.
The prayers in this little volume differ much from the supplications for personal benefits which are commonly called prayers.
These are rather aspirations, or meditations. The highest moral attributes, personified in G.o.d, are held up for the worship of the imperfect human creature, with fervent aspiration to approach as nearly as possible towards that light of unsullied goodness.
The lack of pet.i.tions for material benefits which appears in these "Devotions" was by no means unconscious, instinctive, or accidental.
She had deliberately given up the practice of praying for personal benefits, partly because she held that, since it is impossible for us to foresee how far our highest interests may be served or hindered by changes in our external circ.u.mstances, it is not for us to attempt to indicate, or even to form a desire, as to what those circ.u.mstances shall be. As regarded the emotional side of her religion, she had come to prefer to leave herself and her fate to the unquestioned direction of a higher power.