Heroines of Freethought/Harriet Martineau
"FEELING, as I do, daily comfort in the knowledge of some things which I should once have shrunk from supposing, it would be weak—as foolish as cowardly— ever again to shrink from knowing anything that is true, or to have any preferences whatever among unascertained matters of speculation or fact.” ("Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development,” page 12.)
“From the moment a man desires to find the truth on one side rather than another, it is all over with him as a philosopher.” (Ibid, page 11.)
In these brave utterances may be found the keynote of Harriet Martineau’s life and character: a life which has been from physical causes necessarily isolated and reflective; a character which, naturally rarely sympathetic and womanly, from these same causes has been made almost masculine in its intellectual scope and pursuits.
Harriet Martineau was born in 1802, one of the youngest of the eight children of a Norwich (England) silk manufacturer. Her brother, the Rev. James Martineau, whose name has attained a celebrity nearly equal to her own, is the nearest to her in age. The silk manufactory of which her father was proprietor was established in Norwich soon after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, which drove the Martineaus, with thousands of their fellow Huguenots, from France to England. The same stern, unyielding love of truth, the same strict integrity of conscience, which caused her progenitors to give up home, friends, and wealth, and led them to try their fate in a foreign and uncongenial land, appears again in a somewhat different form in this brave, conscientious woman, their descendant, who has dared “for conscience’ sake” to avow in the face of a shocked Christianity her disbelief of an unproven revelation, her honest doubts of the so-called proofs of a creative, designing, and constantly interfering power called God.
At the time of Harriet’s birth the Martineaus, though not wealthy, were in comfortable and easy circumstances. The education given to the children was solid rather than showy, though the accomplishments fitted to their station in life were not overlooked or neglected; and Harriet, in spite of her increasing deafness, was sent to singing-schools, and was an accomplished performer upon the piano until her growing infirmity caused her to lose all relish for the amusement. Her parents seem to have always encouraged a taste for all useful and scientific knowledge in their children, and to have cultivated in them a love for the beautiful in Nature, judging from fragmentary instances given incidentally by Miss Martineau in relating her own childish experiences.
Harriet was a delicate, ailing child from birth, but possessed of a deeply reflective intellect, and strong, intense feelings. it may be that the strong mind proved too heavy a strain upon the weaker physical system, and so caused some of her later ailments. “I have never,” she says, “had the sense of smell, nor, therefore, much sense of taste ; and before I was twenty I had lost the greater part of my hearing. When my companions give me notice of distant objects by means of any of these senses—when they tell me what is growing in an invisible field or garden, or where there is music, or what people are saying on the farther side of a reach of the lake on a calm summer evening, I feel a sort of start, as if I were in company with sorcerers.”
With these drawbacks upon social intercourse and enjoyment, combined with her natural taste and inclination for study, she necessarily gave free play to her reflective and imaginative faculties, finding in them her chief source of recreation and enjoyment. Such an unusual set of conditions must yield, of course, some results of unusual experience. She says, speaking of this phase of her life:
“It seems to me that for want of the ‘distraction’ commonly enjoyed through the play of the senses, there is too little relief to the action of the busiest parts of the brain,”
It was, perhaps, owing to the lack of this “distraction” made by the full exercise of all the senses that many of her strange experiences in mesmerism and clairvoyance are due. That even as a child her state of mind was in some respects a strangely peculiar and abnormal one is evidenced by several circumstances related by herself, among them the following:
“Let me tell you a curious thing which happened twice to me—the being unable by any effort to see a conspicuous object directly before my eyes—I suppose because I must have had a wrong notion of what I was to see. When I was near seven years old I was taken to Tynemouth in a passion of delight because I was to see the sea. Aunt Margaret took me and an older and a younger one to the haven. There when standing on the bank we were expected to exclaim about the sea, which flowed up to the foot of the bank, directly before our eyes. The other two children were delighted, but I could not see it. When questioned I was obliged to say so, and I said it with shame and reluctance. I well remember the misery; I believe it was thought affectation, like my indifference to scents. We were led down the bank, which was steep and difficult for children. Not till the gentle waves were at my very toes did I see the sea at all; and then it gave me a start, and a painful feeling of being a sort of idiot not to have seen it before. The revelation at last was very like that of a lightning flash. It may be mentioned that my only previous sight of the sea was of something quite different. I was then under three years old—not strong on my feet—and my father led me along the old Yarmouth jetty, which was full of holes, through which I saw the swaying waters below, and was frightened—as I well remember. I may have been occupied with this idea on the second occasion. The other anecdote is yet more odd. When the great comet of 1811 appeared, I was nine years old. Night after night that autumn the whole family went up to the long range of windows in my father’s warehouse to see the comet. I was obliged to go with them, but I never once saw it! My heart used to swell with disappointment and mortification. No effort was wanting on my part; and parents, brothers, and sisters used to point and say: ‘Why, there! Why, it is as large as a saucer! You might as well say you cannot see the moon!’ I could not help it; I never saw it, and I have not got over it yet. The only thing I can suppose is that I must have been looking for something wholly different, and that no straining of the eyes avails if the mind is occupied with another image.”
A more probable explanation of these singular experiences may perhaps be found in the intense nature of the child, who was "in a passion of delight” at the thought of leaking upon the sea, and whose baby-heart swelled to bursting with disappointment and mortification at her failure to see the rare phenomena of nature. The too eager desire defeated its own object, and she did not see because she strained her vision by her too intense effort and anxiety; an experience not uncommon to us “children of a larger growth.”
It was almost a necessity of such a nature that it should find expression through the pen at a very early age, but for some years this mode of expression was followed only as an amusement and recreation. It was not until after her twentieth year that she thought of turning her talent at composition to account. About that time her family met with reverses in business, which made it necessary for her to look around her for means by which to help them and provide for her own necessities. Then her literary abilities and likings occurred to her as affording the most congenial and fitting occupation, and she at once entered upon that literary career which is even yet not quite forsaken by her. In common with most young writers, her pecuniary success was not at first remarkable, and she did not hesitate to increase her earnings during these first years of introduction to the literary world by her skill as needlewoman.
Her religious education had been in the Unitarian faith, and in devout religious thought her conscientious nature took its deepest pleasure, The first work she gave to the world, published in 1823, was an outgrowth of her fervid piety, and was entitled "Devotions for Young People,” while her next was a religious novel, entitled "Christmas Day.” In 1830, the British and Foreign Unitarian Association offered prizes for the three best tracts "On the Introduction and Promotion of Christian Unitarianism among the Roman Catholics, the Jews, and Mohammedans.” She competed for all three, and, singularly enough, won them all, though three separate sets of judges were appointed to compare the merits of the different essays. All through her literary career, theology and the basis of religious belief seem to have occupied the greater share of her attention and investigation, and to the thoroughness and fearlessness of these investigations is due the advanced position she has taken on these subjects; a position which is peculiarly hard for a woman to maintain, as she finds herself arrayed against all but an infinitesimal minority of her own sex, and is thus deprived of most of that affiliation and intellectual companionship which is peculiarly necessary to the feminine mind.
So fearless a thinker as Miss Martineau, as a matter of course, could not long refrain from joining the ranks of radical reform, and her trenchant pen could not long be withheld from telling pertinent truths. So we find among even her earlier productions hits at popular follies, and hints as to methods of overcoming some widespread public evils. Thus, in "The Rioters," “The Turnout,” and other books written in 1827-8, she had in view illustrations of the workings of some political evils incident to the times, and the dissemination of her ideas as to the proper method of overcoming or avoiding them.
In 1831, she conceived the plan of publishing monthly tracts, illustrative of true and false political economy in regard to taxation, the poor laws, and paupers; but she met with considerable difficulty in finding a publisher willing to accept the responsibility of issuing the projected series. She tried one after another, undaunted by failures, until she succeeded in her search. These tracts, in the form of short tales, met with excellent success, and were, doubtless, the means of instructing many on these subjects, who otherwise would never have given any attention whatever to them. “Independent of their value as expositions of great principles,” writes a reviewer, “some of these tales will always be read for their truthful pictures of life, and the ingenious construction of a story limited by its special purpose.” There are very few reforms of any prominence whatever which have not found in Harriet Martineau a powerful pleader and effective ally. Slavery found in her "The Hour and the Man" a bitter denunciation and a vivid portrayal; and during the American Slaveholders’ Rebellion Miss Martineau’s pen supplied on the other side of the water the warmest, friendliest, and most earnest articles in behalf of the Union written by any one not a native-born American.
In every department of life, however high or humble, her searching mind, fertile brain, and ready pen have done good and effective service. She has written on the forest and game laws, on household education, and on health, husbandry, and handicraft. Even the needs of the little ones have not been forgotten or overlooked by this woman, whom no baby-lips have ever called “mother,” but who bears within her bosom as warm a heart as even maternity could bestow; and her series of stories for children, entitled "The Playfellow,” attests how rarely sympathetic is the nature of the translator of such works as "Comte's Positive Philosophy,” and author of “The History of the Thirty Years’ Peace.”
As early as 1834, she had by her unremitting literary labor won for herself a reputation which extended to America, and her profits were such as to enable her in the autumn of that year to make a visit to the young republic with whose boasted freedom of thought and liberty of action she had long wished to acquaint herself from personal observation and experience. She remained in America for two years, and traveled during that time over nearly all sections of the country, acquainting herself as minutely and thoroughly as possible with the habits, laws, politics, and even sectional prejudices, of the American people. Whoever has read her “Society in America”—the literary result of her two years’ sojourn here—cannot have failed to observe the fact that, while frankly stating her convictions as to what she considered the mistakes and exaggerations of this government "by the people, for the people," the whole book is yet permeated by a heartfelt, loving admiration of the Americans and their country. The one great stain on the national character, slavery (which she has fortunately lived to see blotted out), she speaks against boldly and frankly; but even here, where she felt so deeply and indignantly, she does not fail to speak justly and fairly, admitting that the Southern people— whose manifold good qualities she does full justice to—were misled by sophistical reasoning on this point, and were mistaken in their policy, rather than intentionally doing wrong. Her detailed and circumstantial account of that memorable day—the 21st of October, 1833—when William Lloyd Garrison was mobbed in the streets of liberty-loving Boston for his brave efforts in behalf of Southern slaves, and when the Woman's Anti-Slavery Society, in defiance of the threats of that same mob, quietly met and transacted their business in a hall on Boston's principal street, lends an air of probability to the statement made by Henry C. Wright in his autobiography, that she was present at and participated in the business of that meeting. In her account of it, however, she does not explicitly state, nor lead the reader to infer, that she was thus present.
It would have been more than strange if a mind so comprehensive, so radical, so freedom-loving as hers had been blind to the shortcomings, the needs, and the wrongs of her own sex; but it is with a pleased surprise that we find, in the two chapters on woman in her “Society in America,” views so clear and advanced on the question, or questions, of “Woman's Rights.” After a lapse of nearly forty years, during which time those rights have taken rapid strides toward recognition and adjustment, there can be found nothing in her statement of woman's demands and needs which is behind the most advanced ideas of the present day. And I very much doubt whether there can be found half a dozen other women who, at so early a stage of this progressive movement, put themselves so clearly and daringly on record as to their convictions on this subject as did Harriet Martineau.
“I declare,” she says, on the 151st page of the second volume of her “Society in America,” “that whatever obedience I yield to the laws of the society in which I live is a matter between, not the community and myself, but my judgment and my will. Any punishment inflicted on me for a breach of those laws I should regard as so much gratuitous injury, for to those laws I have never actually or virtually assented. I know there are women in England who agree with me in this; I know there are women in America who agree with me in this. The plea of acquiescence is invalidated by us.”
The following few strong words, on page 231 of the second volume, places in its true light one of the most common and commonplace objections to woman's becoming interested in her own affairs: "The incessant outcry about the retiring modesty of the sex proves the opinion of the censors to be that fidelity to conscience is inconsistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, Jet the modesty succumb. It can only be a false modesty which can thus be endangered.”
That life must be well worth living which is permitted to see its most advanced and cherished convictions realized. Such a life is likely to be Harriet Martineau's, and, when her “summons comes to join the innumerable caravan,” she will not need to cry in anguish, “all is vanity and vexation of spirit”! for she has lived to see negro slavery abolished, and English women, under certain restrictions, entitled to vote. Let us dare also to hope that, old as she is, she may yet live to see American women entitled to the same privilege.
I cannot forbear quoting from "Society in America” the following exquisite description of American forests, as a specimen of Miss Martineau's delicacy of expression, and her skill in word-painting:
“The English traveler finds himself never weary by day of prying into the forest from beneath its canopy; or from a distance drinking in its exquisite hues; and his dreams for months or years will be of the mossy roots, the black pine, and silvery birch stems, the translucent green shades of the beech, and the slender creeper. He will dream of the march of hours through the forest, the deep blackness of night broken by the dun forest fires. He will hear again the shrill piping of the whippoorwill, and the multitudinous din from the occasional swamp. He will dream of the deep silence which precedes the dawn; of the gradual apparition of the haunting trees coming faintly out of the darkness; of the first level rays instantaneously piercing the woods to the very heart, and lighting them up into boundless ruddy colonnades, garlanded with wavy verdure, and carpeted with glittering wild flowers. Or he will dream of the clouds of gay butterflies and gauzy dragon-flies that hover over the noonday paths of the forest, or cluster about some graceful shrub, making it appear to bear all at once all the flowers of Eden. Or the golden moon will look down through his dream, making for him islands of light in an ocean of blackness. He may not see the stars but by glimpses; but the winged stars of these regions—the gleaming fireflies—radiate from every sleeping bough, and keep his eye in fancy busy in following their glancing, while his spirit sleeps in the deep charms of the summer night.” (Vol. I, page 91.)
She returned to England in the autumn of 1836, and "Society in America” was published in 1837. About this time her health became so broken down as for a time to interrupt her continuous literary activity, but only for a time. In the intervals of physical pain and nervous prostration, she made use of every available hour in writing. “From 1839 to 1844, she was a confirmed invalid”—I quote from "Half-hours with Freethinkers"—"and perhaps the best proof of the indefatigable nature of her character that has been afforded is the fact that even when prostrated on a bed of severe sickness she could not be idle. She published at this time her series of essays entitled ‘Life in the Sick-room.’ She was restored to partial health by mesmeric agencies.”
“Life in the Sick-room” was not the only work she published during this protracted illness. “Deerbrook” and the "Playfellow” were published in 1839; "The Hour and the Man"—a story written as a tribute to and recognition of the bravery and services of the noble slave, Toussaint L’Ouverture— 1841, besides three volumes of “Forest and Game Law Tales," “Feats on the Fiord,” and “The Billow and Rock.” This partial list of works, written by her while she was "a confirmed invalid,” gives us something of an idea of the indomitable energy of this marvelous woman.
Of her cure by mesmerism 1 have been unable to obtain the particulars, although Miss Martineau refers to it often in her letters to Atkinson. It made her, at all events for many years, and for aught I know to this day, a firm believer in clairvoyance and mesmerism. And Mary Russell Mitford, in a letter written in the winter of 1845, says:
“Everybody is talking of Miss Martineau’s somnambulisme. She writes to Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning), wha forwards her letters to me. The last intelligence is that Lord Morpeth was on his knees, talking Greck and Latin and three modern languages to the poor girl, the Miss Liddells being present. When Imitation was touched she translated what was said; when Language, she replied to it.”
During Miss Martineau's illness, in 1840, she was tendered the compliment of a pension from the English Government, as an acknowledgment of her services as a political writer, and the good she had accomplished by disseminating among the masses true views of political economy. But she was too sensitively just to be willing to accept this alluring offer, averring as her reason for declining it that she "considered herself a political writer, and the offer did not proceed from the people, but from the Government, which did not represent the people.”
The spirit which dictated a reply like this to so tempting an offer may be considered quixotic, but it is a quixotism which is, in these days, alas! too rare for the good of the public, among our male politicians, both writers and haranguers.
Her health being in a good measure restored, in 1846 she started with a company of friends on an Eastern tour of pleasure and observation. The trip included Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia. What good use she made of her eyes and ears—or perhaps I ought to say ear-trumpet—during that tour is attested by the charming and interesting book of travel which she wrote and published after her return, entitled “Eastern Life, Past and Present,” a book of which a writer (C. W. S.), in a recent number of the Toledo Index, says: "The book of all others that has seemed nearest to a revelation to me is Miss Martineau's “Eastern Life,” a work which would probably have made a profound sensation in the literary world if it had not been published some thirty years ago, before that world was ripe for its reception. It contains a charming account of the author's travels with some highly cultivated friends in Egypt and Palestine, with a most instructive essay on the life and purposes of Moses, and his dealings with the Israelites of old, and a wonderful history of ancient Egypt. I took pains about a year ago to attend a course of lectures on this subject by Dr. Thompson, of New York, and was astonished to find how little that able man, who is said to have made it the chief study of his life, had to add to the knowledge imparted by Miss Martineau.”
But at the time (1848) when "Eastern Life” was published, it created among Miss Martineau’s friends and admirers an altogether different sort of “sensation” from that to which this writer refers. It was a sensation made up of consternation and regret at its publication.
Her theological opinions had for some years been slowly undergoing a radical change, but until the publication of this work she had never given open expression to that change; and when her former admirers found that in its pages she did not hesitate to avow her heterodox opinions, they were excessively shocked.
“Her work,” says a Christian reviewer, “is exceedingly interesting, but it is marred by the mocking spirit of Infidelity which she allows for the first time to darken her pages, and testify to the world her disbelief in the Divine revelation.”
But the shock given to her Christian friends by her “Eastern Life” was as nothing compared to that given them three years later by the publication of the letters between herself and H. G. Atkinson, ‘On the Laws of Man's Nature and Development,” in which she plainly avows her atheistical opinions.
"Miss Martineau's friend, Charlotte Bronte,” remarks a writer in Chambers's Journal, “grieved sadly over this declension on the part of one whom she admired as combining the highest mental culture with the nicest discharge of feminine duties. The book, she said, was the first exposition of avowed atheism and materialism she had ever read—the first unequivocal declaration of a disbelief of God or a future life. Hundreds, she said, had deserted Miss Martineau on account of this book; but this the authoress denies. ‘I am not aware,’ says Miss Martineau, ‘of having lost any friends whatever by this book, while I have gained a new world of sympathy.' In fact, most persons regarded this singular lady as sui generis, and would never dream of binding her by the fixed and settled rules.”
Indeed, Harriet Martineau was not one to allow her friendships, or any like selfish consideration, to overbalance her “fidelity to conscience,” and the knowledge of her uncompromising honesty of character could not fail to make her friends respect and admire her, however much they might dissent from her conclusions on theology.
All through this book (“Laws of Man's Nature and Development”) there runs a tone of glad defiance of what the world may choose to think of her, and of restful triumph over her own educational prejudices.
"To me it seems absolutely necessary, as well as the greatest possible relief,” she says, on page 222, “to come to a plain understanding with myself about it; and deep and sweet is the repose of having done so. There is no theory of a God, of an author of Nature, of an origin of the Universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my faculties; which is not (to my feelings) so irreverent as to make me blush; so misleading as to make me mourn. I can now hardly believe that it was I who once read Milton with scarcely any recoil from the theology; or, Paley's ‘Natural Theology’ with pleasure at the ingenuity of the mechanic-god he thought he was recommending to the admiration of his readers.”
Again, on pages 288-9: "What an emancipation it is—to have escaped from the little enclosure of dogma, and to stand —far indeed from being wise — but free to learn!”
And again, on page 256: “Science can abolish nothing but what is unreal, and then only in order to substantiate what is real. Her office is to take out the vital principle from forms once beautiful, when they begin to grow hideous with age, and to transfuse it into new forms of beauty, which we may love without fear and without disgust. She comes to relieve us from our hag-ridden state, and to bring about us forms as fresh as the morning, and as beautiful as the Spring.”
It was between the publication of “Eastern Life” and her letters to Atkinson that Miss Martineau wrote and published her most elaborate and voluminous work, the “History of the Thirty Years’ Peace,” in four volumes, of which a late editorial in the Chicago Evening Journal remarks; "Nowhere else can so fair, so intelligent, and so accurate an account of men and measures in English history be found.” Apart from her other writings, this work alone would have placed Miss Martineau’s name in the front rank of the English writers of to-day.
That she still held firmly to her atheistical opinions was clearly shown by the appearance, in 1853, of her translation and condensation of "Comte’s Positive Philosophy,” a work of great value as a concise and simplified abridgment of the great but frequently prolix and vague French philosopher. Her aim in compiling and publishing this work is best stated by herself in the introductory pages, She says:
“The growth of a scientific taste among the working classes of this country is one of the most striking of the signs of the times. I believe no one can inquire into the mode of life of young men in the middle and operative classes without being struck with the desire that is shown and the sacrifices that are made to obtain the means of scientific study. That such a disposition should be baffled, and such study rendered almost ineffectual, by the desultory character of scientific exposition in England, while such a work as Comte’s was in existence, was not to be borne, if a year or two of humble toil could help, more or less, to supply the need.”
The Lake Country in Cumberland has been for many years, on account of its beautiful and picturesque scenery, the resort of many of England's most brilliant men of genius. Professor Wilson ("Christopher North”), the Coleridges, Wordsworth, Southey, De Quincey—these are some of the literary lights which have in past years frequented and illuminated this region. But we doubt if any of these, endeared as they all are to thousands to whom they gave voice and expression, will have a more enduring fame, or render more hallowed the lovely scenery which environs the lakes, than the quiet invalid who, debilitated in body, yet strong and serene in mind, still inhabits her little cottage at Ambleside, within a mile of Wordsworth’s home, and from which, despite her advanced years and increasing ailments, she still occasionally sends out strong, trenchant words, where words are needed to help right any wrong. It is now more than twenty years since Miss Martineau first established herself at Ambleside, and in that quiet retreat some of her later books have been written. Among these is her "Complete Guide to the Lakes,” published in 1854. Whenever her health will permit, she takes pride and pleasure in those out-of-door pursuits which bring her face to face with Nature; and a tourist, writing some years ago, when her health was better than it now is, says: "She manages her little farm of two acres with the skill of a practical agriculturist, and is esteemed as an affectionate friend and good neighbor.”
Since 1860, I think, she has published but two books: one a compilation from her contributions to "Once a Week,” entitled “Health, Husbandry, and Handicraft”; the other, a series of brilliant "Biographical Sketches,” of which a reviewer in “Old and New” speaks thus:
“If there be any irreverent doubters left among us as to the intellectual pretensions of woman, or her claims to fill any office whatever in Church or State, or in the halls of art or learning, let them read this volume, humbly confess their errors, and throw themselves upon the mercy of the sex. This is a wise, grand, charming book...
But the great charm of the book is its truthfulness; the irresistible feeling of conviction that it carries with it. However our prejudices may be disturbed at times, or our enthusiasm dampened, we are constrained to confess that we are reading facts of history, told by one who has studied them carefully, and weighed them impartially, and who, impelled alike by a sense of justice and a consciousness of her fitness for the task, proceeds to set them forth for the benefit of us all, without fear or favor, malice or exaggeration, in a forcible, clear, and graphic style, without any attempt at brilliant antithesis, or vain parade of uncalled-for embroidery; inflexibly stern and severe at times, and at others charmingly tender and compassionate, but ever in strictest subjection to truth, As we wander delighted from picture to picture, the wonder keeps growing upon us how a woman tried by sickness for so large a portion of her life, and afflicted with deafness from early childhood, could have explored so successfully such vast and various fields of thought, have grappled with so many tough problems of Church and State, have penetrated behind so many scenes; searching the hearts of kings and courtiers, unearthing the secrets of cabals and cliques, ferreting out the tattle of clubs, and the scandal of drawing-rooms: and doing all this so calmly and intrepidly, without loss of dignity or delicacy, without giving way to ennui or disgust; but ever with even temper and unclouded judgment investigating and disentangling the facts as they pass in review before her, and announcing her opinions, often, indeed, with the brevity of an oracle, but never with any taint of its ambiguity or affectation... In this delightful volume only one thing seems wanting to render it absolutely satisfactory to all readers, and that is a deeper feeling of religious enthusiasm and a more cordial recognition of the claims of Christianity, and of the blessings which it has conferred.”
Miss Martineau has counted among her personal friends many of the best and most brilliant minds in England and America —friends whom no difference of opinions could alienate from this large-hearted, large-brained, womanly woman. She has proved herself philosopher, historian, novelist, and politician—and always philanthropist through all. Not until another generation, perhaps, will she be estimated at her highest worth; but she is sure to be thus estimated in time.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his "English Note-Book,” mentions meeting her, in this wise:
“I think I neglected to record that I saw Miss Martineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, elderly woman, and plainly dressed; but, withal, she has so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face that she is pleasanter to look at than most beauties... All her talk was about herself and her affairs; but it did not seem like egotism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbidness. And this woman is an atheist, and thinks that the principle of life will become extinct when her body is laid in the grave! I will not think so, were it only for her sake. What! only a few weeds to spring out of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympathies flowing and fruiting forever.”
Catherine Sedgewick, whose guest Miss Martineau was for a short time during her visit to America, gives the following description of her in her journal:
“Miss Martineau and her attendant have paid their last visit to our valley. I intended to have been diligent in taking notes of our extraordinary guest, but the time was so filled with quickly succeeding pleasures that it passed without any written record. She was here eight days. She has just returned from her Southern and Western tour. She has been, honored, praised, and homaged, not to say worshiped, by the great as well as the small. No woman has ever, perhaps, received so rich a recompense of reward; and why? I think because her spirit and influence have been in harmony with the spirit of the age. Miss Martineau, with a single eye to the general good, has devoted herself, not to the intellectual amusement or advancement of the gifted and educated, but to make bread more plentiful in the husbandman’s dwelling, and to still the cry of hunger forever in the poor man’s cottage.” "Her dress is simple, inexpensive, and appropriate. Her voice is too low-toned, but agreeable, the suitable organ of a refined spirit. Her manners, without any elegance, are pleasing, natural, and kind. She seldom speaks unless addressed, but in reply to a single touch she pours out a rich stream. She is never brilliant, never says a thing that is engraven or cut in to your memory, but she talks on a greater variety of topics than any one I ever heard—agreeably, most agreeably, and with sense and information. She is womanly, strictly, with sympathies fresh from the heart, enthusiasms not always manifestly supported by reason; now and then bordering on the dogmatical, but too thorough a lover of human rights ever, I think, to overstep the boundary; and she is, I think, not conceited—no, not in the least, but quite aware of her own superiority, and perhaps a little too frank on this point. But this may be from a deficiency instead of an excess of vanity.”
More than twenty years ago, Margaret Fuller wrote as follows:
“Another interesting sign of the times is the influence exercised by two women, Miss Martineau and Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning), from their sick-rooms. The lamp of life which, if it had been fed only by their affections, depending on precarious human relations, would scarce have been able to maintain a feeble glare in the lonely prison, now shines far and wide over the nations, cheering fellow-sufferers and hallowing the joy of the faithful. “These persons need not health, nor youth, nor the charms of personal presence, to make their thought available. A few more such, and ‘old woman’ shall not be the synonym for imbecility, nor ‘old maid’ a term of contempt.”
An editorial criticism, in the Chicago Journal, of the leading female writers of the day, thus makes mention of Harriet Martineau: "Probably no living English writer has been more active or more efficient in moulding British opinion, and certainly none has been more beneficent in lifelong influence. England would be less humane and enlightened than she is to-day, if the brave and wise heart of Harriet Martineau had not for nearly fifty years helped to push forward the good cause of popular progress.”
She has already passed the allotted "three- score years and ten,” and can look back upon a long and well-spent life. For her, death has no terrors. If she has no personal hopes for the future, neither has she any regrets for the past. She, surely, if any one, has earned the right to “wrap the drapery of her couch about” her, “and lie down to pleasant” rest, if not “dreams.”
“What an insult it is to our best moral faculties,” she says, in one of her letters to Mr. Atkinson, “to hold over us the promises and threats of heaven and hell, as if there were nothing in us higher than selfish hope and fear!”
And again: “If we feel a contentment in our own lot, which must be sound because it is derived from no special administration of our own affairs, but from the impartial and necessary operations of Nature, we cannot but feel, for the same reason, a new exhilaration on account of the unborn multitudes who will ages hence enter upon existence on better terms than those on which we hold it. It is a pleasant thing to have a daily purpose of raising and disciplining ourselves, for no end of selfish purchase or ransom, but from the instinctive tendency to mental and moral health.” If any Christian admirers of Miss Martineau find cause of grief in her openly expressed and honestly held opinions on theology, let them comfort themselves with the knowledge that if she has not “loved the Lord,” after their fashion, she has done infinitely better, in loving warmly, sincerely, and faithfully, her "fellow-men.” Let them also beware, on their own account, lest for lack of her good works it shall be said to them, “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”
I have not by me a complete list of all Miss Martineau's writings, but the following partial list bears evidence of how industrious a writer she has been, and how varied the themes on which she wrote:
“Devotions for Young People.”
“Christmas Day.”
“The Friends — A Sequel to Christmas
Day.”
“Principle and Practice—A Tale.”
‘The Rioters.”
“Addresses, Prayers and Original Hymns.”
“Mary Campbell.”
“The Turnout.”
“My Servant Rachel.”
“Sequel to Principle and Practice.”
“Traditions of Palestine.”
“The Faith as Unfolded by Many Prophets.”
“Providence, as Manifested through Israel.”
“The Essential Faith of the Universal
Church.”
“Four Years of Youth.”
“Society in America.” 2 vols.
“Deerbrook.”
“The Crofton Boys.”
“The Hour, and the Man.”
“Life in the Sick-room.”
“Forest and Game Law Tales.” 3 vols.
"Feats on the Fiord.”
“Billow and Rock.”
"Eastern Life, Past and Present.”
“History of England, During Thirty Years' Peace—from 1815 to 1845.” 4 vols.
“Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature
and Development.” (Martineau and Atkinson.)
"Comte’s Positive Philosophy.” (A Translation and Condensation.)
“The Housemaid.”
“The Settlers at Home.”
“The Peasant and the Prince.”
“Health, Husbandry and Handicraft.”
“Guide to the Lakes.”
"Biographical Sketches.” 2 vols.
Besides these, she wrote, from 1831 to 1835, monthly tracts on political economy; in 1839 a series of stories for children entitled "The Playfellow,” and many other stories and newspaper and magazine articles not yet compiled.
FOLLOWING close upon the death of her great contemporary, George Sand, came the news of the death of Harriet Martineau, at her retreat at Ambleside, in the latter part of June, 1876. As her opinions on theology remained unchanged, her death was consistent with her expressed opinions. By her own urgent request, her funeral was entirely private, and free from any religious ceremonial. Her autobiography was finished and in press before her death, and will soon be given to the public. A singular instance of her firmness of mind is shown in the fact of her having, just previous to her decease, deposited with the London Daily News a short biographical and critical sketch of her life and works, written by herself, to be published immediately after that event, of which a writer in the Spectator says that it is “so coldly judicial, so severely passionless, so harsh, indeed, in some respects, that had it not been her own work, the editor of the Daily News would have been charged with a mocking hardness for giving it publicity so soon after her death."