Harriet Martineau Part 4

Another piece of work done in 1828, or early in the following year, was a _Life of Howard_, which was written on a positive commission from a member of the Committee of Lord Brougham's "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," who promised her thirty pounds for it.

The MS. was at first said to be lost at the office; eventually she found that its contents were liberally cribbed by the writer of the _Life_ which was published; but she never received a penny of the promised payment. These were her times of stress, and struggle, and suffering, and disappointment, in literature as in ordinary life. Her great success, when at last it did come, was so sudden that her previous work was obscured and pushed out of sight in the blaze of triumph. But these years of labor, unrecognized and almost unrewarded, must not be left out of our view, if we would judge fairly of her character. Courage, resolution, self-reliance, determination to conquer in a field once entered upon, are displayed by her quiet industrious perseverance through those laborious years. Harriet Martineau did not make a sudden and easy rush far up the ladder of fame all at once; her climb, like that of most great men and women, was arduous and slow, and her final success proved not only that she had literary ability, but also the strength of character which could work on while waiting for recognition.

Fresh trouble was yet impending. After Mr. Martineau's death, his son Henry remained a partner in the weaving business which the father had carried on so long; and the incomes (small, but sufficient for a maintenance) of the widow and unmarried daughters had to be paid out of the profits of the factory. Just three years after Mr. Martineau's death, however, in June, 1829, the old house became bankrupt, with but small a.s.sets. Mrs. Martineau and her daughters were thus deprived suddenly of all means of support.

The whole family met this final blow to their fortunes with calm courage. It was soon settled that the two girls who possessed all their senses should go out to teach; but Harriet could not be set to work in the same way--for pupils could not easily be found who would say their lessons into an ear-trumpet. The husband of the lady brought up by Mrs. Martineau with her youngest daughter tells me that upon this occasion Harriet's mother said to her adopted child, "I have no fear for any of my daughters, except poor Harriet; the others can work, but, with her deafness, I do not know how _she_ can ever earn her own bread!"

The first resource for Harriet was fancy work of different kinds. "I could make s.h.i.+rts and puddings," she declares, "and iron, and mend, and get my bread by my needle, if necessary--as it was necessary, for a few months, before I won a better place and occupation with my pen."

During the winter which followed the failure of the old Norwich house, she spent the entire daylight hours poring over fancy-work, by which alone she could with certainty earn money. But she did not lay aside the sterner implement of labor for that bright little bread-winner, the needle. After dark she began a long day's literary labor in her own room.

Every night, I believe, I was writing till two, or even three, in the morning, obeying always the rule of the house of being present at the breakfast-table as the clock struck eight. Many a time I was in such a state of nervous exhaustion and distress that I was obliged to walk to and fro in the room before I could put on paper the last line of a page, or the last half-sentence of an essay or review. Yet was I very happy. The deep-felt sense of progress and expansion was delightful; and so was the exertion of all my faculties; and not least, that of Will to overcome my obstructions, and force my way to that power of public speech of which I believed myself more or less worthy.

She offered the results of this nightly literary toil to a great number of magazine editors and publishers, but without the slightest success. Totally unknown in London society, having no literary friends or connections beyond the editor of the obscure magazine of her sect, her ma.n.u.scripts were scarcely looked at. Everything that she wrote was returned upon her hands, until she offered it in despair to the _Monthly Repository_, where she was as invariably successful. Her work, when published there, however, brought her not an atom of fame, and only the most trifling pecuniary return. She wrote to Mr. Fox, when she found herself penniless, to tell him that it would be impossible for her to continue to render as much gratuitous service as she had been doing to the _Repository_; but he could only reply that the means at his disposal were very limited, and that the utmost he could offer her was 15 a year, for which she was to write "as much as she thought proper." With this letter he forwarded her a parcel of nine books to review, as a commencement. A considerable portion of the s.p.a.ce in his magazine was filled by Miss Martineau for the next two years on these terms.

The essay previously referred to, on the "Agency of Feelings in the Formation of Habits," which appeared in the _Repository_ for February and March, 1829, was Harriet Martineau's first marked work. It was followed up by a series, commencing in the August of the same year, of "Essays on the Art of Thinking," which were continued in the magazine until December, when two chapters were given in the one number, in order, as the editor remarked, that his readers "might possess entire in one volume this valuable manual of the Art of Thought."

"V," the writer of these articles, was supposed to be of the superior s.e.x. In those days, Mr. Fox would have shown rare courage if he had informed his readers that they were "receiving valuable instruction"

in how to exercise their ratiocinative faculties from the pen of a woman. In the Index, I find the references run--"V.'s" "Ode to Religious Liberty"; _his_ "Last Tree of the Forest"; _his_ "Essays on the Art of Thinking," etc., etc.

The "Essays on the Art of Thinking" are nothing less than an outline of Logic. In substance, they present no great originality; but they display full internal evidence that the thoughts presented were the writer's own, and not merely copied from authority. It is really no light test of clearness and depth of thought to write on an abstruse science in lucid, perspicuous fas.h.i.+on, giving a brief but complete view of all its parts in their true relations. Only an accurate thinker, with a mind both capacious and orderly, can perform such a task. The highest function of the human mind is, doubtless, that of the discoverer. The original thinker, he who observes his facts from nature at first hand, who compares them, and reasons about them, and combines them, and generalizes a principle from them, is the one whom posterity to all time must honor and reverence for his additions to the store of human knowledge. But not far inferior in power, and equal in immediate usefulness, is the disciple who can judge the originator's work, and, finding it perfectly in accordance with facts as known to him, can receive it into his mind, arrange it in order, deck it with ill.u.s.tration, illuminate it with power of language, and represent it in a form suitable for general comprehension. There is originality of mind needed for such work; that which is done, the adaptation of the truths to be received to the receptive powers of the mult.i.tude, is an original work performed upon the truths, hardly inferior in difficulty and utility to that of him who first discerns them. This was the cla.s.s of work which Harriet Martineau was beginning to do, and to do well. But there was more than this in her purposes.

As these articles, though vastly inferior in execution to what she afterwards did, nevertheless show the essential characteristics of her work, this seems to be the most favorable opportunity to pause to inquire what was the special feature of her writings. For, various though her subjects appear to be, ranging from the humblest topics, such as the duties of maids-of-all-work, up to the highest themes of mental and political philosophy, yet I find one informing idea, one and the same moving impulse to the pen of the writer, throughout the whole series. Let us see what it was that she really, though half unconsciously perhaps, kept before her as her aim.

It is obvious at once that her writings are all designed to _teach_.

A little closer consideration shows that what they seek to teach is always _what is right conduct_. Abstract truth merely as such does not content her. She seeks its practical concrete application to daily life. Further, not merely has she the aim of teaching morals, but she invariably makes _facts_ and _reasonings from facts the basis_ of her moral teachings. In other words, she approaches morals from the scientific instead of the intuitional side; and to thus influence conduct is the invariable final object of her writings.

It would sound simpler to say that she wrote on the science of morals.

But the term "moral science" has already been appropriated to a cla.s.s of writing than which nothing could, very often, less deserve the name of science. The work which Harriet Martineau spent her whole life in doing, was, however, true work in moral science. What she was ever seeking to do was to find out how men should live from what men and their surroundings are. She must be recognized as one of the first thinkers to uniformly consider practical morals as derived from reasoned science.

Many of the articles contributed to the _Repository_ were naturally, from the character of the publication, upon theology. Much that is noticeable might be culled from amongst them; as, indeed, could be inferred from the fact that an able leader of her religious body allowed her to fill so very large a portion of the pages by which, under his guidance, the Unitarian public were instructed. In all the essays, a distinguis.h.i.+ng feature is the earnestness of the effort put forth to judge the questions at issue by reason, and not by prejudice.

It is true that the effort often fails. There comes the moment at which faith in dogma intervenes, and submerges the pure argument; but none the less do the spirit of justice and fairness, and the love of truth, irradiate the whole of these compositions.

Mr. Fox soon asked her if she thought that any of her ideas could be expressed through the medium of fiction. It so happened that the suggestion precisely fell in with a thought that had already occurred to her that "of all delightful tasks, the most delightful would be to describe, with all possible fidelity, the aspect of the life and land of the Hebrews, at the critical period of the full expectation of the Messiah." She wrote a story which she called _The Hope of the Hebrews_, in which a company of young people, relatives and friends, were shown as undergoing the alternations of doubt and hope about whether this teacher was indeed Messiah, on the first appearance of Jesus in Palestine. The day after this story appeared in the _Repository_ Mr. Fox was at an anniversary dinner of the sect, where so many persons spoke to him about the tale, that he wrote and generously advised Harriet not to publish any more such stories in his magazine, but to make a book of them. She adopted the suggestion; the little volume was issued with her name, and proved her first decisive success. Not only was it well circulated and highly appreciated in England, but it was translated into French, under high ecclesiastical sanction, and was also immediately reproduced in the United States.

While this book was in the press, she went to stay for a short time in London. Mr. Fox, hearing from her how anxious she was to earn her livelihood by literature, succeeded in obtaining from a printer friend of his an offer for her to do "proof correcting and other drudgery,"

if she liked to remain in London for the work. This would have given her a small but certain income, and there could be little doubt that, if she stayed in London, she would gradually get into some journalistic employment which would enable her to support herself tolerably well. There were no great hopes in the matter. Mr. Fox told her that "one hundred or one hundred and fifty pounds a year is as much as our most successful writers usually make"--success here meaning, of course, full employment in hackwork. It had not yet occurred, even to Mr. Fox, that she was to be really a successful author. But to do even this drudgery, and to take the poor chance now offered to her, implied that she must make her home in London; and she wrote to inform her mother of this fact.

The same post which carried Harriet's letter to this effect, bore to Mrs. Martineau a second missive, from the relative with whom her daughter was staying, which strongly advised that Harriet should be recalled home, there to pursue the needle-work by which she had proved she could earn money. The good lady had been wont to ask Harriet day by day "how much she would get" for the literary labor upon which she had expended some hours; and the poor young author's reply not being satisfactory or precise, her hostess looked upon the time spent at the desk as so much wasted. She gave Harriet some pieces of silk, "lilac, blue, and pink," and advised her to keep to making little bags and baskets, which the kind friend generously promised to a.s.sist in disposing of for good coin of the realm.

The mother who had stood between her full-grown daughter and the bed of a dying betrothed, now thought herself justified in interposing between the woman of twenty-seven and the work which she desired to undertake for her independence. Mrs. Martineau sent Harriet a stern letter, peremptorily ordering her to return home forthwith. Bitterly disappointed at seeing this chance of independence in the vocation she loved thus s.n.a.t.c.hed away, Harriet's sense of filial duty led her to obey her mother's commands. She went home with a heavy heart; and with equal sadness, her little sister of eighteen turned out of home, at the same despotic bidding, to go a-governessing. "My mother received me very tenderly. She had no other idea at the moment than that she had been doing her best for my good."

Harriet did not return to Norwich entirely discouraged. Resolution such as hers was not easily broken down. The British and Foreign Unitarian a.s.sociation had advertised three prizes for the best essays designed to convert Roman Catholics, Jews and Mohammedans respectively to Unitarianism. The sum offered for each was but small: ten guineas for the Catholic, fifteen for the Jewish, and twenty for the Mohammedan essays. But it was less the money than interest in the cause, and desire to see if she could succeed in compet.i.tion with others, that led Harriet to form the intention of trying for _all three_ prizes.

She went to work immediately upon the Catholic essay, which was to be adjudicated upon six months earlier than the other two. When it was finished, she paid a schoolboy, who wrote a good hand, a sovereign that she could ill spare, for copying the essay, which was about two-thirds the length of this volume. The essays were to be superscribed, as usual in such compet.i.tions, with a motto, and the writer's name and address had to be forwarded in a sealed envelope, with the same motto outside. In September, 1830, she received the gratifying news that the committee of adjudication had unanimously awarded this prize to her.

The other two essays were commenced with the spirit induced by this success. One of them was copied out by a poor woman, the other by a schoolmaster. Harriet was careful even to have the two essays written upon different sorts of paper, to do them up in differently shaped packages, and to use separate kinds of wax and seals.

The sequel may be told, with all the freshness of the moment, in a quotation from the _Monthly Repository_ for May, 1831: "We were about to review it [_i.e._ the Catholic essay] when the somewhat startling fact transpired of her having carried off the other premiums offered by the a.s.sociation's committee for tracts addressed to the Mohammedans and the Jews. We shall not now stop to inquire how it has happened that our ministers would not or could not prevent the honor of championing the cause of pure Christianity against the whole theological world from developing upon a young lady. However that may be, she has won the honor and well deserves to wear it."

The essays were published by the Unitarian a.s.sociation. There can be little doubt that, however many ministers may have competed, the Committee did select the best papers offered to their choice. The learning in all is remarkable; the freedom from sectarian bitterness, from bigotry, and from the insolent a.s.sumption of moral and religious superiority, is even more striking, in such proselytising compositions.

While waiting the result of the prize compet.i.tion, Harriet wrote a long story for young people, which she called _Five Years of Youth_.

It is one of the prettiest and most attractive of all her writings of this cla.s.s. It has a moral object, of course--a somewhat similar one to that of Jane Austen's _Sense and Sensibility_; but the warning against allowing sensitiveness to pa.s.s into sentimentality is here directed to girls just budding into womanhood; and the punishment for the error is not a love disappointment, but the diminution of the power of domestic and social helpfulness.

Harriet's work of this year, 1830, comprised the doing of much fancy-work for sale, making and mending everything that she herself wore, knitting stockings even while reading, studying a course of German literature, and writing for the press the following quant.i.ty of literary matter:--_Traditions of Palestine_, a duodecimo volume of 170 printed pages; _Five Years of Youth_, 264 small octavo pages; three theological essays, making a closely printed crown octavo volume of 300 pages; and fifty-two articles of various lengths in the twelve numbers of the _Monthly Repository_.

And now she had touched the highest point of sectarian fame. The chosen expositor to the outer world of her form of religion, and the writer of its favorite Sunday School story-book of the hour, she must already have felt that her industrious, resolute labor through many years had at last borne some fruit.

But the moment for wider fame and a greater usefulness was now at hand. In the autumn of 1827 she had read Mrs. Marcet's _Conversations on Political Economy_, and had become aware that the subject which she had thought out for herself, and treated in her little stories of _The Rioters_, and _The Turn-Out_, was a recognized science. She followed this up by a study of Adam Smith, and other economists, and the idea then occurred to her that it might be possible to ill.u.s.trate the whole system of political economy by tales similar in style to those she had already written. The thought had lain working in her mind for long, and, in this autumn of 1831, the idea began to press upon her as a duty.

There were many reasons why it was especially necessary just then that the people should be brought to think about Social Science. The times were bitter with the evils arising from unwise laws. None knew better than she did how largely the well-being of mankind depends upon causes which cannot be affected by laws. It is individual conduct which must make or mar the prosperity of the nation. But, on the other hand, laws are potent, both as direct causes of evil conditions (and in a less degree of good conditions), and from their educational influence upon the people. Harriet Martineau felt that she had come to see more clearly than the ma.s.ses of her fellow-countrymen exactly how far the miseries under which English society groaned were caused directly or indirectly by mischievous legislative acts. Moreover, the circ.u.mstances of the moment made the imparting of such knowledge not only possible, but specially opportune. The Bishops had just thrown out the Reform Bill; but no person who watched the temper of the time could doubt that their feeble opposition would be speedily swept aside, and that self-government was about to be extended to a new cla.s.s of the people. Most suitable was the occasion, then, for offering information to these upon the science and art of society.

Harriet was right in her judgment when she started her project of a series of tales ill.u.s.trative of Political Economy, under a "thorough, well-considered, steady conviction that the work was wanted, was even craved for by the popular mind."

She began to write the first of her stories. The next business was to find a publisher to share her belief that the undertaking would be acceptable to the public. She wrote to one after another of the great London publishers, receiving instant refusal to undertake the series from all but two; and even these two, after giving her a little of that delusive hope which ends by plunging the mind into deeper despair, joined with their brethren in declining to have anything to do with the scheme.

Finally, she went to London to try if personal interviews would bring her any better success. She stayed in a house attached to a brewery (Whitbread's), belonging to a cousin of hers, and situated near the City Road. Thence, she tramped about through the mud and sleet of December to the publishers' offices day after day for nearly three weeks. The result was always failure. But though she returned to the house worn-out and dispirited, her determination that the work should be done never wavered, and night after night she sat up till long after the brewery clock struck twelve, the pen pus.h.i.+ng on in her trembling hand, preparing the first two numbers of the series, to be ready for publication when the means should be found.

It was the kind friend who had helped her before who came to the rescue at last at this crisis. Mr. W. J. Fox induced his brother Charles to make her proposals for publis.h.i.+ng her series.

Mr. Charles Fox took care to offer only such arrangement as should indemnify him from all risk in the undertaking. He required, first, that five hundred subscribers should be obtained for the work; and second, that he, the publisher, should receive about seventy-five per cent of the possible profits. Hopeless of anything better, she accepted these hard terms, and it was arranged that the first number should appear with February, 1832.

The original stipulation as to the time that this agreement should run was that the engagement should be terminable by either party at the end of every five numbers. But a few days afterwards, when Harriet called upon Mr. W. J. Fox to show him her circular inviting subscribers for the series, she found that Mr. Charles Fox had decided to say that he would not publish more than two numbers, unless a thousand copies of No. I were sold in the first fortnight! This decision had been arrived at chiefly in consequence of a conversation which W. J. Fox had held with James Mill, in which the distinguished political economist had p.r.o.nounced against the essential point of the scheme--the narrative form--and had advised that, if the young lady must try her hand at Political Economy, she should write it in the orthodox didactic style.

Mr. Fox lived at Dalston. When Harriet left his house, after receiving this unreasonable and discouraging ultimatum, she "set out to walk the four miles and a half to the Brewery. I could not afford to ride more or less; but, weary already, I now felt almost too ill to walk at all.

On the road, not far from Sh.o.r.editch, I became too giddy to stand without some support; and I leaned over some dirty palings, pretending to look at a cabbage-bed, but saying to myself as I stood with closed eyes, 'My book will do yet.'"

That very night she wrote the long, thoughtful, and collected preface to her work. After she had finished it she sat over the fire in her bedroom, in the deepest depression; she cried, with her feet on the fender, till four o'clock, and then she went to bed, and cried there till six, when she fell asleep. But if any persons suppose that because the feminine temperament finds a relief in tears, the fact argues weakness, they will be instructed by hearing that she was up by half-past eight, continuing her work as firmly resolved as ever that it should be published.

CHAPTER V.

THE GREAT SUCCESS.

The work which had struggled into printed existence with such extreme difficulty raised its author at a bound to fame. Ten days after the publication of the first number, Charles Fox sent Harriet word that not only were the fifteen hundred copies which formed the first edition all sold off, but he had such orders in hand that he proposed to print another five thousand at once. The people had taken up the work instantly. The press followed, instead of leading the public in this instance; but it, too, was enthusiastic in praise, both of the scheme and the execution of the stories.

More than one publisher who had previously rejected the series made overtures for it now. Its refusal, as they saw, had been one of those striking blunders of which literary history has not a few to tell. But there is no occasion to cry out about the stupidity of publishers.

They can judge well how far a work written on lines already popular will meet the demand of the market; but an entirely original idea, or the work of an original writer, is a mere lottery. There is no telling how the public will take it until it has been tried. Publishers put into a good many such lotteries, and often lose by them; then nothing more is heard of the matter. But the cases where they decline a speculation which afterwards turns out to have been a good one are never forgotten. Still, the fact remains that it was Harriet Martineau alone who saw that the people needed her work, and whose wonderful courage and resolution brought it out for the public to accept.

Her success grew, as an avalanche gains in volume, by its own momentum. Besides the publishers' communications she had letters, and pamphlets, and blue-books, and magazines forwarded to her in piles, in order that she might include the advocacy of the senders' hobbies in her series. One day the postmaster sent her a message that she must let a barrow be fetched for her share of the mail, as it was too bulky to come in any other way. Lord Brougham declared, that it made him tear his hair to think that the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge, which he had inst.i.tuted for the very purpose of doing such work as she was undertaking, seemed not to have a man in it with as much sense of what was wanted as this little deaf girl at Norwich. The public interest in the work was, perhaps, heightened by the fact that so ignorant was everybody of her personality, that this description of Brougham's pa.s.sed muster. But she was not little, and she was now twenty-nine years of age.

She stayed in Norwich, going on writing hard, until the November of 1832, by which time eight numbers of her series had appeared. Then she went to London, taking lodgings with an old servant of Mrs.

Martineau's, who lived in Conduit street. In the course of a few months, however, Mrs. Martineau settled herself in London, and her daughter again resided with her, in a house in Fludyer street, Westminster.

The purely literary success which she had hitherto enjoyed was now turned into a social triumph. However she might strive against being lionized she could not avoid the attentions and honors that were poured upon her. It is little to say that all the distinguished people in town hastened to know her; it was even considered to give distinction to a party if she could be secured to attend it. Literary celebrities, t.i.tled people, and members of Parliament, competed for the small s.p.a.ce of time that she could spare for society.

This was not very much, for the work she had undertaken was heavy enough to absorb all her energies. She had engaged to produce one of her stories every month. They were issued in small paper-covered volumes of from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pages of print. She began publication with only two or three numbers ready written. Thus, to keep on with her series, she had to write one whole number every month. It would have been hard work had it been simple story-telling, had she been merely imaginatively reproducing scenes and characters from her past experience, or writing according to her fancy. But it was, in fact, a much more difficult labor upon which she was engaged. Her scheme required that she should embody every shade of variety of the human character; that her scenes should be laid in different parts of the world, with topography and surroundings appropriate to the story; and that the governments and social state of all these various places should be accurately represented. In addition to all this she had to lay down for each tale the propositions which had to be ill.u.s.trated in it; to a.s.sure herself that she clearly saw the truth and the bearings of every doctrine of political economy; and then to work into a connected fiction in a concrete form the abstract truths of the science--representing them as exemplified in the lives of individuals.