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(illustration)
--BACON.
EDITED BY
(imprint)
Copyright, 1877. By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO., CAMBRIDGE.
(preface)
It is my wish, and that of my Executors, that it should be published by
our friends, MESSRS. FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., of Boston; and
every requisite has been provided for their edition being of a similar
character and quality with the English. Theirs is therefore the edition
authorized by me and my Executors.
HARRIET MARTINEAU.
AMBLESIDE, July 22d, 1869.
(contents)
Mrs. Somerville. Joanna Baillie. Political and scientific men. Sir C. Bell and others. The Artists. Sir A. Callcott. Chantrey. Allan Cunningham. Westmacott. Phillips. Macready. The Kembles. Sir C. Eastlake. Other artists. Blue-stocking parties. Miss Berry's. Lady Mary Shepherd's. Lady Stepney. My own soirées. Intimate friends. Mrs. Marsh's first novel. The Carlyles. Mazzini. John Sterling. Leigh Hunt. Thomas Carlyle. Occasional mornings. Sitting for portraits and casts. Mr. Warburton's Dissection Bill. Mr. Toynbee's request. Professional phrenologists' judgments on me. Coleridge. Godwin. Condition of Woman. Basil Montagu. Morning visitors. Dr. Chalmers. Mr. Chadwick. Rowland Hill. Lord Monteagle. Mr. G.R. Porter. Mr. Urquhart. Other morning visitors. Capel Lofft, junior. The Brownings. Miss Mitford. Talfourd. Mr. H.F. Chorley. Miss Landon. Correspondents. Miss Edgeworth. Fraser's hoax. Miss Kelty. Miss Bremer. Modes of authorship among my acquaintance. 205
(introduction)
the beginning of this last winter, however, I had hopes of being able to unite my political work with this; and on New Year's Day I said to myself that the year must not close without my having recorded the story of my life. I was probably strengthened in this purpose by having for some time past felt that my energies were declining, and that I had no longer a right to depend on being able to do whatever I chose. Two or three weeks more settled the business. Feeling very unwell, I went to London to obtain a medical opinion in regard to my health. Two able physicians informed me that I had a mortal disease, which might spare me some considerable space of life, but which might, as likely as not, destroy me at any moment. No doubt could remain after this as to what my next employment should be: and as soon after my return home as I had settled my business with my Executor, I began this autobiography. I thought it best to rewrite the early portion, that the whole might be offered from one point of view, and in a consistent spirit. Without any personal desire about living a few months or weeks more or less, I rather hope that I may be able to finish my story with my own hands. If not, it will be done by another, from materials of more or less value. But one part which ought to be done by myself is the statement of my reasons for so serious a step as forbidding the publication of my private correspondence; and I therefore stop at the Third Period of my Memoir, to write this Introduction, to the following passages of which I request the reader's earnest attention.
I admit, at the outset, that it is rather a piece of self-denial
in me to interdict the publication of my letters. I have no solicitude
about fame, and no fear of my reputation of any sort being injured by the
publication of any thing I have ever put upon paper. My opinions and
feelings have been remarkably open to the world; and my position has been
such as to impose no reserves on a disposition naturally open and
communicative; so that if any body might acquiesce in the publication of
correspondence, it should be myself. Moreover, I am disposed to think that
what my friends tell me is true; that it would be rather an advantage to me
than the contrary to be known by my
private letters All these considerations point out to me that I am therefore precisely the person to bear emphatic practical testimony on behalf of the principle of the privacy of epistolary intercourse; and therefore it is that I do hereby bear that testimony.
Epistolary correspondence is written speech; and the
onus rests with those who publish it to show
why the laws of honor which are uncontested in regard to conversation may
be violated when the conversation is written instead of spoken. The plea is
of the utility of such material for biographical purposes; but who would
admit that plea in regard to fireside conversation? The most valuable
conversation, and that which best illustrates character, is that which
passes between two friends, with their feet on the fender, on winter
nights, or in a summer ramble: but what would be thought of the
traitor who should supply such material for biographical or other purposes?
How could human beings ever open their hearts and minds to each other, if
there were no privacy guaranteed by principles and feelings of honor? Yet
has this security lapsed from that half of human conversation which is
written instead of spoken. Whether there is still time to restore it, I
know not: but I have done my part towards an attempted restoration by
a stringent provision in my Will against any public use whatever being made
of my letters, unless I should myself authorize the publication of some,
which will, in that case, be of some public interest, and not confidential
letters. Most of my friends have burnt my letters,--partly because
they knew my desire thus to enforce my assertion of the principle, and
partly because it was less painful to destroy them while I was still among
them than to escape the importunities of hunters of material after my
death. Several eminent persons of this century have taken stringent
precautions against the same mischief; and very many more, I fear, have
taken the more painful precaution of writing no letters which any body
would care to have. Seventy years ago, Dr. Johnson said in conversation
"It is now become so much the fashion to publish letters, that, in
order to avoid it, I put as little into mine as I can." Nobody will
question the hardship and mischief of a practice
which acts upon epistolary correspondence as the spy system under a despotism acts upon speech: and when we find that a half a dozen of the greatest minds of our time have deprived themselves and their friends of their freedom of epistolary speech for the same reason, it does seem to be time that those qualified to bear testimony against such an infringement on personal liberty should speak out.
"But," say unscrupulous book-makers and readers,
"there are many eminent persons who are so far from feeling as you do
that they have themselves prepared for the publication of their letters.
There was Doddridge:--he left a copy of every letter and note
that he ever wrote, for this very purpose. There was Madame
D'Arblay:--on her death-bed, and in extreme old
age, she revised and had copies made of all the letters she received and
wrote when in the height of her fame as Fanny Burney,--preparing for
publication the smooth compliments and monstrous flatteries written by
hands that had long become dust. There was Southey:--he too kept
copies, or left directions, by which he arranged the method of making his
private letters to his friends property to his heirs. These, and many more,
were of a different way of thinking from you."--They were
indeed: and my answer is,--what were the letters worth, as
letters, when these arrangements became known? What would fireside
conversation be worth, as confidential talk, if it was known that the
speaker meant to make it a newspaper article the next day? And when
Doddridge's friends, and Southey's, heard that what they had
taken for conversational out-pouring on paper was so much literary
production, to appear hereafter in a book,--what was the worth of
those much-prized letters then? Would the correspondents not as soon
have received a page of a dissertation, or the proof of a review article?
Surely the only word necessary as to this part of the question is a word of
protest against every body, or every eminent person, being deprived of
epistolary liberty because there have been some among their predecessors or
contemporaries who did not know how to use it, or happen to value it.
We are recommended, again, to "leave the matter to the
dis-
cretion of survivors." I, for my part, have too much regard for my Executors to bequeath to them any such troublesome office as withstanding the remonstrances of any number of persons who may have a mind to see my letters, or of asserting a principle which it is my business to assert for myself. If they were to publish my letters, they would do what I believe to be wrong: and if they refused to publish them, they might be subject to importunity or censure which I have no right to devolve upon them. And why are we to leave this particular piece of testamentary duty to the discretion of survivors, when we are abundantly exhorted, in the case of every other, to do our own testamentary duty ourselves,--betimes, carefully and conscientiously?
Then comes the profit argument,--the plea of how much the world
would have lost without the publication of the letters of A. B. and C. This
is true, in a way. The question is whether the world has not lost more by
the injury to epistolary freedom than it has gained by reading the letters
of nonconsenting letter-writers. There will always be plenty of
consenting and willing letter-writers: let society have their
letters. But there should be no others,--at least till privacy is
altogether abolished as an unsocial privilege. This grossly utilitarian
view does not yet prevail; and I do not think it ever will. Meantime, I
claim the sanction of every principle of integrity, and every feeling of
honor and delicacy, on behalf of my practice. I claim, over and above
these, the sanction of the law.--Law reflects the principles of
morals; and in this case the mirror presents a clear image of the right and
the duty. The law vests the right of publication of private letters solely
in the writer, no one else having any such right during the author's
life, or after his death, except by his express permission. On the
knowledge of this provision I have acted, in my arrangements about my own
correspondence; and I trust that others, hitherto unaccustomed to the grave
consideration of the subject, will feel, in justice to myself and others
who act with me, that there can be no wrong, no moral inexpediency, in the
exercise of a right thus expressly protected by the Law. If, by what I have
done, I have fixed attention upon the morality of the case, this will be a
greater social benefit than
the publication of any letters written by me, or by persons far wiser and more accomplished than myself.
I have only to say further, in the way of introduction, a word or two as
to my descent and parentage. On occasion of the Revelation of the Edict of
Nantes, in 1688, a surgeon of the name of Martineau, and a family of the
name of Pierre, crossed the Channel, and settled with other Huguenot
refugees, in England. My ancestor married a young lady of the Pierre
family, and settled in Norwich, where his descendants afforded a succession
of surgeons up to my own day. My eminent uncle, Mr. Philip Meadows
Martineau, and my eldest brother, who died before the age of thirty, were
the last Norwich surgeons of the name.--My grandfather, who was one of
the honorable series, died at the age of forty-two, of a fever
caught among his poor patients. He left a large family, of whom my father
was the youngest. When established as a Norwich manufacturer, my father
married Elizabeth Rankin, the eldest daughter of a sugar-refiner at
Newcastle upon Tyne. My father and mother had eight children, of whom I was
the sixth: and I was born on the 12th of June, 1802.
(illustration)
sinking under diarrhoea. My bad health during my whole childhood and youth, and even my deafness, was always ascribed by my mother to this. However it might be about that, my health certainly was very bad till I was nearer thirty than twenty years of age; and never was poor mortal cursed with a more beggarly nervous system. The long years of indigestion by day and night-mare terrors are mournful to think of now.--Milk has radically disagreed with me, all my life: but when I was a child, it was a thing unheard of for children not to be fed on milk: so, till I was old enough to have tea at breakfast, I went on having a horrid lump at my throat for hours of every morning, and the most terrific oppressions in the night. Sometimes the dim light of the windows in the night seemed to advance till it pressed upon my eyeballs, and then the windows would seem to recede to an infinite distance. If I laid my hand under my head on the pillow, the hand seemed to vanish almost to a point, while the head grew as big as a mountain. Sometimes I was panic struck at the head of the stairs, and was sure I could never get down; and I could never cross the yard to the garden without flying and panting, and fearing to look behind, because a wild beast was after me. The starlight sky was the worst; it was always coming down, to stifle and crush me, and rest upon my head. I do not remember any dread of thieves or ghosts in particular; but things as I actually saw them were dreadful to me; and it now appears to me that I had scarcely any respite from the terror. My fear of persons was as great as any other. To the best of my belief, the first person I was ever not afraid of was Aunt Kentish, who won my heart and my confidence when I was sixteen. My heart was ready enough to flow out; and it often did: but I always repented of such expansion, the next time I dreaded to meet a human face.--It now occurs to me, and it may be worth while to note it,--what the extremest terror of all was about. We were often sent to walk on the Castle Hill at Norwich. In the wide area below, the residents were wont to expose their feather-beds, and to beat them with a stick. That sound,--a dull shock,--used to make my heart stand still: and it was no use my standing at the rails above, and
seeing the process. The striking of the blow and the arrival of the sound did not correspond; and this made matters worse. I hated that walk; and I believe for that reason. My parents knew nothing of all this. It never occurred to me to speak of anything I felt most: and I doubt whether they ever had the slightest idea of my miseries. It seems to me now that a little closer observation would have shown them the causes of the bad health and fitful temper which gave them so much anxiety on my account; and I am sure that a little more of the cheerful tenderness which was in those days thought bad for children, would have saved me from my worst faults, and from a world of suffering.
My hostess and nurse at the above-mentioned cottage was a Mrs.
Merton, who was, as was her husband, a Methodist or melancholy Calvinist of
some sort. The family story about was that I came home the absurdest little
preacher of my years (between two and three) that ever was. I used to nod
my head emphatically, and say "Never ky for tyfles:"
"Dooty fust, and pleasure afterwards," and so forth: and
I sometimes got courage to edge up to strangers, and ask them to give
me--"a maxim." Almost before I could join letters, I got
some sheets of paper,and folded them into a little square book, and wrote,
in double lines, two or three in a page, my beloved maxims. I believe this
was my first effort at book-making. It was probably what I picked up
at Carleton that made me so intensely religious as I certainly was from a
very early age. The religion was of a bad sort enough, as might be expected
from the urgency of my needs; but I doubt whether I could have got through
without it. I pampered my vain-glorious propensities by dreams of
divine favor, to make up for my utter deficiency of
self-respect: and I got rid of otherwise incessant remorse by
a most convenient confession and repentance, which relieved my nerves
without at all, I suspect, improving my conduct.
To revert to my earliest recollections:--I certainly could
hardly walk alone when our nursemaid took us,--including my sister
Elizabeth, who was eight years older than myself,--an unusual walk;
through a lane, (afterwards called by us the
"Spinner's Lane") where some Miss Taskers, acquaintances of Elizabeth's and her seniors, were lodging, in a cottage which had a fir grove behind it. Somebody set me down at the foot of a fir, where I was distressed by the slight rising of the ground at the root, and by the long grass, which seemed a terrible entanglement. I looked up the tree, and was scared at its height, and at that of so many others. I was comforted with a fir-cone; and then one of the Miss Taskers caught me up in her arms and kissed me; and I was too frightened to cry till we got away.--I was not more than two years old when an impression of touch occurred to me which remains vivid to this day. It seems indeed as if impressions of touch were at that age more striking than those from the other senses. I say this from observation of others besides myself; for my own case is peculiar in that matter. Sight, hearing and touch were perfectly good in early childhood; but I never had the sense of smell; and that of taste was therefore exceedingly imperfect. On the occasion I refer to, I was carried down a flight of steep back stairs, and Rachel (a year and half older than I) clung to the nursemaid's gown, and Elizabeth was going before, (still quite a little girl) when I put down my finger ends to feel a flat velvet button on the top of Rachel's bonnet. The rapture of the sensation was really monstrous, as I remember it now. Those were our mourning bonnets for a near relation; and this marks the date, proving me to have been only two years old.
I was under three when my brother James was born. That day was another
of the distinct impressions which flashed upon me in after years. I found
myself within the door of the best bedroom,--an impressive place from
being seldom used, from its having a dark, polished floor, and from the
awful large gay figures of the chintz bed hangings. That day the curtains
were drawn, the window blinds were down, and an unknown old woman, in a mob
cap, was at the fire, with a bundle of flannel in her arms. She beckoned to
me, and I tried to go, though it seemed impossible to cross the slippery
floor. I seem to hear now the paltering of my feet. When I arrived at her
knee, the
nurse pushed out with her foot a tiny chair, used as a footstool, made me sit down on it, laid the bundle of flannel across my knees, and opened it so that I saw the little red face of the baby. I then found out that there was somebody in the bed,--seeing a nightcap on the pillow. This was on the 21st of April, 1805. I have a distinct recollection of some incidents of that summer. My mother did not recover well from her confinement, and was sent to the sea, at Yarmouth. On our arrival there, my father took me along the old jetty,--little knowing what terror I suffered. I remember the strong grasp of his large hand being some comfort; but there were holes in the planking of the jetty quite big enough to let my foot through; and they disclosed the horrible sight of waves flowing and receding below, and great tufts of green weeds swaying to and fro. I remember the sitting room at our lodgings, and my mother's dress as she sat picking shrimps, and letting me try to help her.--Of all my many fancies, perhaps none was so terrible as a dream that I had at four years old. The impression is as fresh as possible now; but I cannot at all understand what the fright was about. I know nothing more strange than this power of re-entering, as it were, into the narrow mind of an infant, so as to compare it with that of maturity; and therefore it may he worth while to record that piece of precious nonsense,--my dream at four years old. I imagine I was learning my letters then from cards, where each letter had its picture,--as a stag for S. I dreamed that we children were taking our walk with our nursemaid out of St. Austin's Gate (the nearest bit of country to our house.) Out of the public-house there came a stag, with prodigious antlers. Passing the pump, it crossed the road to us, and made a polite bow, with its head on one side, and with a scrape of one foot, after which it pointed with its foot to the public-house, and spoke to me, inviting me in. The maid declined, and turned to go home. Then came the terrible part. By the time we were at our own door it was dusk, and we went up the steps in the dark; but in the kitchen it was bright sunshine. My mother was standing at the dresser, breaking sugar; and she lifted me up, and set me in the sun, and gave me a bit of sugar.
Such was the dream which froze me with horror! Who shall say why? But my panics were really unaccountable. They were a matter of pure sensation, without any intellectual justification whatever, even of the wildest kind. A magic-lantern was exhibited to us on Christmas-day, and once or twice in the year besides. I used to see it cleaned by daylight, and to handle all its parts,--understanding its whole structure; yet, such was my terror of the white circle on the wall, and of the moving slides, that, to speak the plain truth, the first apparition always brought on bowel-complaint; and, at the age of thirteen, when I was pretending to take care of little children during the exhibition, I could never look at it without having the back of a chair to grasp, or hurting myself, to carry off the intolerable sensation. My bitter shame may be conceived; but then, I was always in a state of shame about something or other. I was afraid to walk in the town, for some years, if I remember right, for fear of meeting two people. One was an unknown old lady who very properly rebuked me one day for turning her off the very narrow pavement of London Lane, telling me, in an awful way, that little people should make way for their elders. The other was an unknown farmer, in whose field we had been gleaning (among other trespassers) before the shocks were carried. This man left the field after us, and followed us into the city,--no doubt, as I thought, to tell the Mayor, and send the constable after us. I wonder how long it was before I left off expecting that constable. There were certain little imps, however, more alarming still. Our house was in a narrow street; and all its windows, except two or three at the back, looked eastward. It had no sun in the front rooms, except before breakfast in summer. One summer morning, I went into the drawing-room, which was not much used in those days, and saw a sight which made me hide my face in a chair, and scream with terror. The drops of the lustre on the mantle-piece, on which the sun was shining, were somehow set in motion, and the prismatic colors danced vehemently on the walls. I thought they were alive,--imps of some sort; and I never dared go into that room alone in the morning, from that time forward. I am afraid
I must own that my heart has beat, all my life long, at the dancing of prismatic colors on the wall.
I was getting some comfort, however, from religion by this time. The
Sundays began to be marked days, and pleasantly marked, on the whole. I do
not know why crocuses were particularly associated with Sunday at that
time; but probably my mother might have walked in the garden with us, some
early spring Sunday. My idea of Heaven was of a place gay with yellow and
lilac crocuses. My love of gay colors was very strong. When I was sent with
the keys to a certain bureau in my mother's room, to fetch miniatures
of my father and grandfather, to be shown to visitors, I used to stay an
unconscionable time, though dreading punishment for it, but utterly unable
to resist the fascination of a certain watch-ribbon kept in a drawer
there. This ribbon had a pattern in floss silk, gay and beautifully shaded;
and I used to look at it till I was sent for, to be questioned as to what I
had been about. The young wild parsley and other weeds in the hedges used
to make me sick with their luscious green in spring. One crimson and purple
sunrise I well remember, when James could hardly walk alone, and I could
not therefore have been more than five. I awoke very early, that summer
morning, and saw the maid sound asleep in her bed, and "the
baby" in his crib. The room was at the top of the house; and some
rising ground beyond the city could be seen over the opposite roofs. I
crept out of bed, saw James's pink toes showing themselves invitingly
through the rails of his crib, and gently pinched them, to wake him. With a
world of trouble I got him over the side, and helped him to the window, and
upon a chair there. I wickedly opened the window, and the cool air blew in;
and yet the maid did not wake. Our arms were smutted with the blacks on the
window-sill, and our bare feet were corded with the impression of
the rush-buttomed chair; but we were not found out. The sky was
gorgeous, and I talked very religiously to the child. I remember the mood,
and the pleasure of expresing it, but nothing of what I said.
I must have been a remarkably religious child, for the only
support and pleasure I remember having from a very early age was from that source. I was just seven when the grand event of my childhood took place,--a journey to Newcastle to spend the summer (my mother and four of her children) at my grandfather's; and I am certain that I cared more for religion before and during that summer than for anything else. It was after our return, when Ann Turner, daughter of the Unitarian Minister there, was with us, that my piety first took a practical character; but it was familiar to me as an indulgence long before. While I was afraid of everybody I saw, I was not in the least afraid of God. Being usually very unhappy, I was constantly longing for heaven, and seriously, and very frequently planning suicide in order to get there. I knew it was considered a crime; but I did not feel it so. I had a devouring passion for justice;--justice, first to my own precious self, and then to other oppressed people. Justice was precisely what was least understood in our house, in regard to servants and children. Now and then I desperately poured out my complaints; but in general I brooded over my injuries, and those of others who dared not speak; and then the temptation to suicide was very strong. No doubt, there was much vindictiveness in it. I gloated over the thought that I would make somebody care about me in some sort of way at last: and, as to my reception in the other world, I felt sure that God could not be very angry with me for making haste to him when nobody else cared for me, and so many people plagued me. One day I went to the kitchen to get the great carving knife, to cut my throat; but the servants were at dinner, and this put it off for that time. By degrees, the design dwindled down into running away. I used to lean out of the window, and look up and down the street, and wonder how far I could go without being caught. I had no doubt at all that if I once got into a farm-house, and wore a woollen petticoat, and milked the cows, I should be safe, and that nobody would inquire about me any more.--It is evident enough that my temper must have been very bad. It seems to me now that it was downright devilish, except for a placability which used to
annoy me sadly. My temper might have been early made a thoroughly good one, by the slightest indulgence shown to my natural affections, and any rational dealing with my faults: but I was almost the youngest of a large family, and subject, not only to the rule of severity to which all were liable, but also to the rough and contemptuous treatment of the elder children, who meant no harm, but injured me irreparably. I had no self-respect, and an unbounded need of approbation and affection. My capacity for jealousy was something frightful. When we were little more than infants, Mr. Thomas Watson, son of my father's partner, one day came into the yard, took Rachel up in his arms, gave her some grapes off the vine, and carried her home, across the street, to give her Gay's Fables, bound in red and gold. I stood with a bursting heart, beating my hoop, and hating every body in the world. I always hated Gay's Fables, and for long could not abide a red book. Nobody dreamed of all this; and the "taking down" system was pursued with me as with the rest, issuing in the assumed doggedness and wilfulness which made me desperately disagreeable during my youth, to every body at home. The least word or tone of kindness melted me instantly, in spite of the strongest predeterminations to be hard and offensive. Two occasions stand out especially in my memory, as indeed almost the only instances of the enjoyment of tenderness manifested to myself individually.
When I was four or five years old, we were taken to a lecture of Mr.
Drummond's, for the sake, no doubt, of the pretty shows, we were to
see,--the chief of which was the Phantasmagoria of which we had heard,
as a fine sort of magic-lantern. I did not like the darkness, to
begin with; and when Minerva appeared, in a red dress, at first extremely
small, and then approaching, till her owl seemed coming directly upon me,
it was so like my nightmare dreams that I shrieked aloud. I remember my own
shriek. A pretty lady who sat next us, took me on her lap, and let me hide
my face in her bosom, and held me fast. How intensely I loved her, without
at all knowing who she was! From that time we knew her, and she filled a
large space in my life; and above forty years after, I had the honor of
having her for my
guest in my own house. She was Mrs. Lewis Cooper, then the very young mother of two girls of the ages of Rachel and myself, of whom I shall have to say more presently.--The other occasion was when I had a terrible ear-ache one Sunday. The rest went to chapel in the afternoon; and my pain grew worse. Instead of going into the kitchen to the cook, I wandered into a lumber room at the top of the house. I laid my aching ear against the cold iron screw of a bedstead, and howled with pain; but nobody came to me. At last, I heard the family come home from chapel. I heard them go into the parlor, one after another, and I knew they were sitting round the fire in the dusk. I stole down to the door, and stood on the mat, and heard them talking and laughing merrily. I stole in, thinking they would not observe me, and got into a dark corner. Presently my mother called to me, and asked what I was doing there. Then I burst out,--that my ear ached so I did not know what to do! Then she and my father both called me tenderly, and she took me on her lap, and laid the ear on her warm bosom. I was afraid of spoiling her starched muslin handkerchief with the tears which would come; but I was very happy, and wished that I need never move again. Then of course came remorse for all my naughtiness; but I was always suffering that, though never, I believe, in my whole childhood, being known to own myself wrong. I must have been an intolerable child; but I need not have been so.
I was certainly fond of going to chapel before that Newcastle era which
divided my childhood into two equal portions: but my besetting
troubles followed me even there. My passion for justice was baulked there,
as much as any where. The duties preached were those of inferiors to
superiors, while the per contra was not
insisted on with any equality of treatment at all. Parents were to bring up
their children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and
to pay servants due wages; but not a word was ever preached about the
justice due from the stronger to the weaker. I used to thirst to hear some
notice of the oppression which servants and children had (as I supposed
universally) to endure, in regard to their feelings, while duly clothed,
fed, and taught: but nothing of the sort ever came; but instead, a doctrine of passive obedience which only made me remorseful and miserable. I was abundantly obedient in act; for I never dreamed of being otherwise; but the interior rebellion kept my conscience in a state of perpetual torture. As far as I remember my conscience was never of the least use to me; for I always concluded myself wrong about every thing, while pretending entire complacency and assurance. My moral discernment was almost wholly obscured by fear and mortification.--Another misery at chapel was that I could not attend to the service, nor refrain from indulging in the most absurd vain-glorious dreams, which I was ashamed of, all the while. The Octagon Chapel at Norwich has some curious windows in the roof;--not skylights, but letting in light indirectly. I used to sit staring up at those windows, and looking for angels to come for me, and take me to heaven, in sight of all the congregation,--the end of the world being sure to happen while we were at chapel. I was thinking of this, and of the hymns, the whole of the time, it now seems to me. It was very shocking to me that I could not pray at chapel. I believe that I never did in my life. I prayed abundantly when I was alone; but it was impossible to me to do it in any other way; and the hypocrisy of appearing to do so was a long and sore trouble to me.--All this is very painful; but I really remember little that was not painful at that time of my life.--To be sure, there was Nurse Ayton, who used to come, one or two days in the week, to sew. She was kind to me, and I was fond of her. She told us long stories about her family; and she taught me to sew. She certainly held the family impression of my abilities,--that I was a dull, unobservant, slow, awkward child. In teaching me to sew, she used to say (and I quite acquiesced) that "slow and sure" was the maxim for me, and "quick and well" was the maxim for Rachel. I was not jealous about this,--it seemed to me so undeniable. On one occasion only I thought Nurse Ayton unkind. The back of a rickety old nursing-chair came off when I was playing on it; and I was sure she could save me from being scolded by sewing it on again. I insisted that she could sew anything. This made my mother
laugh when she came up; and so I forgave nurse: and I believe that was our only quarrel.
My first political interest was the death of Nelson. I was then four
years old. My father came in from the counting-house at an unusual
hour, and told my mother, who cried heartily. I certainly had some
conception of a battle, and of a great man being a public loss. It always
rent my heart-strings (to the last day of her life,) to see and hear
my mother cry; and in this case it was clearly connected with the death of
a great man. I had my own notions of Bonaparte too. One day, at dessert,
when my father was talking anxiously to my mother about the expected
invasion, for which preparations were made all along the Norfolk coast, I
saw them exchange a glance, because I was standing staring, twitching my
pinafore with terror. My father called me to him, and took me on his knee,
and I said "But, papa, what will you do if Boney comes?"
"What will I do?" said he, cheerfully, "Why, I will ask
him to take a glass of Port with me,"--helping himself to a
glass as he spoke. That wise reply was of immense service to me. From the
moment I knew that "Boney" was a creature who could take a
glass of wine, I dreaded him no more. Such was my induction into the
department of foreign affairs. As to social matters,--my passion for
justice was cruelly crossed, from the earliest time I can remember, by the
imposition of passive obedience and silence on servants and tradespeople,
who met with a rather old-fashioned treatment in our house. We
children were enough in the kitchen to know how the maids avenged
themselves for scoldings in the parlor, before the family and visitors, to
which they must not reply; and for being forbidden to wear white gowns,
silk gowns, or any thing but what strict housewives approved. One of my
chief miseries was being sent with insulting messages to the
maids,--e.g., to "bid them not be so like carthorses
overhead," and the like. On the one hand, it was a fearful sin to
alter a message; and, on the other, it was impossible to give such an one
as that: so I used to linger and delay to the last moment, and then
deliver something civil, with all imaginable sheepishness, so that the
maids used to look at one another
and laugh. Yet, one of my most heartfelt sins was towards a servant who was really a friend of my mother's and infinitely respected, and a good deal loved, by us children,--Susan Ormsby, who came to live with us just before James was born, and staid till that memorable Newcastle journey, above four years afterwards. When she was waiting at dinner one day, I stuck my knife upright, in listening to something, so that the point cut her arm. I saw her afterwards washing it at the pump; and she shook her head at me in tender reproach. My heart was bursting; but I dared not tell her how sorry I was. I never got over it, or was happy with her again; and when we were to part, the night before our journey, and she was kissing us with tears, it was in dumb grief and indignation that I heard her tell my mother that children do not feel things as grown people do, and that they could not think of any thing else when they were going a journey.
One more fact takes its place before that journey,--the awakening
of a love of money in me. I suspect I have had a very narrow escape of
being an eminent miser. A little more, or a little less difficulty, or
another mode of getting money would easily have made me a miser. The first
step, as far as I remember, was when we played cards, one winter evening,
at our uncle Martineau's, when I was told that I had won twopence.
The pavement hardly seemed solid when we walked home,--so elated was
I. I remember equal delight when Mrs. Meadows Taylor gave us children
twopence when we expected only a halfpenny, to buy string for a top:
but in this last case it was not the true amor
nummi, as in the other. The same avarice was excited in the same
way, a few years later, when I won eighteen-pence at cards on a
visit. The very sight of silver and copper was transporting to me, without
any thought of its use. I stood and looked long at money, as it lay in my
hand. Yet I do not remember that this passion ever interfered with my
giving away money, though it certainly did with my spending it otherwise. I
certainly wa very close, all my childhood and youth. I may as well mention
here that I made rules and kept them, in regard to my expenditure, from the
time I had an allowance. I believe we gave away
something out of our first allowance of a penny a week. When we had twopence, I gave away half. The next advance was to half-a-guinea a quarter, to buy gloves and sashes: then to ten pounds a year (with help) for clothes; then fifteen, and finally twenty, without avowed help. I sewed indefatigably all those years,--being in truth excessively fond of sewing, with the amusement of either gossiping, or learning poetry by heart, from a book, lying open under my work. I never had the slightest difficulty in learning any amount of verse; and I knew enough to have furnished me for a wandering reciter,--if there had been such a calling in our time,--as I used to wish there was. While thus busy, I made literally all my clothes, as I grew up, except stays and shoes. I platted bonnets at one time, knitted stockings as I read aloud, covered silk shoes for dances, and made all my garments. Thus I squeezed something out of the smaller allowance, and out of the fifteen pounds, I never spent more than twelve in dress; and never more than fifteen pounds out of the twenty. The rest I gave away, except a little which I spent in books. The amount of time spent in sewing now appears frightful; but it was the way in those days, among people like ourselves. There was some saving in our practice of reading aloud, and in mine of learning poetry in such mass: but the censorious gossip which was the bane of our youth drove prose and verse out of the field, and wasted more of our precious youthful powers and dispositions than any repentance and amendment in after life could repair. This sort of occupation, the sewing however, was less unfitting than might now appear, considering that the fortunes of manufacturers, like my father, were placed in jeopardy by the war, and that there was barely a chance for my father ever being able to provide fortunes for his daughters. He and my mother exercised every kind of self-denial to bring us up qualified to take care of ourselves. They pinched themselves in luxuries to provide their girls, as well as their boys, with masters and schooling; and they brought us up to an industry like their own;--the boys in study and business, and the girls in study and household cares. Thus was I saved from being a literary lady who could not sew; and when, in
after years, I have been insulted by admiration at not being helpless in regard to household employments, I have been wont to explain, for my mother's sake, that I could make shirts and puddings, and iron and mend, and get my bread by my needle, if necessary,--(as it once was necessary, for a few months), before I won a better place and occupation with my pen.
Travelling was no easy matter in those days. My mother, our dear,
pretty, gentle aunt Margaret, sister Elizabeth, aged fifteen, Rachel,
myself, and little James, aged four, and in nankeen frocks, were all
crammed into a post-chaise, for a journey of three or four days.
Almost every incident of those days is still fresh: but I will report
only one, which is curious from showing how little aware we children were
of our own value. I really think, if I had once conceived that any body
cared for me, nearly all the sins and sorrows of my anxious childhood would
have been spared me; and I remember well that it was Ann Turner who first
conveyed the cheering truth to me. She asked me why my mother sat sewing so
diligently for us children, and sat up at night to mend my stockings, if
she did not care for me; and I was convinced at once;--only too happy
to believe it, and being unable to resist such evidence as the
stocking-mending
at night, when we children were asleep. Well: on our second day's journey, we stopped at Burleigh House, and the three elders of the party went in, to see the picture gallery.--Children were excluded; so we three little ones were left to play among the haymakers on the lawn. After what seemed a long time, it suddenly struck us that the elders must have forgotten us, and gone on to Newcastle without us. I, for my part, was entirely persuaded that we should never be missed, or remembered more by any body; and we set up a terrible lamentation. A good-natured haymaker, a sunburnt woman whose dialect we could not understand, took us in hand, and led us to the great door, where we were soon comforted by my mother's appearance. I remember wondering why she and aunt Margaret laughed aside when they led us back to the chaise.
Of course it was difficult to amuse little children so cooped up for so
long. There was a little quiet romping, I remember, and a great deal of
story telling by dear aunty: but the finest device was setting us to
guess what we should find standing in the middle of grandpapa's
garden. As it was something we had never seen or known about, there was no
end to the guessing. When we arrived at the gates of the Forth, (my
grandfather's house) the old folks and their daughters came out to
meet us, all tearful and agitated: and I, loathing myself for the
selfishness, could not wait, but called out,--"I
want to see what that thing is in the garden." After an enlightening
hint, and without any rebuke, our youngest aunt took me by the hand, and
led me to face the mystery. I could make nothing of it when I saw it. It
was a large, heavy, stone sundial. That dial is worth this much mention,
for it was of immeasurable value to me. I could see its face only by
raising myself on tiptoe on its step: and there, with my eyes on a
level with the plate, did I watch and ponder, day by day, painfully forming
my first clear conceptions of Time, amidst a bright confusion of notions of
day and night, and of the seasons, and of the weather. I loved that dial
with a sort of superstition; and when, nearly forty years after, I built a
house for myself at Ambleside, my strong wish was to have this very dial
for the platform below the terrace: but it was not
to be had. It had been once removed already,--when the railway cut through the old garden; and the stone mass was too heavy, and far too much fractured and crumbled for a second removal. So a dear friend set up for me a beautiful new dial; and I can only hope that it may possibly render as great a service to some child of a future generation as my grandfather's did for me.
It seems to me now that I seldom asked questions in those days. I went
on for years together in a puzzle, for want of its ever occurring to me to
ask questions. For instance, no accounts of a spring-gun answered to
my conception of it;--that it was a pea-green musket, used only
in spring! This absurdity at length lay by unnoticed in my mind till I was
twenty! Even so! At that age, I was staying at Birmingham; and we were
returning from a country walk in the dusk of the evening, when my host
warned us not to cross a little wood, for fear of spring-guns; and
he found and showed us the wire of one. I was truly confounded when the
sense of the old mistake, dormant in my mind till now, came upon me. Thus
it was with a piece of mystification imposed on me by my
grandfather's barber in 1809. One morning, while the
shaving-pot was heating, the barber took me on his knee, and
pretended to tell me why he was late that morning. Had I ever heard of a
failing star? Yes, I had. Well: a star had fallen in the night; and
it fell in the Forth lane, which it completely blocked up, beside Mr.
Somebody's orchard. It was quite round, and of the beautifullest and
clearest crystal. "Was it there still?" O yes,--or most of
it: but some of the crystal was shivered off, and people were
carrying it away when he arrived at the spot. He had to go round by
Something Street; and it was that which made him late. "Would there
be any left by the time we went for our walk?" He hoped there might.
I got through my lessons in a fever of eagerness that morning, and engaged
the nurse maid to take us through that lane. There was the orchard, with
the appletree stretching over the wall: but not a single spike of the
crystal was left. I thought it odd; but it never occurred to me to doubt
the story, or to speak to any body about it, except the
bar-
ber. I lay in wait for him the next morning; and very sorry he professed to be;--so sorry that he had not just picked up some crystals for me while there were so many; but no doubt I should come in the way of a fallen star myself, some day. We kept this up till October, when we bade him good bye: and my early notions of astronomy were cruelly bewildered by that man's rhodomontade. I dare not say how many years it was before I got quite clear of it.
There is little that is pleasant to say of the rest of that absence from
home. There was a naughty boy staying at my grandfather's, who caused
us to be insulted by imputations of stealing the green fruit, and to be
shut out of the garden, where we had never dreamed of touching a
gooseberry: and he led little James into mischief; and then canted
and made his own part good. Our hearts swelled under the injuries he caused
us. Then, we were injudiciously fed, and my nightmare miseries were
intolerable. The best event was that my theological life began to take
form. I had a prodigious awe of clergymen and ministers, and a strong
yearning towards them for notice. No doubt there was much vanity in this;
but it was also one investment of the religious sentiment, as I know by my
being at times conscious of a remnant of the feeling now, while radically
convinced that the intellectual and moral judgment of priests of all
persuasions is inferior to that of any other order of men. The first of the
order who took any direct notice of me was, as far as I know, good Mr.
Turner of Newcastle, my mother's pastor and friend before her
marriage. At Newcastle, we usually went to tea at his house on Sunday
evenings; and it was then that we began the excellent practice of writing
recollections of one of the sermons of the day. When the minister preaches
what children can understand, this practice is of the highest use in fixing
their attention, and in disclosing to their parents the character and
imperfections of their ideas on the most important class of subjects. On
occasion of our first attempt,--Rachel's and mine,--I felt
very triumphant beforehand. I remembered the text; and it seemed to me that
my head was full of thoughts from the sermon. I scrawled over the whole of
a large slate,
and was not a little mortified when I found that all I had written came into seven or eight lines of my mother's handwriting. I made sure that I had not been cheated, and then fell into discouragement at finding that my grand "sermon" came to nothing more. However, my attempt was approved; I was allowed to "sit up to supper," and the Sunday practice was begun which continued till I grew too deaf to keep up my attention successfully. For some years of that long period, our success was small, because Mr. Madge's, (our minister's) sermons conveyed few clear ideas to children, though much sweet and solemn impression. Dr. Carpenter's were the best I ever listened to for the purpose:--so good that I have known him carry a "recollection" written by a cousin of mine at the age of sixteen, to Mrs. Carpenter, as a curiosity,--not a single sentence of his sermon being altogether absent from the hearer's version of it.--Another religious impression that we children brought from Newcastle is very charming to me still. Our gentle, delicate aunt Mary, whom I remember so well in her white gown, with her pink color, thin silky brown hair, and tender manner towards us, used to get us round her knees as she sat in the window-seat at the Forth, where the westerly sun shone in, and teach us to sing Milton's hymn "Let us with a gladsome mind." It is the very hymn for children, set to its own simple tune; and I always, to this day, hear aunt Mary's weak, earnest voice in it. That was the gentle hymn. The woe-breathing one was the German Evening Hymn. The heroic one, which never failed to rouse my whole being was "Awake, my soul; stretch every nerve," sung to Artaxerxes. In those days, we learned Mrs. Barbauld's Prose Hymns by heart; and there were parts of them which I dearly loved: but other parts made me shiver with awe. I did not know what "shaking bogs" were, and was alarmed at that mysterious being "Child of Mortality." On the whole, however, religion was a great comfort and pleasure to me; and I studied the New Testament very heartily and profitably, from the time that Ann Turner went south with us, and encouraged me to confession and morning and nightly prayer.
For many years past, my amazement has been continually on the increase
that Unitarians can conceive that they are giving their children a
Christian education in making their religious training what it is. Our
family certainly insisted very strongly, and quite sincerely, on being
Christians, while despising and pitying the orthodox as much as they could
be despised and pitied in return; while yet, it must have been from
wonderful slovenliness of thought, as well as ignorance, that we could have
taken Unitarianism to be Christianity, in any genuine sense,--in any
sense which could justify separate Christian worship. In our particular
case, family pride and affection were implicated in our dissent. It was not
the dissent that was to be wondered at, but its having degenerated into
Unitarianism. Our French name indicates our origin. The first Martineaus
that we know of were expatriated Huguenots, who came over from Normandy on
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were, of course,
Calvinists,--so fully admitting the Christian religion to be a scheme
of redemption as to deserve, without limitation or perversion, the title of
Christians. But their descendants passed by degrees, with the congregations
to which they belonged, out of Calvinism into the
pseudo-Christianity of Arianism first, and then of Unitarianism,
under the guidance of pastors whose natural sense revolted from the
essential points of the Christian doctrine, while they had not learning
enough, biblical, ecclesiastical, historical or philosophical, to discover
that what they gave up was truly essential, and that the name of
Christianity was a mere sham when applied to what they retained. One
evening when I was a child, I entered the parlor when our Unitarian
minister, Mr. Madge, was convicting of error (and what he called idiotcy)
an orthodox schoolmaster who happened to be our visitor. "Look
here," said Mr. Madge, seizing three wine-glasses, and placing
them in a row: "here is the Father,--here's the
Son,--and here's the Holy Ghost; do you mean to tell me that
those three glasses can be in any case one? 'Tis mere
nonsense." And so were we children taught that it was "mere
nonsense." I certainly wondered exceedingly that so vast a majority
of the people of Norwich could accept such nonsense,
and so very few see through it as the Unitarians of the city: but there was no one to suggest to me that there might be more in the matter than we saw, or than even our minister was aware of. This was pernicious enough: but far worse was the practice, necessarily universal among Unitarians, of taking any liberties they please with the revelation they profess to receive. It is true, the Scriptures are very properly declared by them to be not the revelation itself, but the record of it: but it is only through the record that the revelation can be obtained--at least by Protestants: and any tamperings with the record are operations upon the revelation itself. To appreciate the full effect of such a procedure, it is only necessary to look at what the Unitarians were doing in the days of my youth. They were issuing an Improved Version, in which considerable portions were set aside (printed in a different type) as spurious. It is true, those portions flatly contradicted some other portions in regard to dates and other facts; but the shallow scholarship of the Unitarians made its own choice what to receive and what to reject, without perceiving that such a process was wholly incompatible with the conception of the Scriptures being the record of a divine revelation at all. Having begun to cut away and alter, there was no reason for stopping; and every Unitarian was at liberty to make the Scriptures mean what suited his own views. Mr. Belsham's Exposition of the Epistles is a remarkable phenomenon in this way. To get rid of some difficulties about heaven and hell, the end of the world, salvation and perdition, &c., he devised a set of figurative meanings which he applied with immense perseverance, and a poetical ingenuity remarkable in so thoroughly prosaic a man; and all the while, it never seems to have occurred to him that that could hardly be a revelation designed for the rescue of the human race from perdition, the explanation of which required all this ingenuity at the hand of a Belsham, after eighteen centuries. I as a deeply-interested a reader of those big volumes as any Unitarian in England; and their ingenuity gratified some of my faculties exceedingly; but there was throughout a haunting sense of unreality which made me uneasy,--a consciousness that this kind of solemn amusement was no
fitting treatment of the burdensome troubles of conscience, and the moral irritations which made the misery of my life. This theological dissipation, and the music and poetry of psalms and hymns, charmed away my woes for the hour; but they were not the solid consolation I needed. So, to work I went in my own way, again and again studying the New Testament,--making "Harmonies," poring over the geography, greedily gathering up every thing I could find in the way of commentary and elucidation, and gladly working myself into an enthusiasm with the moral beauty and spiritual promises I found in the Sacred Writings. I certainly never believed, more or less, in the "essential doctrines" of Christianity, which represent God as the predestinator of men to sin and perdition, and Christ as their rescuer from that doom. I never was more or less beguiled by the trickery of language by which the perdition of man is made out to be justice, and his redemption to be mercy. I never suffered more or less from fear of hell. The Unitarianism my parents saved me from that. But nothing could save me from the perplexity of finding so much of indisputable statement of those doctrines in the New Testament, nor from a covert sense that it was taking a monstrous liberty with the Gospel to pick and choose what made me happy, and reject what I did not like or could not receive. When I now find myself wondering at Unitarians who do so,--who accept heaven and reject hell,--who get rid somehow of the reign of Christ and the apostles on earth, and derive somehow a sanction of their fancy of a heaven in the stars, peopled with old acquaintances, and furnished for favourite pursuits, I try to recal the long series of years during which I did the same thing, with far more, certainly, of complacency than of misgiving. I try to remember how late on in life I have said that I confidently reckoned on entering the train of Socrates in the next world, and getting some of his secrets out of Pythagoras, besides making friendship with all the Christian worthies I especially inclined to. When I now see the comrades of my early days comfortably appropriating all the Christian promises, without troubling themselves with the clearly-specified condition,--of faith in Christ as a Redeemer,--I remind
myself that this is just what I did for more than the first half of my life. The marvel remains how they now, and I then, could possibly wonder at the stationary or declining fortunes of their sect,--so evidently as Unitarianism is a mere clinging, from association and habit, to the old privilege of faith in a divine revelation, under an actual forfeiture of all its essential conditions.
My religious belief, up to the age of twenty, was briefly this. I
believed in a God, milder and more beneficent and passionless than the God
of the orthodox, inasmuch as he would not doom any of his creatures to
eternal torment. I did not at any time, I think, believe in the Devil, but
understood the Scriptures to speak of Sin under that name, and of eternal
detriment under the name of eternal punishment. I believed in inestimable
and eternal rewards of holiness; but I am confident that I never in my life
did a right thing, or abstained from a wrong one from any consideration of
reward or punishment. To the best of my recollection, I always feared sin
and remorse extremely, and punishment not at all; but, on the contrary,
desired punishment or any thing else that would give me the one good that I
pined for in vain,--ease of conscience. The doctrine of forgiveness on
repentance never availed me much, because forgiveness for the past was
nothing without safety in the future; and my sins were not curable, I felt,
by any single remission of their consequences,--if such remission were
possible. If I prayed and wept, and might hope that I was pardoned at
night, it was small comfort, because I knew I should be in a state of
remorse again before the next noon. I do not remember the time when the
forgiveness clause in the Lord's Prayer was not a perplexity and a
stumbling-block to me. I did not care about being let off from
penalty. I wanted to be at ease in conscience; and that could only be by
growing good, whereas I hated and despised myself every day. My belief in
Christ was that he was the purest of all beings, under God; and his
sufferings for the sake of mankind made him as sublime in my view and my
affections as any being could possibly be. The Holy Ghost was a mere
fiction to me. I took all the miracles for facts, and contrived to
worship the letter of the Scriptures long after I had, as desired, given up portions as "spurious," "interpolations" and so forth. I believed in a future life as a continuation of the present, and not as a new method of existence; and, from the time when I saw that the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul could not both be true, I adhered to the former,--after St. Paul. I was uncomfortably disturbed that Christianity had done so little for the redemption of the race: but the perplexity was not so serious as it would have been if I had believed in the perdition of the majority of men; and, for the rest, I contrived to fix my view pretty exclusively on Christendom itself,--which Christians in general find a grand resource in their difficulties. In this way, and by the help of public worship, and of sacred music, and Milton, and the Pilgrim's Progress, I found religion my best resource, even in its first inconsistent and unsatisfactory form, till I wrought my way to something better, as I shall tell by and by.
When I was seven years old,--the winter after our return from
Newcastle,--I was kept from chapel one Sunday afternoon by some
ailment or other. When the house door closed behind the
chapel-goers, I looked at the books on the table. The
ugliest-looking of them was turned down open; and my turning it up
was one of the leading incidents of my life. That plain, clumsy,
calf-bound volume was "Paradise Lost;" and the common
blueish paper, with its old-fashioned type, became as a scroll out
of heaven to me. The first thing I saw was "Argument," which I
took to mean a dispute, and supposed to be stupid enough: but there
was something about Satan cleaving Chaos, which made me turn to the poetry;
and my mental destiny was fixed for the next seven years. That volume was
henceforth never to be found but by asking me for it, till a young
acquaintance made me a present of a little Milton of my own. In a few
months, I believe there was hardly a line in Paradise Lost that I could not
have instantly turned to. I sent myself to sleep by repeating it: and
when my curtains were drawn back in the morning, descriptions of heavenly
light rushed into my memory. I think this must have been my first
expe-
rience of moral relief through intellectual resource. I am sure I must have been somewhat happier from that time forward; though one fact of which I am perfectly certain shows that the improvement must have been little enough. From the time when Ann Turner and her religious training of me put me, as it were, into my own moral charge, I was ashamed of my habit of misery,--and especially of crying. I tried for a long course of years,--I should think from about eight to fourteen,--to pass a single day without crying. I was a persevering child; and I know I tried hard: but I failed. I gave up at last; and during all those years, I never did pass a day without crying. Of course, my temper and habit of mind must have been excessively bad. I have no doubt I was an insufferable child for gloom, obstinacy and crossness, Still, when I remember my own placability,--my weakness of yielding every thing to the first word or tone of tenderness, I cannot but believe that there was grievous mistake in the case, and that even a little more sympathy and moral support would have spared me and others a hideous amount of fault and suffering.
How I found my way out we shall see hereafter: meantime, one small
incident, which occurred when I was eleven years old, may foreshadow my
release. Our eldest brother, Thomas, was seven years older than myself. He
was silent and reserved generally, and somewhat strict to us younger ones,
to whom he taught our Latin grammar. We revered and loved him intensely, in
the midst of our awe of him: but once in my childhood I made him
laugh against his will, by a pun in my Latin lesson (which was a great
triumph) and once I ventured to confide to him a real
difficulty,--without result. I found myself by his side during a
summer evening walk, when something gave me courage to ask him--(the
man of eighteen!)--the question which I had long been secretly
revolving:--how, if God foreknew everything, we could be blamed
or rewarded for our conduct, which was thus absolutely settled for us
beforehand. He considered for a moment, and then told me, in a kind voice,
that this was a thing which I could not understand at present, nor for a
long time to come. I dared not
remon-
state; but I was disappointed: and I felt that if I could feel the difficulty, I had a right to the solution. No doubt, this refusal of a reply helped to fix the question in my mind.
I have said that by this time I had begun to take moral or spiritual
charge of myself. I did try hard to improve; but I fear I made little
progress. Every night, I reviewed the thoughts and actions of the day, and
tried to repent; but I could seldom comfort myself about any amendment. All
the while, however, circumstances were doing for me what I could not do for
myself,--as I have since found to be incessantly happening. The first
great wholesome discipline of my life set in (unrecognized as such) when I
was about eight years old. The kind lady who took me upon her lap at Mr.
Drummond's lecture had two little girls, just the ages of Rachel and
myself: and, after that incident, we children became acquainted, and
very soon, (when the family came to live close beside us in Magdalen
Street) as intimate as possible. I remember being at their house in the
Market Place when I was seven years old; and little E. could not stand, nor
even sit, to see the magic-lantern, but was held in her papa's
arms, because she was so very lame. Before the year was out, she lost her
leg. Being a quiet-tempered child, and the limb being exceedingly
wasted by disease, she probably did not suffer very much under the
operation. However that might be, she met the occasion with great courage,
and went through it with remarkable composure, so that she was the talk of
the whole city. I was naturally very deeply impressed by the affair. It
turned my imagination far too much on bodily suffering, and on the peculiar
glory attending fortitude in that direction. I am sure that my nervous
system was seriously injured, and especially that my subsequent deafness
was partly occasioned by the exciting and vain-glorious dreams that
I indulged for many years after my friend E. lost her leg. All manner of
deaths at the stake and on the scaffold, I went through in imagination, in
the low sense in which St. Theresa craved martyrdom; and night after night,
I lay bathed in cold perspiration till I sank into the sleep of exhaustion.
All this is detestable to think of now; but it is a duty to relate the
truth, because
parents are apt to know far too little of what is passing in their children's imaginations, unless they win the confidence of the little creatures about that on which they are shyest of all,--their aspirations. The good side of this wretched extravagance of mine was that it occasioned or strengthened a power of patience under pain and privation which was not to be looked for in a child so sensitive and irritable by nature. Fortitude was in truth my favorite virtue; and the power of bearing quietly a very unusual amount of bodily pain in childhood was the poor recompense I enjoyed for the enormous detriment I suffered from the turn my imagination had taken.
This, however, is not the discipline I referred to as arising from my
companionship with E. In such a case as hers, all the world acquiesces in
the parents' view and method of action: and in that case the
parents made a sad mistake. They enormously increased their
daughter's suffering from her infirmity by covering up the fact in an
unnatural silence. E.'s lameness was never mentioned, nor recognized
in any way, within my remembrance, till she, full late, did it herself. It
was taken for granted that she was like other children; and the delusion
was kept up in play-hours at my expense. I might almost say that
from the time E. and I grew intimate, I never more had any play. Now, I was
fond of play,--given to romp; and I really wonder now when I look back
upon the many long years during which I stood, with cold feet and a longing
mind, with E. leaning on my arm, looking on while other children were at
play. It was a terrible uneasiness to me to go walks with her,--shy
child as I was,--fancying every body in the streets staring at us, on
account of E.'s extreme difficulty in walking. But the long
self-denial which I never thought of refusing or grumbling at, must
have been morally good for me, if I may judge by the pain caused by two
incidents;--pain which seems to me now to swallow up all that issued
from mere privation.--The fatigue of walking with E. was very great,
from her extreme need of support, and from its being always on the same
side. I was never very strong; and when growing fast, I was found to
growing sadly crooked, from E.'s constant tugging at one arm.
I cannot at all understand how my mother could put it upon me to tell E.'s mother that I must not walk with her, because it made me crooked: but this ungracious message I was compelled to carry; and it cost me more pain than long years of privation of play. The hint was instantly taken; but I suffered the shame and regret over again every time that I saw E. assigned to any one else; and I had infinitely rather have grown crooked than have escaped it by such a struggle.--The other incident was this. We children were to have a birthday party; and my father gave us the rare and precious liberty to play hide-and-seek in the warehouse, among the packing-cases and pigeon-holes where the bombasines were stored. For weeks I had counted the days and hours till this birthday and this play; but E. could not play hide-and-seek; and there we stood, looking at the rest,--I being cold and fidgety, and at last uncontrollably worried at the thought that the hours were passing away, and I had not had one bit of play. I did the fatal thing which has been a thorn in my mind ever since. I asked E. if she would much mind having some one else with her for a minute while I hid once,--just once. O no,--she did not mind; so I sent somebody else to her, and ran off, with a feeling of self-detestation which is fresh at this day. I had no presence-of-mind for the game,--was caught in a minute; and came back to E. damaged in self-respect, for the whole remaining course of our friendship. However, I owe her a great deal; and she and her misfortune were among the most favourable influences I had the benefit of after taking myself in hand for self-government. I have much pleasure in adding that nothing could be finer than her temper in after life, when she had taken her own case in hand, and put an end, as far as it lay with her to do so, to the silence about her infirmity. After I wrote my "Letter to the Deaf," we seemed to be brought nearer together by our companionship in infirmity. Years after that, when I had written "The Crofton Boys," and was uneasy lest my evident knowledge of such a case should jar upon her feelings,--always so tenderly considered,--I wrote her a confession of my uneasiness, and had in reply a most charming letter,--free, cheerful, magnanimous;--
such a letter as has encouraged me to write as I have now done.
The year 1811 was a marked one to me,--first, by my being sent into
the country for my health, for the whole summer and autumn; and next for
the birth of the best-beloved member of my family,--my sister
Ellen.--It was not a genuine country life in a farm-house, that
summer, but a most constrained and conventional one, in the abode of a rich
lawyer,--a cousin of my father's, who sent a daughter of his to
our house for the advantage of city masters, in exchange for me, who went
for health. I was not, on the whole, happy them:--indeed, it is
pretty clear by this time that I was not happy anywhere. The old fancy for
running away came back strongly upon me, and I was on the very point of
attempting it when a few words of concession and kindness upset my purpose,
as usual. I detested the governess,--and with abundant reason. The
very first day, she shut me up and punished me because I, a
town-bred child, did not know what a copse was. "Near yonder
copse," &c. She insisted that every body must know what a copse
is, and that therefore I was obstinate and a liar. After such a beginning,
it will be easily conceived that our relations could not be cordial or
profitable. She presently showed herself jealous of my being in advance of
her pupils in school-room knowledge; and she daily outraged my sense
of justice, expressly, and in the most purpose-like manner. She was
thoroughly vulgar; and in a few weeks she was sent away.--One
annoyance that I remember at that place was (what now appears very strange)
the whispers I overheard about myself, as I sat on a little stool in a
corner of the dining-room, reading. My hostess, who might have said
anything in her ordinary voice without my attending to her, used to whisper
to her morning visitors about my wonderful love of reading,--that I
never heard anything that was said while I sat reading, and that I had
written a wonderful sermon. All the while, she pretended to disguise it,
winking and nudging, and saying "We never hear any thing
when we are reading:" "We have written a
sermon which is really quite wonderful at our age,"
&c. &c. I wished that sermon at Jericho
a hundred times; for in truth, I was heartily ashamed of it. It was merely a narrative of St. Paul's adventures, out of the Acts; and I knew it was no more a sermon than a string of parables out of the Gospels would have been.
There were some sweet country pleasures that summer. I never see
chestnuts bursting from their sheaths, and lying shining among the autumn
leaves, without remembering the old Manor-house where we children
picked up chestnuts in the avenue, while my hostess made her call at the
house. I have always loved orchards and apple-gatherings since, and
blossomy lanes. The truth is, my remembrances of that summer may be found
in "Deerbrook," though I now finally, (as often before,)
declare that the characters are not real. More or less suggestion from real
characters there certainly is; but there is not one, except the hero, (who
is not English,) that any person is justified in pointing out as
"from the life." Of the scenery too, there is more from Great
Marlow than from that bleak Norfolk district: but the fresh country
impressions are certainly derived from the latter. It was there that I had
that precious morsel of experience which I have elsewhere
detailed;*--the first
putting
my hand in among the operations of Nature, to modify them. After a morning
walk, we children brought in some wild strawberry roots, to plant in our
gardens. My plant was sadly withered by the time we got home; and it was
then hot noon,--the soil of my garden was warm and parched, and there
seemed no chance for my root. I planted it, grieved over its flabby leaves,
watered it, got a little child's chair, which I put over it for
shelter, and stopped up the holes in the chair with grass. When I went at
sunset to look at it, the plant was perfectly fresh; and after that, it
grew very well. My surprise and pleasure must have been very great, by my
remembering such a trifle so long; and I am persuaded that I looked upon
Nature with other eyes from the moment that I found I had power to modify
her processes.
In November came the news which I had been told to expect. My sister
Rachel had been with us in the country for a
fort-
___________________* Household Education,
p.152
Page 39
night; and we knew that there was to be a baby at home before we went back; and I remember pressing so earnestly, by letter, to know the baby's name as to get a rebuff. I was told to wait till there was a baby. At last, the carrier brought us a letter one evening which told us that we had a little sister. I still longed to know the name, but dared not ask again. Our host saw what was in my mind. He went over to Norwich a day or two after, and on his return told me that he hoped I should like the baby's name now she had got one;--"Beersheba." I did not know whether to believe him or not; and I had set my mind on "Rose." "Ellen," however, satisfied me very well. Homesick before, I now grew downright ill with longing. I was sure that all old troubles were wholly my fault, and fully resolved that there should be no more. Now, as so often afterwards, (as often as I left home) I was destined to disappointment. I scarcely felt myself at home before the well-remembered bickerings began;--not with me, but from the boys being troublesome, James being naughty; and our eldest sister angry and scolding. I then and there resolved that I would look for my happiness to the new little sister, and that she should never want for the tenderness which I had never found. This resolution turned out more of a prophecy than such decisions, born of a momentary emotion, usually do. That child was henceforth a new life to me. I did lavish love and tenderness on her; and I could almost say that she has never caused me a moment's pain but by her own sorrows. There has been much suffering in her life; and in it I have suffered with her: but such sympathetic pain is bliss in comparison with sack feelings as she has not excited in me during our close friendship of above forty years. When I first saw her it was as she was lifted out of her crib, at a fortnight old, asleep, to be shown to my late hostess, who had brought Rachel and me home, The passionate fondness I felt for her from that moment has been unlike any thing else I have felt in life,--though I have made idols of not a few nephews and nieces. But she was a pursuit to me, no less than an attachment. I remember telling a young lady at the Gate-House Concert, (a weekly undress concert) the next night, that
I should now see the growth of a human mind from the very beginning. I told her this because I was very communicative to all who showed me sympathy in any degree. Years after, I found that she was so struck by such a speech from a child of nine that she had repeated it till it had spread all over the city, and people said somebody had put it into my head: but it was perfectly genuine. My curiosity was intense; and all my spare minutes were spent in the nursery, watching,--literally watching,--the baby. This was a great stimulus to me in my lessons, to which I gave my whole power, in order to get leisure the sooner. That was the time when I took it into my head to cut up the Bible into a rule of life, as I have already told; and it was in the nursery chiefly that I did it,--sitting on a stool opposite the nursemaid and baby, and getting up from my notes to devour the child with kisses. There were bitter moments and hours,--as when she was vaccinated or had her little illnesses. My heart then felt bursting, and I went to my room, and locked the door, and prayed long and desperately. I knew then what the Puritans meant by "wrestling in prayer."--One abiding anxiety which pressed upon me for two years. or more was lest this child should be dumb: and if not, what an awful amount of labour was before the little creature! I had no other idea than that she must learn to speak at all as I had now to learn French,--each word by an express effort: and if I, at ten and eleven, found my vocabulary so hard, how could this infant learn the whole English language? The dread went off in amazement when I found that she sported new words every day, without much teaching at first, and then without any. I was as happy to see her spared the labour as amused at her use of words in her pretty prattle.
For nearly two years after our return from that country visit, Rachel
and I were taught at home. Our eldest brother taught Latin, and the next
brother, Henry, writing and arithmetic: and our sister, French,
reading and exercises. We did not get on well, except with the Latin. Our
sister expected too much from us, both morally and intellectually; and she
had not been herself carried on so far as to have much resource as a
teacher. We owed
to her however a thorough grounding in our French grammar (especially the verbs) which was of excellent service to us afterwards at school, as was a similar grounding in the Latin grammar, obtained from our brother. As for Henry, he made our lessons in arithmetic, &c. his funny time of day; and sorely did his practical jokes and ludicrous severity afflict us. He meant no harm; but he was too young to play schoolmaster; and we improved less than we should have done under less head-ache and heart-ache from his droll system of torture. I should say, on their behalf, that I, for one, must have seemed a most unpromising pupil,--my wits were so completely scattered by fear and shyness. I could never give a definition, for want of presence of mind. I lost my place in class for every thing but lessons that could be prepared beforehand. I was always saying what I did not mean. The worst waste of time, energy, money and expectation was about my music. Nature made me a musician in every sense. I was never known to sing out of tune. I believe all who knew me when I was twenty would give a good account of my playing. There was no music that I ever attempted that I did not understand, and that I could not execute,--under the one indispensable condition, that nobody heard me. Much money was spent in instruction; and I dislike thinking of the amount of time lost in copying music. My mother loved music, and, I know, looked to me for much gratification in this way which she never had. My deafness put an end to all expectation of the kind at last; but long before that, my music was a misery to me,--while yet in another sense, my dearest pleasure. My master was Mr. Beckwith, organist of Norwich Cathedral;--an admirable musician; but of so irritable a temper as to be the worst of masters to a shy girl like me. It was known that he had been dismissed from one house or more for rapping his pupils' knuckles; and that he had been compelled to apologize for insufferable scolding. Neither of these things happened at our house; but really I wondered sometimes that they did not,--so very badly did I play and sing when he was at my elbow. My fingers stuck together as in cramp, and my voice was as husky as if I had had cotton-wool in my throat.
Now and then he complimented my ear; but he oftener told me that I had no more mind than the music-book,--no more feeling than the lid of the piano,--no more heart than the chimney-piece; and that it was no manner of use trying to teach me any thing. All this while, if the room-door happened to be open without my observing it when I was singing Handel by myself, my mother would be found dropping tears over her work, and I used myself, as I may now own, to feel fairly transported. Heaven opened before me at the sound of my own voice when I believed myself alone;--that voice which my singing-master assuredly never heard. It was in his case that I first fully and suddenly learned the extent of the mischief caused by my shyness. He came twice a week. On those days it was an effort to rise in the morning,--to enter upon a day of misery; and nothing could have carried me through the morning but the thought of the evening, when he would be gone,--out of my way for three days, or even four. The hours grew heavier: my heart fluttered more and more: I could not eat my dinner; and his impatient loud knock was worse to me than sitting down in the dentist's chair. Two days per week of such feelings, strengthened by the bliss of the evenings after he was gone, might account for the catastrophe, which however did not shock me the less for that. Mr. Beckwith grew more and more cross, thinner and thinner, so that his hair and beard looked blacker and blacker, as the holidays approached, when he was wont to leave home for a week or two. One day when somebody was dining with us, and I sat beside my father at the bottom of the table, he said to my mother, "By the way, my dear, there is a piece of news which will not surprise you much, I fancy. Poor John Beckwith is gone. He died yesterday." Once more, that name made my heart jump into my mouth; but this time, it was with a dreadful joy. While the rest went on very quietly saying how ill he had looked for some time, and "who would have thought he would never come back?"--and discussing how Mrs. B. and the children were provided for, and wondering who would be organist at the Cathedral, my spirits were dancing in secret rapture. The worst of my besetting terrors was over
for ever! All days of the week would henceforth be alike, as far as that knock at the door was concerned. Of come, my remorse at this glee was great; and thus it was that I learned how morally injured I was by the debasing fear I was wholly unable to surmount.
Next to fear, laziness was my worst enemy. I was idle about brushing my
hair,--late in the morning,--much afflicted to have to go down to
the apple-closet in winter; and even about my lessons I was
indolent. I learned any thing by heart very easily, and I therefore did it
well: but I was shamefully lazy about using the dictionary, and went
on, in full anticipation of rebuke, translating
la rosée the rose,
tomber, to bury, and so on. This shows that
there must have been plenty of provocation on my side, whatever mistakes
there may have been on that of my teachers. I was sick and weary of the
eternal "Telemachus," and could not go through the labours of
the dictionary for a book I cared so little about. This difficulty soon
came to an end; for in 1813 Rachel and I went to a good day-school
for two years, where our time was thoroughly well spent; and there we
enjoyed the acquisition of knowledge so much as not to care for the
requisite toil.
Before entering on that grand new period, I may as well advert to a few
noticeable points.--I was certainly familiar with the idea of death
before that time. The death of Nelson, when I was four years old, was
probably the earliest association in my mind of mournful feelings with
death. When I was eight or nine, an aunt died whom I had been in the
constant habit of seeing. She was old-fashioned in her dress, and
peculiar in her manners. Her lean arms were visible between the
elbow-ruffles and the long mits she wore; and she usually had an
apron on, and a muslin handkerchief crossed on her bosom. She fell into
absent-fits which puzzled and awed us children: but we heard
her so highly praised (as she richly deserved) that she was a very
impressive personage to us. One morning when I came down, I found the
servants at breakfast unusually early: they looked very gloomy; bade
me make no noise; but would not explain what it was all about. The shutters
were half-closed;
and when my mother came down, she looked so altered by her weeping that I hardly knew whether it was she. She called us to her, and told us that aunt Martineau had died very suddenly, of a disease of the heart. The whispers which were not meant for us somehow reached our ears all that week. We heard how my father and mother had been sent for in the middle of the night by the terrified servants, and how they had heard our poor uncle's voice of mourning before they had reached the house; and how she looked in her coffin, and all about the funeral: and we were old enough to be moved by the sermon in her praise at chapel, and especially by the anthem composed for the occasion, with the words from Job,--"When the ear heard her then it blessed her," &c. My uncle's gloomy face and unpowdered hair were awful to us; and, during the single year of his widowhood, he occasionally took us children with him in the carriage, when he went to visit country patients. These drives came to an end with the year of widowhood; but he gave us something infinitely better than any other gift or pleasure in his second wife, whose only child was destined to fill a large space in our hearts and our lives.--Soon after that funeral, I somehow learned that our globe swims in space, and that there is sky all round it. I told this to James; and we made a grand scheme which we never for a moment doubted about executing. We had each a little garden, under the north wall of our garden. The soil was less than two feet deep; and below it was a mass of rubbish,--broken bricks, flints, pottery, &c. We did not know this; and our plan was to dig completely through the globe, till we came out at the other side. I fully expected to do this, and had an idea of an extremely deep hole, the darkness of which at the bottom would be lighted up by the passage of stars, slowly traversing the hole. When we found our little spades would not dig through the globe, nor even through the brickbats, we altered our scheme. We lengthened the hole to our own length, having an extreme desire to know what dying was like. We lay down alternately in this grave, and shut our eyes, and fancied ourselves dead, and told one another our feelings when we came out again. As far
as I can remember, we fully believed that we now knew all about it.
A prominent event of my childhoOd happened in 1812, when we went to
Cromer for the sake of the baby's health. I had seen the sea, as I
mentioned, when under three years old, as it swayed under the old jetty at
Yarmouth: and I had seen it again at Tynemouth, when I was
seven: but now it was like a wholly new spectacle; and I doubt
whether I ever received a stronger impression than when, from the rising
ground above Cromer, we caught sight of the sparkling expanse. At
Tynemouth, that singular incident took place which I have elsewhere
narrated,*--that I was shown
the sea, immediately below my feet, at the foot of the very slope on which
I was standing, and could not see it. The rest of the party must have
thought me crazy or telling a lie; but the distress of being unable to see
what I had so earnestly expected, was real enough; and so was the amazement
when I at last perceived the fluctuating tide. All this had gone out of my
mind when we went to Cromer; and the spectacle seemed a wholly new one.
That was a marvellous month that the nursemaid and we children spent there.
When we were not down on the sands, or on the cliffs, I was always perched
on a bank in the garden whence I could see that straight blue line, or
those sparkles which had such a charm for me. It was much that I was happy
for a whole month; but I also obtained many new ideas, and much
development;--the last chiefly, I think, in a religious direction.
In the preceding year another instance had occurred,--a most
mortifying one to me,--of that strange inability to see what one is
looking for (no doubt because one looks wrongly) of which the Tynemouth
sea-gazing was a strong
illustration.+ When the
great comet of 1811 was attracting all eyes, my star-gazing was just
as ineffectual. Night after night, the whole family of us went up to the
long windows at the top of my father's warehouse; and the
exclamations on all hands about the comet perfectly exasperated
me,--because I could not see it! "Why,
___________________* Letters on the Laws of
Man's Nature and Development, p. 161.
___________________+ Ibid.
Page 46
there it is!" "It is as big as a saucer." "It is as big as a cheese-plate." "Nonsense; you might as well pretend not to see the moon." Such were the mortifying comments on my grudging admission that I could not see the comet. And I never did see it. Such is the fact; and philosophers may make of it what they may,--remembering that I was then nine years old, and with remarkably good eyes.
We were horribly nervous, the first day we went to school. It was a very
large vaulted room, whitewashed, and with a platform for the master and his
desk; and below, rows of desks and benches, of wood painted red, and carved
all over with idle boys' devices. Some good many boys remained for a
time; but the girls had the front row of desks, and could see nothing of
the boys but by looking behind them. The thorough way in which the boys did
their lessons, however, spread its influence over us, and we worked as
heartily as if we had worked together. I
remember being somewhat oppressed by the length of the first morning,--from nine till twelve,--and dreading a similar strain in the afternoon, and twice every day: but in a very few days, I got into all the pleasure of it, and a new state of happiness had fairly set in. I have never since felt more deeply and thoroughly the sense of progression than I now began to do. As far as I remember, we never failed in our lessons, more or less. Our making even a mistake was very rare: and yet we got on fast. This shows how good the teaching must have been. We learned Latin from the old Eton grammar, which I therefore, and against all reason, cling to,--remembering when we recited all that Latin, prose and verse, which occupied us four hours. Two other girls, besides Rachel and myself, formed the class; and we certainly attained a capability of enjoying some of the classics, even before the two years were over. Cicero, Virgil, and a little of Horace were our main reading then: and afterwards I took great delight in Tacitus. I believe it was a genuine understanding and pleasure, because I got into the habit of thinking in Latin, and had something of the same pleasure in sending myself to sleep with Latin as with English poetry. Moreover, we stood the test of verse-making, in which I do not remember that we ever got any disgrace, while we certainly obtained, now and then, considerable praise. When Mr. Perry was gone, and we were put under Mr. Banfather, one of the masters at the Grammar-school, for Latin, Mr. B. one day took a little book out of his pocket, and translated from it a passage which he desired us to turn into Latin verse. My version was precisely the same as the original, except one word (annosa for antiqua) and the passage was from the Eneid. Tests like these seem to show that we really were well taught, and that our attainment was sound, as far as it went. Quite as much care was bestowed on our French, the grammar of which we learned thoroughly, while the pronunciation was scarcely so barbarous as in most schools during the war, as there was a French lady engaged for the greater part of the time. Mr. Perry prided himself, I believe, on his process of composition being exceedingly methodical; and he enjoyed above every thing initiating us into
the mystery. The method and mystery were more appropriate in our lessons in school than in his sermons in chapel;--at least, the sermons were fearfully dull; whereas the lessons were highly interesting and profitable. The only interest we could feel in his preaching was when he first brought the familiar fore-finger into play, and then built up his subject on the scaffolding which we knew so well. There was the Proposition, to begin with: then the Reason, and the Rule; then the Example, ancient and modern; then the Confirmation; and finally, the Conclusion. This may be a curious method, (not altogether apostolic) of preaching the gospel; but it was a capital way of introducing some order into the chaos of girls' thoughts. One piece of our experience which I remember is highly illustrative of this. In a fit of poetic furor one day we asked leave for once to choose our own subject for a theme,--the whole class having agreed before-hand what the subject should be. Of course, leave was granted; and we blurted out that we wanted to write "on Music." Mr. Perry pointed out that this was not definite enough to be called a subject. It might be on the Uses of Psalmody, or on the effect of melody in certain situations, or of martial music, or of patriotic songs, &c. &c.: but he feared there would be some vagueness if so large a subject were taken, without circumscription. However, we were bent on our own way, and he wisely let us have it. The result may easily be foreseen. We were all floating away on our own clouds, and what a space we drifted over may be imagined. We came up to Mr. P.'s desk all elate with the consciousness of our sensibility and eloquence; and we left it prodigiously crest-fallen. As one theme after another was read, no two agreeing even so far as the Proposition, our folly became more and more apparent; and the master's few, mild, respectful words at the end were not necessary to impress the lesson we had gained. Up went the fore-finger, with "You perceive, ladies" ......... and we saw it all; and thenceforth we were thankful to be guided, or dictated to, in the choice of our topics. Composition was my favourite exercise; and I got credit by my themes, I believe. Mr. Perry told me so, in 1834, when I had just completed the publication of my Political Economy
Tales, and when I had the pleasure of making my acknowledgments to him as my master in composition, and probably the cause of my mind being turned so decidedly in that direction. That was a gratifying meeting, after my old master and I had lost sight of one another for so many years. It was our last. If I remember right, we met on the eve of my sailing for America; and he was dead before my return.
Next to Composition, I think arithmetic was my favourite study. My
pleasure in the working of numbers is something inexplicable to
me,--as much as any pleasure of sensation. I used to spend my play
hours in covering my slate with sums, washing them out, and covering the
slate again. The fact is, however, that we had no lessons that were not
pleasant. That was the season of my entrance upon an intellectual life. In
an intellectual life I found then, as I have found since, refuge from moral
suffering, and an always unexhausted spring of moral strength and
enjoyment.
Even then, and in that happy school, I found the need of a refuge from
trouble. Even there, under the care of our just and kind master, I found my
passion for justice liable to disappointment as elsewhere. Some of our
school-fellows brought a trumpery charge, out of school, against
Rachel and me; and our dismay was great at finding that Mrs. Perry, and
therefore, no doubt, Mr. Perry believed us capable of a dirty trick. We
could not establish our innocence; and we had to bear the knowledge that we
were considered guilty of the offence in the first place, and of telling a
lie to conceal it in the next. How vehemently I used to determine that I
would never, in all my life, believe people to be guilty of any offence,
where disproof was impossible, and they asserted their
innocence.--Another incident made a great impression on me.--It
happened before the boys took their final departure; and it helped to make
me very glad when we girls (to the number of sixteen) were left to
ourselves.
Mr. Perry was one day called out, to a visitor who was sure to detain
him for some time. On such occasions, the school was left in charge of the
usher, whose desk was at the farther end of the great room. On this
particular day, the boys would not let
the girls learn their lessons. Somehow, they got the most absurd masks within the sphere of our vision; and they said things that we could not help laughing at, and made soft bow-wows, cooings, bleatings, &c., like a juvenile House of Commons, but so as not to be heard by the distant usher. While we girls laughed, we were really angry, because we wanted to learn our lessons. It was proposed by somebody, and carried unanimously, that complaint should be made to the usher. I believe I was the youngest; and I know I was asked by the rest to convey the complaint. Quite innocently I did what I was asked. The consequence,--truly appalling to me,--was that coming up the school-room again was like running the gauntlet. O! that hiss! "S-s-s--tell-tale--tell-tale!&r dquo; greeted me all the way up: but there was worse at the end. The girls who had sent me said I was served quite right, and they would have nothing to do with a tell-tale. Even Rachel went against me. And was I really that horrible thing called a tell-tale? I never meant it; yet not the less was it even so! When Mr. Perry came back, the usher's voice was heard from the lower regions--"Sir!" and then came the whole story, with the names of all the boys in the first class. Mr. Perry was generally the mildest of men; but when he went into a rage, he did the thing thoroughly. He became as white as his powdered hair, and the ominous fore-finger shook: and never more than on this occasion. J.D., as being usually "correct," was sentenced to learn only thirty lines of Greek, after school. (He died not long after, much beloved.) W.D., his brother, less "correct" in character, had fifty. Several more had from thirty to fifty; and R.S. (now, I believe, the leading innkeeper in old Norwich)--"R.S., always foremost in mischief, must now meet the consequences. R.S. shall learn SEVENTY lines of Greek before he goes home." How glad should I have been to learn any thing within the compass of human knowledge to buy off those boys! They probably thought I enjoyed seeing them punished. But I was almost as horror-struck at their fate as at finding that one could be a delinquent, all in a moment, with the most harmless intentions.
An incident which occurred before Mr. Perry's departure from
Norwich startled me at the time, and perhaps startles me even more now, as showing how ineffectual the conscience becomes when the moral nature of a child is too much depressed.--All was going on perfectly well at school, as far as we knew, when Mr. Perry one day called, and requested a private interview with my father or mother. My mother and he were talking so long in the drawing-room, that dinner was delayed above half-an-hour, during which time I was growing sick with apprehension. I had no doubt whatever that we had done something wrong, and that Mr. Perry had come to complain of us. This was always my way,--so accustomed was I to censure, and to stiffen myself under it, right or wrong; so that all clear sense of right and wrong was lost. I believe that, at bottom, I always concluded myself wrong. In this case it made no difference that I had no conception what it was all about. When my mother appeared, she was very grave: the mood spread, and the dinner was silent and gloomy,--father, brothers and all. My mother had in her heart a little of the old-fashioned liking for scenes: and now we had one,--memorable enough to me! "My dear," said she to my father, when the dessert was on the table, and the servant was gone, "Mr. Perry has been here." "So I find, my love." "He had some very important things to say. He had something to say about--Rachel--and--Harriet." I had been picking at the fringe of my doily; and now my heart sank, and I felt quite faint. "Ah! here it comes," thought I, expecting to hear of some grand delinquency. My mother went on, very solemnly. "Mr. Perry says that he has never had a fault to find with Rachel and Harriet; and that if he had a school full of such girls, he should be the happiest man alive." The revulsion was tremendous. I cried desperately, I remember, amidst the rush of congratulations. But what a moral state it was, when my conscience was of no more use to me than this! The story carries its own moral.
What Mr. Perry came to say was, however, dismal enough. He was no man of
the world; and his wife was no manager: and they were in debt and
difficulty. Their friends paid their debts (my father taking a generous
sham) and they removed to
Ipswich. It was the bitterest of my young griefs, I believe,--their departure. Our two years' schooling seemed like a lifetime to look back upon: and to this day it fills a disproportionate space in the retrospect of my existence,--so inestimable was its importance. When we had to bid our good master farewell, I was deputed to utter the thanks and good wishes of the pupils: but I could not get on for tears, and he accepted our grief as his best tribute. He went round, and shook hands with us all, with gracious and solemn words, and sent us home passionately mourning.--Though this seemed like the close of one period of my life, it was in fact the opening of its chief phase,--of that intellectual existence which my life has continued to be, more than any thing else, through its whole course.
After his departure, and before I was sent to Bristol, our mode of life
was this. We had lessons in Latin and French, and I in music, from masters;
and we read aloud in family a good deal of history, biography, and critical
literature. The immense quantity of needlework and music-copying
that I did remains a marvel to me; and so does the extraordinary bodily
indolence. The difficulty I had in getting up in the morning, the
detestation of the daily walk, and of all visiting, and of every break in
the monotony that I have always loved, seem scarcely credible to me
now,--active as my habits have since become. My health was bad,
however, and my mind ill at ease. It was a depressed and wrangling life;
and I have no doubt I was as disagreeable as possible. The great calamity
of my deafness was now opening upon me; and that would have been quite
enough for youthful fortitude, without the constant indigestion, languor
and muscular weakness which made life a burden to me. My religion was a
partial comfort to me; and books and music were a great resource: but
they left a large margin over for wretchedness. My beloved hour of the day
was when the cloth was drawn, and I stole away from the dessert, and read
Shakspere by firelight in winter in the drawing-room. My mother was
kind enough to allow this breach of good family manners; and again at a
subsequent time when I took to newspaper reading very
heartily. I have often thanked her for this forbearance since. I was conscious of my bad manners in keeping the newspaper on my chair all dinner-time, and stealing away with it as soon as grace was said; and of sticking to my Shakspere, happen what might, till the tea was poured out: but I could not forego those indulgences, and I went on to enjoy them uneasily. Our newspaper was the Globe, in its best days, when, without ever mentioning Political Economy, it taught it, and viewed public affairs in its light. This was not quite my first attraction to political economy (which I did not know by name till five or six years later;) for I remember when at Mr. Perry's fastening upon the part of our geography book (I forget what it was) which treated of the National Debt, and the various departments of the Funds. This was fixed in my memory by the unintelligible raillery of my brothers and other companions, who would ask me with mock deference to inform them of the state of the Debt, or would set me, as a forfeit at Christmas Games, to make every person present understand the operation of the Sinking Fund. I now recal Mr. Malthus's amusement, twenty years later, when I told him I was sick of his name before I was fifteen. His work was talked about then, as it has been ever since, very eloquently and forcibly, by persons who never saw so much as the outside of the book. It seems to me that I heard and read an enormous deal against him and his supposed doctrines; whereas when, at a later time, I came to inquire, I could never find any body who had read his book. In a poor little struggling Unitarian periodical, the Monthly Repository, in which I made my first appearance in print, a youth, named Thomas Noon Talfourd, was about this time making his first attempts at authorship. Among his earliest papers, I believe, was one "On the System of Malthus," which had nothing in fact to do with the real Malthus and his system, but was a sentimental vindication of long engagements. It was prodigiously admired by very young people: not by me, for it was rather too luscious for my taste,--but by some of my family, who read it, and lived on it for awhile: but it served to mislead me about Malthus, and helped to sicken me of his name, as I told him
long afterwards. In spite of this, however, I was all the while becoming a political economist without knowing it, and, at the same time, a sort of walking Concordance of Milton and Shakspere.
The first distinct recognition of my being deaf, more or less, was when
I was at Mr. Perry's,--when I was about twelve years old. It was
a very slight, scarcely-perceptible hardness of hearing at that
time; and the recognition was merely this;--that in that great vaulted
school-room before-mentioned, where there was a large space
between the class and the master's desk or the fire, I was excused
from taking places in class, and desired to sit always at the top, because
it was somewhat nearer the master, whom I could not always hear further
off. When Mr. Perry changed his abode, and we were in a smaller
school-room, I again took places with the rest. I remember no other
difficulty about hearing at that time. I certainly heard perfectly well at
chapel, and all public speaking (I remember Wilberforce in our vast St.
Andrew's Hall) and general conversation everywhere: but before
I was sixteen, it had become very noticeable, very inconvenient, and
excessively painful to myself. I did once think of writing down the whole
dreary story of the loss of a main sense, like hearing; and I would not now
shrink from inflicting the pain of it on others, and on myself, if any
adequate benefit could be obtained by it. But, really, I do not see that
there could. It is true,--the sufferers rarely receive the comfort of
adequate, or even intelligent sympathy: but there is no saying that
an elaborate account of the woe would create the sympathy, for practical
purposes. Perhaps what I have said in the "Letter to the Deaf,"
which I published in 1834, will serve as well as anything I could say here
to those who are able to sympathise at all; and I will therefore offer no
elaborate description of the daily and hourly trials which attend the
gradual exclusion from the world of sound.
Some suggestions and conclusions, however, it is right to offer.--I
have never seen a deaf child's education welt managed at home, or at
an ordinary school. It does not seem to be ever considered by parents and
teachers how much more is learned by
oral intercourse than in any other way; and, for want of this consideration, they find too late, and to their consternation, that the deaf pupil turns out deficient in sense, in manners, and in the knowledge of things so ordinary that they seem to be matters of instinct rather than of information. Too often, also, the deaf are sly and tricky, selfish and egotistical; and the dislike which attends them is the sin of the parent's ignorance visited upon the children. These worst cases are of those who are deaf from the outset, or from a very early age; and in as far as I was exempt from them, it was chiefly because my education was considerably advanced before my hearing began to go. In such a case as mine, the usual evil (far less serious) in that the sufferer is inquisitive,--will know everything that is said, and becomes a bore to all the world. From this I was saved (or it helped to save me) by a kind word from my eldest brother. (From how much would a few more such words have saved me?) He had dined in company with an elderly single lady,--a sort of provincial blue-stocking in her time,--who was growing deaf, rapidly, and so sorely against her will that she tried to ignore the fact to the last possible moment. At that dinner-party, this lady sat next her old acquaintance, William Taylor of Norwich, who never knew very well how to deal with ladies (except, to his honour be it spoken, his blind mother;) and Miss N-- teased him to tell her all that every body said till he grew quite testy and rude. My brother told me, with tenderness in his voice, that he thought of me while blushing, as every body present did, for Miss N--; and that he hoped that if ever I should grow as deaf as she, I should never be seen making myself so irksome and absurd. This helped me to a resolution which I made and never broke,--never to ask what was said. Amidst remonstrance, kind and testy, and every sort of provocation, I have adhered to this resolution,--confident in its soundness. I think now, as I have thought always, that it is impossible for the deaf to divine what is worth asking for and what is not; and that one's friends may always be trusted, if left unmolested, to tell one whatever is essential, or really worth hearing.
One important truth about the case of persons deficient in a sense I
have never seen noticed; and I much doubt whether ever occurs to any but
the sufferers under that deficiency. We sufferers meet with abundance of
compassion for our privations: but the privation is, (judging by my
own experience) a very inferior evil to the fatigue imposed by the
obstruction. In my case, to be sure, the deficiency of three senses out of
five renders the instance a very strong one: but the merely blind or
deaf must feel something of the laboriousness of life which I have found it
most difficult to deal with. People in general have only to sit still in
the midst of Nature, to be amused and diverted (in the strict
sense of the word,--distracted, in the French sense) so
as to find "change of work as good as rest:" but I have
had, for the main part of my life, to go in search of impressions and
influences, as the alternative from abstract or unrelieved thought, in an
intellectual view, and from brooding, in a moral view. The fatigue
belonging to either alternative may easily be conceived, when once
suggested: and considerate persons will at once see what large
allowance must in fairness be made for faults of temper, irritability or
weakness of nerves, narrowness of mind, and imperfection of sympathy, in
sufferers so worn with toil of body and mind as I, for one, have been. I
have sustained, from this cause, fatigue which might spread over double my
length of life; and in this I have met with no sympathy till I asked for it
by an explanation of the ease. From this labour there is, it must be
remembered, no holiday, except in sleep. Life is a long, hard, unrelieved
working-day to us, who hear, or see, only by express effort, or have
to make other senses serve the turn of that which is lost. When three out
of five are deficient, the difficulty of cheerful living is great, and the
terms of life are truly hard.--If I have made myself understood about
this, I hope the explanation may secure sympathy for many who cannot be
relieved from their burden, but may be cheered under it.
Another suggestion that I would make is that those who hear should not
insist on managing the case of the deaf for them. As much sympathy as you
please; but no overbearing interference in a case which you cannot possibly
judge of. The fact is,--
the family of a person who has a growing infirmity are reluctant to face the truth; and they are apt to inflict frightful pain on the sufferer to relieve their own weakness and uneasiness. I believe my family would have made almost any sacrifice to save me from my misfortune; but not the less did they aggravate it terribly by their way of treating it. First, and for long, they insisted that it was all my own fault,--that I was so absent,---that I never cared to attend to any thing that was said,--that I ought to listen this way, or that, or the other; and even (while my heart was breaking) they told me that "none are so deaf as those that won't hear." When it became too bad for this, they blamed me for not doing what I was sorely tempted to do,--inquiring of them about every thing that was said, and not managing in their way, which would have made all right. This was hard discipline; but it was most useful to me in the end. It showed me that I must take my case into my own hands; and with me, dependent as I was upon the opinion of others, this was redemption from probable destruction. Instead of drifting helplessly as hitherto, I gathered myself up for a gallant breasting of my destiny; and in time I reached the rocks where I could take a firm stand. I felt that here was an enterprise; and the spirit of enterprise was roused in me; animating me to sure success, with many sinkings and much lapse by the way. While about it, I took my temper in hand,--in this way. I was young enough for vows,--was, indeed, at the very age of vows;--and I made a vow of patience about this infirmity;--that I would smile in every moment of anguish from it; and that I would never lose temper at any consequences from it,--from losing public worship (then the greatest conceivable privation) to the spoiling of my cap-borders by the use of the trumpet I foresaw I must arrive at. With such a temper as mine was then, an infliction so worrying, so unintermitting, so mortifying, so isolating as loss of hearing must "kill or cure." In time, it acted with me as a cure, (in comparison with what my temper was in my youth:) but it took a long long time to effect the cure, and it was so far from being evident, or even at all perceptible when I was fifteen, that my parents were determined by
medical advice to send me from home for a considerable time, in hope of improving my health, nerves and temper by a complete and prolonged change of scene and objects.
Before entering upon that new chapter of my life, however, I must say
another word about this matter of treatment of personal infirmity. We had a
distant relation, in her young womanhood when I was a child, who, living in
the country, came into Norwich sometimes on market days, and occasionally
called at our house. She had become deaf in infancy,--very very deaf;
and her misfortune had been mismanaged. Truth to speak, she was far from
agreeable: but it was less for that than on account of the trouble of
her deafness that she was spoken of as I used to hear, long before I ever
dreamed of being deaf myself. When it was announced by any child at the
window that -- -- was passing, there was an exclamation of
annoyance; and if she came up the steps, it grew into lamentation.
"What shall we do?" "We shall be as hoarse
as ravens all day." "We shall be completely worn out,"
and so forth. Sometimes she was wished well at Jericho. When I was growing
deaf, all this came back upon me; and one of my self-questionings
was--"Shall I put people to flight as -- -- does?
Shall I be dreaded and disliked in that way all my
life?" The lot did indeed seem at times too hard to be borne. Yet
here am I now, on the borders of the grave, at the end of a busy life,
confident that this same deafness is about the best thing that ever
happened to me;--the best, in a selfish view, as the grandest impulse
to self-mastery; and the best in a higher view, as my most peculiar
opportunity of helping others, who suffer the same misfortune without equal
stimulus to surmount the false shame, and other unspeakable miseries which
attend it.
By this time, the battle of Waterloo had been fought. I suppose most
children were politicians dining the war. I was a great one. I remember Mr.
Perry's extreme amusement at my breaking through my shyness, one day,
and stopping him as he was leaving the school-room, to ask, with
much agitation, whether he believed in the claims of one of the many Louis
XVII.'s who have turned up in my time. It must be
consid-
ered that my mother remembered the first French Revolution. Her sympathies were with the royal family; and the poor little Dauphin was an object of romantic interest to all English children who knew anything of the story at all. The pretence that he was found set thousands of imaginations on fire, whenever it was raised; and among many other wonderful effects, it emboldened me to speak to Mr. Perry about other things than lessons. Since the present war (of 1854) broke out, it has amused me to find myself so like my old self of forty years before, in regard to telling the servants the news. In the old days, I used to fly into the kitchen, and tell my father's servants how sure "Boney" was to be caught,--how impossible it was that he should escape,--how his army was being driven back through the Pyrenees,--or how he had driven back the allies here or there. Then, I wanted sympathy, and liked the importance and the sensation of carrying news. Now, the way has been to summon my own servants after the evening post, and bid them get the map, or come with me to the globe, and explain to them the state of the war, and give them the latest news,--probably with some of the old associations lingering in my mind; but certainly with the dominant desire to give these intelligent girls an interest in the interests of freedom, and a clear knowledge of the position and duties of England in regard to the war. I remember my father's bringing in the news of some of the Peninsular victories, and what his face was like when he told my mother of the increase of the Income-tax to ten per cent, and again, of the removal of the Income-tax. I remember the proclamation of peace in 1814, and our all going to see the illuminations; those abominable transparencies, among the rest, which represented Bonaparte (always in green coat, white breeches and boots) as carried to hell by devils, pitch-forked in the fiery lake by the same attendant, or haunted by the Duc d'Enghien. I well remember the awful moment when Mr. Drummond (of the chemical lectures) looked in at the back door (on his way from the counting-house) and telling my mother that "Boney" had escaped from Elba, and was actually in France. This impressed me more than the subsequent hot Midsummer morning when
somebody (I forget whether father or brother) burst in with the news of the Waterloo slaughter. It was the slaughter that was uppermost with us, I believe, though we never had a relative, nor, as far as I know, even an acquaintance, in either army or navy.
I was more impressed still with the disappointment about the effects of
the peace, at the end of the first year of it. The country was overrun with
disbanded soldiers, and robbery and murder were frightfully frequent and
desperate. The Workhouse Boards were under a pressure of pauperism which
they could not have managed if the Guardians had been better informed than
they were in those days; and one of my political panics (of which I
underwent a constant succession) was that the country would become bankrupt
through its poor-law. Another panic was about revolution,--our
idea of revolution being, of course, of guillotines in the streets, and all
that sort of thing. Those were Cobbett's grand days, and the days of
Castlereagh and Sidmouth spy-systems and conspiracies. Our pastor
was a great radical; and he used to show us the caricatures of the day
(Hone's, I think) in which Castlereagh was always flogging Irishmen,
and Canning spouting froth, and the Regent insulting his wife, and the
hungry, haggard multitude praying for vengeance on the Court and the
Ministers; and every Sunday night, after supper, when he and two or three
other bachelor friends were with us, the talk was of the absolute certainty
of a dire revolution. When, on my return from Bristol in 1819, I then
turned to say what my conscience bade me say, and what I had been led to
see by a dear aunt, that it was wrong to catch up and believe and spread
reports injurious to the royal family, who could not reply to slander like
other people, I was met by a shout of derision first, and then by a serious
reprimand for my immorality in making more allowance for royal sinners than
for others. Between my dread of this worldliness, and my sense that they
had a worse chance than other people, and my further feeling that respect
should be shown them on account of their function first, and their
defenseless position afterwards, I was in what the Americans would call
"a fix." The conscientious
uncertainty I was in was a real difficulty and trouble to me; and this probably helped to fix my attention upon the principles of politics and the characteristics of parties, with an earnestness not very common at that age. Still,--how astonished should I have been if any one had then foretold to me that, of all the people in England, I should be the one to write the "History of the Peace!"
One important consequence of the peace was the interest with which
foreigners were suddenly invested, in the homes of the middle classes,
where the rising generation had seen no foreigners except old
emigrés,--powdered old Frenchmen,
and ladies with outlandish bonnets and high-heeled shoes. About this
time there came to Norwich a foreigner who excited an unaccountable
interest in our house,--considering what exceedingly proper people we
were, and how sharp a look-out we kept on the morals of our
neighbors. It was poor Polidori, well known afterwards as Lord
Byron's physician, as the author of "the Vampire," and as
having committed suicide under gambling difficulties. When we knew him, he
was a handsome, harum-scarum young man,--taken up by William
Taylor as William Taylor did take up harum-scarum young
men,--and so introduced into the best society the place afforded,
while his being a Catholic, or passing for such, insured him a welcome in
some of the most aristocratic of the county houses. He was a foolish
rattle,--with no sense, scarcely any knowledge, and no principle; but
we took for granted in him much that he had not, and admired whatever he
had. For his part, he was an avowed admirer of our eldest sister (who
however escaped fancy-free;) and he was forever at our house. We
younger ones romanced amazingly about him,--drew his remarkable
profile on the backs of all our letters, dreamed of him, listened to all
his marvelous stories, and, when he got a concussion of the brain by
driving his gig against a tree in Lord Stafford's park, were
inconsolable. If he had (happily) died then, he would have remained a hero
in our imaginations. The few following years (which were very possibly all
the wilder for that concussion of the brain) disabused every body of all
expectation of good from him; but yet when he died,
frantic under gaming debts, the shock was great, and the impression, on my mind at least, deep and lasting. My eldest sister, then in a happy home of her own, was shocked and concerned; but we younger ones felt it far more. I was then in the height of my religious fanaticism; and I remember putting away all doubts about the theological propriety of what I was doing, for the sake of the relief of praying for his soul. Many times a day, and with my whole heart, did I pray for his soul.
I was too shy ever to ask to be taught any thing,--except, indeed,
of good-natured strangers. I have mentioned that we were well
practiced in some matters of domestic management. We could sew, iron, make
sweets, gingerbread and pastry, and keep order generally throughout the
house. But I did not know,--what nobody can know without being
taught,--how to purchase stores, or to set out a table, or to deal
with the butcher and fish-monger. It is inconceivable what a trouble
this was to me for many years. I was always in terror at that great
mountain of duty before me, and wondering what was to become of me if my
mother left home, or if I should marry. Never once did it occur to me to go
to my mother, and ask to be taught: and it was not pride but fear
which so incapacitated me. I liked that sort of occupation, and had great
pleasure in doing what I could do in that way; insomuch that I have
sometimes felt myself what General F. called his wife, -- "a
good housemaid spoilt." My "Guides
to Service," ("The Maid-of-all-work," "Housemaid," "Lady's Maid," and "Dress-maker,") written twenty years afterwards, may show something of this. Meantime, never was poor creature more dismally awkward than I was when domestic eyes were upon me: and this made me a most vexatious member of the family. I remember once upsetting a basin of moist sugar into a giblet pie. (I remember nothing else quite so bad.) I never could find any thing I was sent for, though I could lay my hands in the dark on any thing I myself wanted. On one occasion, when a workwoman was making mourning in the midst of us, I was desired to take the keys, and fetch a set of cravats for marking, out of a certain drawer. My heart sank at the order, and already the inevitable sentence rung in my ears,--that I was more trouble than I was worth; which I sincerely believed. The drawer was large, and crammed. I could not see one thing from another; and in no way could I see any cravats. Slowly and fearfully I came back to say so. Of course, I was sent again, and desired not to come back without them. That time, and again the next, I took every thing out of the drawer; and still found no cravats. My eldest sister tried next; and great was my consolation when she returned crest-fallen,--having found no cravats. My mother snatched the keys, under a strong sense of the hardship of having to do every thing herself, when Rachel suggested another place where they might have been put. Then they were found; and my heart was swelling with vindictive pleasure when my mother, by a few noble words, turned the tide of feeling completely. In the presence of the workwoman, she laid her hand on my arm, kissed me, and said, "And now, my dear, I have to beg your pardon." I answered only by tears; but the words supported me for long after.
I look back upon another scene with horror at my own audacity, and
wonder that my family could endure me at all. At Mr. Perry's, one of
our school-fellows was a clever, mischievous girl,--so clever,
and so much older than myself as to have great influence over me when she
chose to try her power, though I disapproved her ways very heartily. She
one day asked me, in a corner, in a mysterious sort of way, whether I did
not perceive
that Rachel was the favourite at home, and treated with manifest partiality. Every body else, she said, observed it. This had never distinctly occurred to me. Rachel was handy and useful, and not paralysed by fear, as I was; and, very naturally, our busy mother resorted to her for help, and put trust in her about matters of business, not noticing the growth of an equally natural habit in Rachel of quizzing or snubbing me, as the elder ones did. From the day of this mischievous speech of my schoo-fellow, I was on the watch, and with the usual result to the jealous. Months,--perhaps a year or two--passed on while I was brooding over this, without a word to any one; and then came the explosion, one winter evening after tea, when my eldest sister was absent, and my mother, Rachel and I were sitting at work. Rachel criticized something that I said, in which I happened to be right. After once defending myself, I sat silent. My mother remarked on my "obstinacy," saying that I was "not a bit convinced." I replied that nothing convincing had been said. My mother declared that she agreed with Rachel, and that I ought to yield. Then I passed the verge, and got wrong. A sudden force of daring entering my mind, I said, in the most provoking way possible, that this was nothing new, as she always did agree with Rachel against me. My mother put down her work, and asked me what I meant by that. I looked her full in the face, and said that what I meant was that every thing that Rachel said and did was right, and every thing that I said and did was wrong. Rachel burst into an insulting laugh, and was sharply bidden to "be quiet." I saw by this that I had gained some ground; and this was made clearer by my mother sternly desiring me to practise my music. I saw that she wanted to gain time. The question now was how I should get through. My hands were clammy and tremulous: my fingers stuck to each other; my eyes were dim, and there was a roaring in my ears. I could easily have fainted; and it might have done no harm if I had. But I made a tremendous effort to appear calm. I opened the piano, lighted a candle with a steady hand, began, and derived strength from the first chords. I believe I never played better in my life. Then the question was--how was I ever to
leave off? On I went for what seemed to me an immense time, till my mother sternly called to me to leave off and go to bed. With my candle in my hand, I said "Good-night." My mother laid down her work, and said, "Harriet, I am more displeased with you to-night than ever I have been in your life." Thought I, "I don't care: I have got it out, and it is all true." "Go and say your prayers," my mother continued; "and ask God to forgive you for your conduct to-night; for I don't know that I can. Go to your prayers." Thought I,--"No, I shan't." And I did not: and that was the only night from my infancy to mature womanhood that I did not pray. I detected misgiving in my mother's forced manner; and I triumphed. If the right was on my side (as I entirely believed) the power was on hers; and what the next morning was to be I could not conceive. I slept little, and went down sick with dread. Not a word was said, however, then or ever, of the scene of the preceding night; but henceforth, a most scrupulous impartiality between Rachel and me was shown. If the occasion had been better used still,--if my mother had but bethought herself of saying to me, "My child, I never dreamed that these terrible thoughts were in your mind. I am your mother. Why do you not tell me every thing that makes you unhappy?" I believe this would have wrought in a moment that cure which it took years to effect, amidst reserve and silence.
It has been a difficulty with me all my life (and its being a difficulty
shows some deep-seated fault in me) how to reconcile sincerity with
peace and good manners in such matters as other people's little
mistakes of fact. As an example of what I mean, a school-fellow
spelled Shakspere as I spell it here. Mr. Perry but in an a,
observing that the name was never spelt in print without an a.
I ventured to doubt this; but he repeated his assertion. At afternoon
school, I showed him a volume of the edition we had at home, which proved
him wrong. He received the correction with so indifferent a grace that I
was puzzled as to whether I had done right or wrong,--whether
sincerity required me to set my master right before the face of his
scholars. Of course, if I had been older, I should have done it more
privately. But this is a specimen of the difficulties of that class that I have struggled with almost ever since. The difficulty was immensely increased by the family habit of requiring an answer from me, and calling me obstinate if the reply was not an unconditional yielding. I have always wondered to see the ease and success with which very good people humour and manage the aged, the sick and the weak, and sometimes every body about them. I could never attempt this; for it always seemed to me such contemptuous treatment of those whom I was at the moment respecting more than ever, on account of their weakness. But I was always quite in the opposite extreme;--far too solemn, too rigid, and prone to exaggeration of differences and to obstinacy at the same time. It was actually not till I was near forty that I saw how the matter should really be,--saw it through a perfect example of an union of absolute sincerity with all possible cheerfulness, sweetness, modesty and deference for all, in proportion to their claims. I have never attained righteous good-manners, to this day; but I have understood what they are since the beauties of J.S.'s character and manners were revealed to me under circumstances of remarkable trial.
While organised, it seems to me, for sincerity, and being generally
truthful, except for the exaggeration which is apt to beset persons of
repressed faculties, I feel compelled to state here (what belongs to this
part of my life) that towards one person I was habitually untruthful, from
fear. To my mother I would in my childhood assert or deny any thing that
would bring me through most easily. I remember denying various harmless
things,--playing a game at battledore, for one; and often without any
apparent reason: and this was so exclusively to one person that,
though there was remonstrance and punishment, I believe I was never
regarded as a liar in the family. It seems now all very strange: but
it was a temporary and very brief phase. When I left home, all temptation
to untruth ceased, and there was henceforth nothing more than the habit of
exaggeration and strong expression to struggle with.
Before I went to Bristol, I was the prey of three
griefs,--prominent among many. I cannot help laughing while I write
them. They were my bad hand-writing, my deafness, and the state of my hair. Such a trio of miseries! I was the first of my family who failed in the matter of hand-writing; and why I did remains unexplained. I am sure I tried hard; but I wrote a vulgar, cramped, untidy scrawl till I was past twenty;--till authorship made me forget manner in matter, and gave freedom to my hand. After that, I did very well, being praised by compositors for legibleness first, and in course of time, for other qualities. But it was a severe mortification while it lasted; and many bitter tears I shed over the reflections that my awkward hand called forth. It was a terrible penance to me to write letters home from Bristol; and the day of the week when it was to be done was very like the Beckwith music-lesson days. If any one had told me then how many reams of paper I should cover in the course of my life, life would have seemed a sort of purgatory to me.--As to my deafness, I got no relief about that at Bristol. It was worse when I returned in weak health.--The third misery, which really plagued me seriously, was cured presently after I left home, I made my dear aunt Kentish the depositary of my confidence in all matters; and this, of course, among the rest. She induced me to consult a friend of hers, who had remarkably beautiful hair; and then it came out that I had been combing overmuch, and that there was nothing the matter with my hair, if I would be content with brushing it. So that grief was annihilated, and there was an end of one of those trifles which "make up the sum of human things."
And now the hour was at hand when I was to find, for the first time, a
human being whom I was not afraid of. That blessed being was my dear aunt
Kentish, who stands distinguished in my mind by that from all other persons
whom I have ever known.
I did not understand the facts about my leaving home till I had been
absent some months; and when I did, I was deeply and effectually moved by
my mother's consideration for my feelings. We had somehow been
brought up in a supreme contempt of boarding-schools: and I
was therefore truly amazed when my mother sounded me, in the spring of
1817, about going for a
year or two to a Miss Somebody's school at Yarmouth. She talked of the sea, of the pleasantness of change, and of how happy L.T--, an excessively silly girl of our acquaintance, was there: but I made such a joke of L. and her studies, and of the attainments of the young ladies, as we had heard of them, that my mother gave up the notion of a scheme which never could have answered. It would have been ruin to a temper like mine at that crisis to have sent me among silly and ignorant people, to have my "manners formed," after the most ordinary boarding school fashion. My mother did much better in sending me among people so superior to myself as to improve me morally and intellectually, though the experiment failed in regard to health. A brother of my mother's had been unfortunate in business at Bristol, and had not health to retrieve his affairs; and his able and accomplished wife, and clever young daughters opened a school. Of the daughters, one was within a few weeks of my own age; and we have been intimate friends from that time (the beginning of 1818) till this hour. Another was two years younger; another, two years older; while the eldest had reached womanhood. Of these clever cousins we had heard much, for many years, without having seen any of them. At the opening of the year 1818, a letter arrived from my aunt to my mother, saying that it was time the young people should be becoming acquainted; that her girls were all occupied in the school, for the routine of which Rachel was somewhat too old; but that if Harriet would go, and spend some time with them, and take the run of the school, she would be a welcome guest, &c. &c. This pleased me much, and I heard with joy that I was to go when my father took his next journey to Bristol,--early in February. My notion was of a stay of a few weeks; and I was rather taken aback when my mother spoke of my absence as likely to last a year or more. It never entered my head that I was going to a boarding-school; and when I discovered, long after, that the Bristol family understood that I was, I was not (as I once might have been) angry at having been tricked into it, but profoundly contrite for the temper which made such management necessary, and touched by the trouble
my mother took to spare my silly pride, and consider my troublesome feelings.
I was, on the whole, happy during the fifteen months I spent at Bristol,
though home-sickness spoiled the last half of the time. My home
affections seem to have been all the stronger for having been repressed and
baulked. Certainly, I passionately loved my family, each and all, from the
very hour that parted us; and I was physically ill with expectation when
their letters became due;--letters which I could hardly read when they
came, between my dread of something wrong, and the beating heart and
swimming eyes with which I received letters in those days. There were some
family anxieties during the latter part of the time; and there was one
grand event,--the engagement of my eldest sister, who had virtually
ceased to belong to us by the time I returned home.
I found my cousins even more wonderfully clever than I had expected; and
they must have been somewhat surprised at my striking inferiority in
knowledge, and in the power of acquiring it. I still think that I never met
with a family to compare with theirs for power of acquisition, or effective
use of knowledge. They would learn a new language at odd minutes; get
through a tough philosophical book by taking turns in the court for air;
write down an entire lecture or sermon, without missing a sentence; get
round the piano after a concert, and play and sing over every new piece
that had been performed. Ability like this was a novel spectacle to me; and
it gave me the pure pleasure of unmixed admiration; for I was certainly not
conscious of any ability whatever at that time. I had no great deal to do
in the school, being older than every girl there but one; and I believe I
got no particular credit in such classes as I did join. For one thing, my
deafness was now bad enough to be a disadvantage; but it was a worse
disqualification that my memory, always obedient to my own command, was
otherwise disobedient. I could remember whatever I had learned in my own
way, but was quite unable to answer in class, like far younger girls, about
any thing just communicated. My chief intellectual improvement during that
important period was derived from
private study. I read some analytical books, on logic and rhetoric, with singular satisfaction; and I lost nothing afterwards that I obtained in this way. I read a good deal of History too, and revelled in poetry,--a new world of which was opened to me by my cousins. The love of natural scenery was a good deal developed in me by the beauty around Bristol. One circumstance makes me think that I had become rather suddenly awakened to it not long before,--though my delight in the sea at Cromer dated some years earlier. Mr. Perry tried upon us the reading of L'Allegro and Il Penseroso; and it failed utterly. I did not feel any thing whatever, though I supposed I understood what I heard. Not long after he was gone, I read both pieces in the nursery, one day; and straightway went into a transport, as if I had discovered myself in possession of a new sense. Thus it was again now, when I was transferred from flat, bleak Norfolk to the fine scenery about Bristol. Even the humble beauty of our most frequent walk, by the Logwood Mills, was charming to me,--the clear running water, with its weedy channel, and the meadow walk on the brink: and about Leigh woods, Kingsweston, and the Downs, my rapture knew no bounds.
Far more important, however, was the growth of kindly affections in me
at this time, caused by the free and full tenderness of my dear aunt
Kentish, and of all my other relations then surrounding me. My heart warmed
and opened, and my habitual fear began to melt away. I have since been told
that, on the day of my arrival, when some of the school-girls asked
my cousin M. what I was like, (as she came out of the parlour where I was)
she said that I looked as if I was cross; but that she knew I was not; and
that I looked unhappy. When I left Bristol, I was as pale as a ghost, and
as thin as possible; and still very frowning and repulsive-looking;
but yet with a comparatively open countenance. The counteracting influence
to dear aunt Kentish's was one which visited me very strongly at the
same time,--that of a timid superstition. She was herself, then and
always, very religious; but she had a remarkable faculty of making her
religion suggest and sanction whatever she
liked: and, as she liked whatever was pure, amiable, unselfish and unspoiling, this tendency did her no harm. Matters were otherwise with me. My religion too took the character of my mind; and it was harsh, severe and mournful accordingly. There was a great furor among the Bristol Unitarians at that time about Dr. Carpenter, who had recently become their pastor. He was a very devoted Minister, and a very earnest pietist: superficial in his knowledge, scanty in ability, narrow in his conceptions, and thoroughly priestly in his temper. He was exactly the dissenting minister to be worshipped by his people, (and especially by the young) and to be spoiled by that worship. He was worshipped by the young, and by none more than by me; and his power was unbounded while his pupils continued young: but, as his instructions and his scholars were not bound together by any bond of essential Christian doctrine, every thing fell to pieces as soon as the merely personal influence was withdrawn. A more extraordinary diversity of religious opinion than existed among his pupils when they became men and women could not be seen. They might be found at the extremes of catholicism and atheism, and every where between. As for me, his devout and devoted Catechumen, he made me desperately superstitious,--living wholly in and for religion, and fiercely fanatical about it. I returned home raving about my pastor and teacher, remembering every word he had ever spoken to me,--with his instructions burnt in, as it were, upon my heart and conscience, and with an abominable spiritual rigidity and a truly respectable force of conscience casually mingled together, so as to procure for me the no less curiously mingled ridicule and respect of my family. My little sister, then learning to sew on her stool at my mother's knee, has since told me what she perceived, with the penetrating eyes and heart of childhood. Whenever I left the room, my mother and elder sisters used to begin to quiz my fanaticism,--which was indeed quizzical enough; but the little one saw a sort of respect for me underlying the mockery, which gave her her first clear sense of moral obligation, and the nature of obedience to it.
The results of the Bristol experiment were thus good on the
whole. My health was rather worse than better, through wear and tear of nerves,--home-sickness, religious emotions, overmuch study (so my aunt said, against my conviction) and medical mismanagement. I had learned a good deal, and had got into a good way of learning more. My domestic affections were regenerated; and I had become sincerely and heartily religious, with some improvement in temper in consequence, and not a little in courage, hope and conscientiousness. The fanaticism was a stage which I should probably have had to pass through at any rate,--and by the same phase of pastor-worship,--whoever the pastor might have been.
My eldest sister's marriage in 1820 made young women at once of
Rachel and myself. It was on all accounts a happy event, though we dreaded
excessively the loss of her from home, which she eminently graced. But
never did woman grow in grace more remarkably than she did by her marriage.
When she had found her own heart, it proved a truly noble one; and the
generosity, sweetness, and wisdom of her whole conduct towards her own
children showed that her mistakes in her treatment of us were merely the
crudities of inexperience. I may say, once for all, that her home at
Newcastle was ever open to us, and that all possible kindness from her
hospitable husband and herself was always at our command, without hindrance
or difficulty, till my recovery from a hopeless illness, in 1844, by
Mesmerism, proved too much for the natural prejudice of a surgeon and a
surgeon's wife, and caused, by the help of the ill-offices of
another relation, a family breach, as absurd as it was lamentable. My
sister was then under the early symptoms of her last illness; and matters
might have ended more happily if
she had been in her usual state of health and nerve, as they certainly would if advantage had not been taken of her natural irritation against Mesmerism to gratify in another jealousies to which she was herself far superior. My own certainty of this, and my grateful remembrance of the long course of years during which I enjoyed her friendship and generosity, and her cordial sympathy in my aims and successes, incline me to pass over her final alienation, and dwell upon the affectionate intercourse we enjoyed, at frequent intervals, for twenty years from her marriage day.
Our revered and beloved eldest brother had, by this time, settled in
Norwich as a surgeon, in partnership with our uncle, Mr. P.M. Martineau,
the most eminent provincial surgeon of his day,--in some departments,
if not altogether. My brother's health was delicate, and we were to
lose him by death in five years. One of the sweetest recollections of my
life is that I had the honour and blessing of his intimate friendship,
which grew and deepened from my sister's marriage to the time of his
own death. My mother, too, took me into her confidence more and more as my
mind opened, and, I may add, as my deafness increased, and bespoke for me
her motherly sympathy. For some years, indeed, there was a genuine and
cordial friendship between my mother and me, which was a benefit to me in
all manner of ways; and, from the time when I began to have literary
enterprises, (and quite as much before I obtained success as after) I was
sustained by her trustful, generous, self-denying sympathy and
maternal appreciation. After a time, when she was fretted by cares and
infirmities, I became as nervous in regard to her as ever, (even to the
entire breaking down of my health;) but during the whole period of which I
am now treating,--(and it is a very large space in my
life)--there were no limitations to our mutual confidence.
One other relation which reached its highest point, and had begun to
decline, during this period was one which I must abstain from discussing.
The briefest possible notice will be the best method of treatment. All who
have ever known me are aware that the strongest passion I have ever
entertained was
in regard to my youngest brother, who has certainly filled the largest space in the life of my affections of any person whatever. Now, the fact,--the painful fact,--in the history of human affections is that, of all natural relations, the least satisfactory is the fraternal. Brothers are to sisters what sisters can never be to brothers as objects of engrossing and devoted affection. The law of their frames is answerable for this: and that other law--of equity--which sisters are bound to obey, requires that they should not render their account of their disappointments where there can be no fair reply. Under the same law, sisters are bound to remember that they cannot be certain of their own fitness to render an account of their own disappointments, or to form an estimate of the share of blame which may be due to themselves on the score of unreasonable expectations. These general considerations decide me to pass over one of the main relations and influences of my life in a few brief and unsatisfactory lines, though I might tell a very particular tale. If I could see a more truthful, just, and satisfactory method of treating the topic, I should most gladly adopt it.--As for the other members of our numerous family, I am thankful and rejoiced to bear testimony that they have given all possible encouragement to the labours of my life; and that they have been the foremost of all the world to appreciate and rejoice in my successes, and to respect that independence of judgment and action on my part which must often have given them pain, and which would have overpowered any generosity less deeply rooted in principle and affection than theirs.
When I was young, it was not thought proper for young ladies to study
very conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand. Young ladies (at least
in provincial towns) were expected to sit down in the parlour to
sew,--during which reading aloud was permitted,--or to practice
their music; but so as to be fit to receive callers, without any signs of
blue-stockingism which could be reported abroad. Jane Austen
herself, the Queen of novelists, the immortal creator of Anne Elliott, Mr.
Knightly, and a score or two more of unrivalled intimate friends of the
whole public, was compelled by the feelings of her family to
cover up her manuscripts with a large piece of muslin work, kept on the table for the purpose, whenever any genteel people came in. So it was with other young ladies, for some time after Jane Austen was in her grave; and thus my first studies in philosophy were carried on with great care and reserve. I was at the work table regularly after breakfast,--making my own clothes, or the shirts of the household, or about some fancy work: I went out walking with the rest,--before dinner in winter, and after tea in summer: and if ever I shut myself into my own room for an hour of solitude, I knew it was at the risk of being sent for to join the sewing-circle, or to read aloud,--I being the reader, on account of my growing deafness. But I won time for what my heart was set upon, nevertheless,--either in the early morning, or late at night. I had a strange passion for translating, in those days; and a good preparation it proved for the subsequent work of my life. Now, it was meeting James at seven in the morning to read Lowth's Prelections in the Latin, after having been busy since five about something else, in my own room. Now it was translating Tacitus, in order to try what was the utmost compression of style that I could attain.--About this I may mention an incident while it occurs. We had all grown up with a great reverence for Mrs. Barbauld (which she fully deserved from much wiser people than ourselves) and, reflectively, for Dr. Aikin, her brother,--also able in his way, and far more industrious, but without her genius. Among a multitude of other labours, Dr. Aikin had translated the Agricola of Tacitus. I went into such an enthusiasm over the original, and especially over the celebrated concluding passage, that I thought I would translate it, and correct it by Dr. Aikin's, which I could procure from our public library. I did it, and found my own translation unquestionably the best of the two. I had spent an infinity of pains over it,--word by word; and I am confident I was not wrong in my judgment. I stood pained and mortified before my desk, I remember, thinking how strange and small a matter was human achievement, if Dr. Aikin's fame was to be taken as a testimony of literary desert. I had beaten him whom I had taken for my master. I need not point out that, in the
first place, Dr. Aikin's fame did not hang on this particular work; nor that, in the second place, I had exaggerated his fame by our sectarian estimate of him. I give the incident as a curious little piece of personal experience, and one which helped to make me like literary labour more for its own sake, and less for its rewards, than I might otherwise have done.--Well: to return to my translating propensities. Our cousin J.M.L., then studying for his profession in Norwich, used to read Italian with Rachel and me,--also before breakfast. We made some considerable progress, through the usual course of prose authors and poets; and out of this grew a fit which Rachel and I at one time took, in concert with our companions and neighbours, the C.'s, to translate Petrarch. Nothing could be better as an exercise in composition than translating Petrach sonnets into English of the same limits. It was putting ourselves under compulsion to do with the Italian what I had set myself voluntarily to do with the Latin author. I believe we really succeeded pretty well; and I am sure that all these exercises were a singularly apt preparation for my after work. At the same time, I went on studying Blair's Rhetoric (for want of a better guide) and inclining mightily to every kind of book or process which could improve my literary skill,--really as if I had foreseen how I was to spend my life.
These were not, however, my most precious or serious studies. I studied
the Bible incessantly and immensely; both by daily reading of chapters,
after the approved but mischievous method, and by getting hold of all
commentaries and works of elucidation that I could lay my hands on. A work
of Dr. Carpenter's, begun but never finished, called "Notes and
Observations on the Gospel History," which his catechumens used in
class, first put me on this track of study,--the results of which
appeared some years afterwards in my "Traditions of Palestine."
It was while reading Mr. Kenrick's translation from the German of
"Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," with which I was
thoroughly bewitched, that I conceived, and communicated to James, the
audacious idea of giving a somewhat resembling account of the Jews and
their country, under the immediate expectation of the
Messiah, and even in his presence, while carefully abstaining from permitting more than his shadow to pass over the scene. This idea I cherished till I found courage, under a new inspiration some years after, to execute it: and so pleasant was the original suggestion, and so congenial the subject altogether, that even now, at the distance of a quarter of a century, I regard that little volume with a stronger affection than any other of my works but one;--that one being "Eastern Life."
Dr. Carpenter was inclined also to the study of philosophy, and wrote on
it,--on mental and moral philosophy; and this was enough, putting all
predisposition out of the question, to determine me to the study. He was of
the Locke and Hartley school altogether, as his articles on "Mental
and Moral Philosophy," in Rees's Cyclopedia, and his work on
"Systematic Education" show. He used to speak of Hartley as one
who had the intellectual qualities of the seraphic order combined with the
affections of the cherubic; and it was no wonder if Hartley became my idol
when I was mistress of my own course of study. I must clear myself from all
charge of having ever entertained his doctrine of Vibrations. I do not
believe that Dr. Carpenter himself could have prevailed with me so far as
that. But neither did Hartley prevail with Dr. Carpenter so far as that.
The edition of Hartley that I used was Dr. Priestley's,--that
which gives the philosophy of Association, cleared from the incumbence of
the Vibration theory. That book I studied with a fervor and perseverance
which made it perhaps the most important book in the world to me, except
the bible; and there really is in it, amidst its monstrous deficiencies and
absurdities, so much that is philosophically true, as well as holy,
elevating and charming, that its influence might very well spread into all
the events and experience of life, and chasten the habits and feelings, as
it did in my case during a long series of years. So far from feeling, as
Dr. Channing and other good men have done, that the influence of that
philosophy is necessarily, in all cases, debasing, I am confident at this
moment that the spirit of the men, Locke and Hartley, redeems much of the
fault of their doctrine in its operation on young minds; and moreover, that
the conscientious
accuracy with which they apply their doctrine to the moral conduct of the smallest particulars of human life (Hartley particularly) forms a far better discipline, and produces a much more exalting effect on the minds of students than the vague metaphysical imaginations,--as various and irreconcilable as the minds that give them forth, which Dr. Channing and his spiritual school adopted (or believed that they adopted) as a "spiritual philosophy." I know this,--that while I read the Germans, Americans and English who am the received exponents of that philosophy with a general and extremely vague sense of elevation and beauty as the highest emotion produced, I cannot at this hour look at the portrait of Hartley prefixed to his work, or glance at his strange Scholia,--which I could almost repeat, word for word,--without a strong revival of the old mood of earnest desire of self-discipline, and devotion to duty which I derived from them in my youth. While the one school has little advantage over the other in the abstract department of their philosophy, the disciples of Hartley have infinitely the advantage over the dreaming school in their master's presentment of the concrete department of fact and of action. Compelled as I have since been to relinquish both as philosophy, I am bound to avow, (and enjoy the avowal) that I owe to Hartley the strongest and best stimulus and discipline of the highest affections and most important habits that it is perhaps possible, (or was possible for me) to derive from any book.--The study of Priestley's character and works (natural to me because he was the great apostle of Unitarianism) necessarily led me to the study of the Scotch school of philosophy, which I took the liberty to enjoy in its own way, in spite of Priestley's contempt of it. I never believed in it, because it was really inconceivable to me how anybody should; and I was moreover entirely wrong in not perceiving that the Scotch philosophers had got hold of a fragment of sound truth which the other school had missed,--in their postulate of a fundamental complete faculty, which could serve as a basis of the mind's operations,--whereas Hartley lays down simply the principle of association, and a capacity for pleasure and pain. I ought to have perceived that the Scotch proposition of Common
Sense would answer much better for purposes of interpretation, if I had not yet knowledge enough to show me that it was much nearer the fact of the case. I did not perceive this, but talked as flippantly as Priestley, with far less right to do so. At the same time, I surrendered myself, to a considerable extent, to the charm of Dugald Stewart's writings,--having no doubt that Priestley, if then living, would have done so too. About Beattie and Reid I was pert enough, from a genuine feeling of the unsatisfactoriness of their writings; but the truth of detail scattered through Dugald Stewart's elegant elucidations, the gentle and happy spirit, and the beautiful style, charmed me so much that I must have been among his most affectionate disciples, if I had not been fortified against his seductions by my devotion to Hartley.
It appears to me now that, though my prevailing weakness in study is
excessive sympathy, intellectual as well as moral, with my author, I even
then felt something of the need which long after became all-powerful
in me, of a clear distinction between the knowable and the
unknowable,--of some available indication of an indisputable point of
view, whence one's contemplation of human nature, as of every thing
else in the universe, should make its range. It may be that I am carrying
back too far in my life this sense of need. When I consider how contentedly
I went on, during the whole of this third period, floating and floundering
among metaphysical imaginations, and giving forth inbred conceptions as
truths of fact, I am disposed to think it probable that I am casting back
the light of a later time among the mists of an earlier, and supposing
myself sooner capable than I really was of practically distinguishing
between a conception and a conviction. But there can be no mistake about
the time and manner of my laying hold of a genuine conviction in a genuine
manner, as I will presently tell. It would no doubt haste been a fine thing
for me,--an event which would have elevated my whole
after-life,--if a teacher had been at hand to show ms the
boundary line between the knowable and the unknowable, as I see it now, and
to indicate to me that the purely human view of the universe, derived
solely from within, and proceeding
on the supposition that Man and his affairs and his world are the centre and crown of the universe, could not possibly be the true one. But, in the absence of such a teacher,--in my inability to see the real scope and final operation of the discovery of Copernicus and Galileo,--and the ultimate connexion of physical and moral science,--it was the next best thing, perhaps, to obtain by my own forces, and for my own use, the grand conviction which henceforth gave to my life whatever it has had of steadiness, consistency, and progressiveness.
I have told how, when I was eleven years old, I put a question to my
brother about the old difficulty of foreknowledge and freewill,--the
reconciliation of God's power and benevolence,--and how I was
baulked of an answer. That question had been in my mind ever since; and I
was not driven from entertaining it by Milton's account of its being
a favourite controversy in hell, nor even by a rebuke administered to one
of our family by Mr. Turner of Newcastle, who disapproved inquiry into what
he took for granted to be an unknowable thing. To me it seemed, turn it
which way I would, to be certainly a knowable thing,--so closely as it
presses on human morality,--to say nothing of man's religion and
internal peace. Its being reconcilable with theology is quite another
affair. I tried long to satisfy myself with the ordinary
subterfuge;--with declaring myself satisfied that good comes out of
evil, and a kind of good which could accrue in no other way: but this
would not do. I wrote religious poetry upon it, and wrought myself up to it
in talk: but it would not do. This was no solution; and it was
unworthy of a rational being to pretend to think it so. I tried
acquiescence and dismissal of the subject; but that would not do, because
it brought after it a clear admission of the failure of the scheme of
creation in the first place, and of the Christian scheme in the next. The
time I am now speaking of was, of course, prior to my study of Priestley
and of Hartley, or I should have known that there was a recognised doctrine
of Necessity.
One summer afternoon, when my brother James (then my oracle) was sitting
with my mother and me, telling us some of his experiences after his first
session at the York College (the Unita-
rian college) I seized upon some intimation that he dropped about this same doctrine of Necessity. I uttered the difficulty which had lain in my mind for so many years; and he just informed me that there was, or was held to be, a solution in that direction, and advised me to make it out for myself. I did so. From that time the question possessed me. Now that I had got leave, as it were, to apply the Necessarian solution, I did it incessantly. I fairly laid hold of the conception of general laws, while still far from being prepared to let go the notion of a special Providence. Though at times almost overwhelmed by the vastness of the view opened to me, and by the prodigious change requisite in my moral views and self-management, the revolution was safely gone through. My laboring brain and beating heart grew quiet, and something more like peace than I had ever yet known settled down upon my anxious mind. Being aware of my weakness of undue sympathy with authors whom I read with any moral interest, I resolved to read nothing on this question till I had thought it out; and I kept to my resolve. When I was wholly satisfied, and could use my new method of interpretation in all cases that occurred with readiness and ease, I read every book that I could hear of on the subject of the Will; and I need not add that I derived confirmation from all I read on both sides. I am bound to add that the moral effect of this process was most salutary and cheering. From the time when I became convinced of the certainty of the action of laws, of the true importance of good influences and good habits, of the firmness, in short, of the ground I was treading, and of the security of the results which I should take the right means to attain, a new vigour pervaded my whole life, a new light spread through my mind, and I began to experience a steady growth in self-command, courage, and consequent integrity and disinterestedness. I was feeble and selfish enough at best; but yet, I was like a new creature in the strength of a sound conviction. Life also was like something fresh and wonderfully interesting, now that I held in my hand this key whereby to interpret some of the most conspicuous of its mysteries.
That great event in my life seems very remote; and I have
been hearing more or less of the free-will difficulty ever since; and yet it appears to me, now as then, that none but Necessarians at all understand the Necessarian doctrine. This is merely saying in other words that its truth is so irresistible that, when once understood, it is adopted as a matter of course. Some, no doubt, say of the doctrine that every body can prove it, but nobody believes it; an assertion so far from true as not to be worth contesting, if I may judge by my own intercourses. Certainly, all the best minds I know are among the Necessarians;--all indeed which are qualified to discuss the subject at all. Moreover, all the world is practically Necessarian. All human action proceeds on the supposition that all the workings of the universe are governed by laws which cannot be broken by human will. In fact, the mistake of the majority in this matter is usually in supposing an interference between the will and the action of Man. The very smallest amount of science is enough to enable any rational person to see that the constitution and action of the human faculty of Will are determined by influences beyond the control of the possessor of the faculty: and when this very plain fact is denied in words it is usually because the denier is thinking of something else,--not of the faculty of willing, but of executing the volition. It is not my business here to argue out a question which has been settled in my own mind for the greater part of my life; but I have said thus much in explanation of the great importance of the conviction to me. For above thirty years I have seen more and more clearly how awful, and how irremediable except by the spread of a true philosophy, are the evils which arise from that monstrous remnant of old superstition,--the supposition of a self-determining power, independent of laws, in the human will; and I can truly say that if I have had the blessing of any available strength under sorrow, perplexity, sickness and toil, during a life which has been any thing but easy, it is owing to my repose upon eternal and irreversible laws, working in every department of the universe, without any interference from any random will, human or divine.--As to the ordinary objection to the doctrine,--that it is good for endurance but bad for action,--besides the obvious
reply that every doctrine is to be accepted or rejected for its truth or falsehood, and not because mere human beings fancy its tendency to be good or bad,--I am bound to reply from my own experience that the allegation is not true. My life has been (whatever else) a very busy one; and this conviction, of the invariable action of fixed laws, has certainly been the main-spring of my activity. When it is considered that, according to the Necessarian doctrine, no action falls to produce effects, and no effort can be lost, there seems every reason for the conclusion which I have no doubt is the fact, that true Necessarians must be the most diligent and confident of all workers. The indolent dreamers whom I happen to know are those who find an excuse for their idleness in the doctrine of free-will, which certainly leaves but scanty encouragement to exertion of any sort: and at the same time, the noblest activity that I ever witness, the most cheerful and self-denying toil, is on the part of those who hold the Necessarian doctrine as a vital conviction.
As to the effect of that conviction on my religion, in those days of my
fanaticism and afterwards, I had better give some account of it here,
though it will lead me on to a date beyond the limits of this third period
of my life.--In the first place, it appeared to me when I was twenty,
as it appears to me now, that the New Testament proceeds on the ground of
necessarian, rather than free-will doctrine. The prayer for daily
bread is there, it is true; but the Lord's prayer is compiled from
very ancient materials of the theocratic age. The fatalistic element of the
Essene doctrine strongly pervades the doctrine and morality of Christ and
the apostles; and its curious union with the doctrine of a special
providence is possible only under the theocratic supposition which is the
basis of the whole faith.--As for me, I seized upon the necessarian
element with eagerness, as enabling me to hold to my cherished faith; and I
presently perceived, and took instant advantage of the discovery, that the
practice of prayer, as prevailing throughout Christendom, is wholly
unauthorized by the New Testament. Christian prayer, as prevailing at this
day, answers precisely to the description of that pharisaic prayer which
Christ reprobated. His own method
of praying, the prayer he gave to his disciples, and their practice, were all wholly unlike any thing now understood by Christian prayer, in protestant as well as catholic countries. I changed my method accordingly,--gradually, perhaps, but beginning immediately and decidedly. Not knowing what was good for me, and being sure that every external thing would come to pass just the same, whether I liked it or not, I ceased to desire, and therefore to pray for, any thing external,--whether "daily bread," or health, or life for myself or others, or any thing whatever but spiritual good. There I for a long time drew the line. Many years after I had outgrown the childishness of wishing for I knew not what,--of praying for what might be either good or evil,--I continued to pray for spiritual benefits. I can hardly say for spiritual aid; for I took the necessarian view of even the higher form of prayer,--that it brought about, or might bring about, its own accomplishment by the spiritual dispositions which it excited and cherished. This view is so far from simple, and so irreconcilable with the notion of a revelation of a scheme of salvation, that it is clear that the one or the other view must soon give way. The process in my case was this. A long series of grave misfortunes brought me to the conviction that there is no saying beforehand what the external conditions of internal peace really are. I found myself now and then in the loftiest moods of cheerfulness when in the midst of circumstances which I had most dreaded, and the converse; and thus I grew to be, generally speaking, really and truly careless as to what became of me. I had cast off the torment of fear, except in occasional weak moments. This experience presently extended to my spiritual affairs. I found myself best, according to all trustworthy tests of goodness, when I cared least about the matter. I continued my practice of nightly examination of my hourly conduct; and the evidence grew wonderfully strong that moral advancement came out of good influences rather than self-management; and that even so much self-reference as was involved in "working out one's own salvation with fear and trembling" was demoralizing. Thus I arrived,--after long years,--at the same point of ease or resignation about my spiritual as my
temporal affairs, and felt that (to use a broad expression uttered by somebody) it was better to take the chance of being damned than be always quacking one's self in the fear of it. (Not that I had any literal notion of being damned,--any more than any other born and bred Unitarian.) What I could not desire for myself, I could not think of stipulating for others; and thus, in regard to petition, my prayers became simply an aspiration,--"Thy will be done!" But still, the department of praise remained. I need hardly say that I soon drew back in shame from offering to a Divine being a homage which would be offensive to an earthly one: and when this practice was over, my devotions consisted in aspiration,--very frequent and heartfelt,--under all circumstances and influences, and much as I meditate now, almost hourly, on the mysteries of life and the universe, and the great science and art of human duty. In proportion as the taint of fear and desire and self-regard fell off, and the meditation had fact instead of passion for its subject, the aspiration became freer and sweeter, till at length, when the selfish superstition had wholly gone out of it, it spread its charm through every change of every waking hour,--and does now, when life itself is expiring.
As to the effect that all this had on my belief in
Christianity,--it did not prevent my holding on in that
pseudo-acceptance of it which my Unitarian breeding rendered easy.
It was a grand discovery to me when I somewhere met with the indication,
(since become a rather favourite topic with Unitarian preachers) that the
fact of the miracles has nothing whatever to do with the quality of the
doctrine. When miracles are appealed to by the Orthodox as a proof of, not
only the supernatural orion, but the divine quality of the doctrine, the
obvious answer is that devils may work miracles, and the doctrine may
therefore be from hell. Such was the argument in Christ's time; and
such is it now among a good many protestants,--horrifying the
Catholics and High-Churchmen of our time as much as it horrified the
evangelists of old. The use to which it is turned by many who still call
themselves Unitarians, and to which it was applied by me is--the
holding to Christianity in a manner as a revelation, after
surrendering belief in the miracles. I suppose the majority of Unitarians still accept all the miracles (except the Miraculous Conception, of course)--even to the withering away of the fig-tree. Some hold to the resurrection, while giving up all the rest; and not a few do as I did,--say that the interior evidence of a divine origin of that doctrine is enough, and that no amount of miracles could strengthen their faith. It is clear however that a Christianity which never was received as a scheme of salvation,--which never was regarded as essential to salvation,--which might be treated, in respect to its records, at the will and pleasure of each believer,--which is next declared to be independent of its external evidences, because those evidences are found to be untenable,--and which is finally subjected in its doctrines, as in its letter, to the interpretation of each individual,--must cease to be a faith, and become a matter of speculation, of spiritual convenience, and of intellectual and moral taste, till it declines to the rank of a mere fact in the history of mankind. These are the gradations through which I passed. It took many years to travel through them; and I lingered long in the stages of speculation and taste, intellectual and moral. But at length I recognized the monstrous superstition in its true character of a great fact in the history of the race, and found myself, with the last link of my chain snapped,--a free rover on the broad, bright breezy common of the universe.
desired, I always did, as of course; and after he had left me to my widowhood soon after six o'clock, one bright September morning, I was at my desk before seven, beginning a letter to the Editor of the "Monthly Repository,"--that editor being the formidable prime minister of his sect,--Rev. Robert Aspland. I suppose I must tell what that first paper was, though I had much rather not; for I am so heartily ashamed of the whole business as never to have looked at the article since the first flutter of it went off. It was on Female Writers on Practical Divinity. I wrote away, in my abominable scrawl of those days, on foolscap paper, feeling mighty like a fool all the time. I told no one, and carried my expensive packet to the post-office myself, to pay the postage. I took the letter V for my signature,--I cannot at all remember why. The time was very near the end of the month: I had no definite expectation that I should ever hear any thing of my paper; and certainly did not suppose it could be in the forthcoming number. That number was sent in before service-time on a Sunday morning. My heart may have been beating when I laid hands on it; but it thumped prodigiously when I saw my article there, and, in the Notices to Correspondents, a request to bear more from V. of Norwich. There is certainly something entirely peculiar in the sensation of seeing one'sself in print for the first time:--the lines burn themselves in upon the brain in a way of which black ink is incapable, in any other mode. So I felt that day, when I went about with my secret.--I have said what my eldest brother was to us,--in what reverence we held him. He was just married, and he and his bride asked me to return from chapel with them to tea. After tea he said, "Come now, we have had plenty of talk; I will read you something;" and he held out his hand for the new "Repository." After glancing at it, he exclaimed, "They have got a new hand here. Listen." After a paragraph, he repeated, "Ah! this is a new hand; they have had nothing so good as this for a long while." (It would be impossible to convey to any who do not know the "Monthly Repository" of that day, how very small a compliment this was.) I was silent, of course. At the end of the first column,
he exclaimed about the style, looking at me in some wonder at my being as still as a mouse. Next (and well I remember his tone, and thrill to it still) his words were--"What a fine sentence that is! Why, do you not think so?" I mumbled out, sillily enough, that it did not seem any thing particular. "Then," said he, "you were not listening. I will read it again. There now!" As he still got nothing out of me, he turned round upon me, as we sat side by side on the sofa, with "Harriet, what is the matter with you? I never knew you so slow to praise any thing before." I replied, in utter confusion,--"I never could baffle any body. The truth is, that paper is mine." He made no reply; read on in silence, and spoke no more till I was on my feet to come away. He then laid his hand on my shoulder, and said gravely (calling me "dear" for the first time) "Now, dear, leave it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings; and do you devote yourself to this." I went home in a sort of dream, so that the squares of the pavement seemed to float before my eyes. That evening made me an authoress.
It was not all so glorious, however. I immediately after began to write
my first work,--"Devotional Exercises," of which I now
remember nothing. But I remember my brother's anxious doubting looks,
in which I discerned some disappointment, as he read the M.S. I remember
his gentle hints about precision and arrangement of ideas, given with the
utmost care not to discourage me; and I understood the significance of his
praise of the concluding essay (in a letter from Madeira, where he was
closing his precious life)--praise of the definiteness of object in
that essay, which, as he observed, furnished the key to his doubts about
the rest of the book, and which he conveyed only from an anxious desire
that I should work my way up to the high reputation which he felt I was
destined to attain. This just and gentle treatment, contrasting with the
early discouragements which had confused my own judgment, affected me
inexpressibly. I took these hints to heart in trying my hand at a sort of
theologico-metaphysical novel, which I entered upon with a notion of
enlightening the world through the same kind of interest as was then
excited by Mr. Ward's novel, "Tremaine,"
which was making a prodigious noise, and which perfectly enchanted me, except by its bad philosophy. I mighty enjoyed the prospect of this work, as did my mother; and I was flattered by finding that Rachel had higher expectations from it than even my own. But, at the end of half a volume, I became aware that it was excessively dull, and I stopped. Many years afterwards I burned it; and this is the only piece of my work but two (and a review) in my whole career that never was published.
Already I found that it would not do to copy what I wrote; and here (at
the outset of this novel) I discontinued the practice for ever,--thus
saving an immense amount of time which I humbly think is wasted by other
authors. The prevalent doctrine about revision and copying, and especially
Miss Edgeworth's account of her method of writing,--scribbling
first, then submitting her manuscript to her father, and copying and
altering many times over till, (if I remember right) no one paragraph of
her "Leonora" stood at last as it did at first,--made me
suppose copying and alteration to be indispensable. But I immediately found
that there was no use in copying if I did not alter; and that, if ever I
did alter, I had to change back again; and I, once for all committed myself
to a single copy. I believe the only writings I ever copied were
"Devotional Exercises," and my first tale;--a trumpery
story called "Christmas Day." It seemed clear to me that
distinctness and precision must be lost if alterations were made in a
different state of mind from that which suggested the first utterance; and
I was delighted when, long afterwards, I met with Cobbett's
advice;--to know first what you want to say, and then say it in the
first words that occur to you. The excellence of Cobbett's style, and
the manifest falling off of Miss Edgeworth's after her father's
death (so frankly avowed by herself) were strong confirmations of my own
experience. I have since, more than once, weakly fallen into
mannerism,--now metaphysically elliptical,--now poetically
amplified, and even, in one instance, bordering on the Carlylish; but
through all this folly, as well as since having a style of my
own,--(that is, finding expression by words as
easy as breathing air)--I have always used the same method in writing. I have always made sure of what I meant to say, and then written it down without care or anxiety,--glancing at it again only to see if any words were omitted or repeated, and not altering a single phrase in a whole work. I mention this because I think I perceive that great mischief arises from the notion that botching in the second place will compensate for carelessness in the first. I think I perceive that confusion of thought, and cloudiness or affectation in style are produced or aggravated by faulty prepossessions in regard to the method of writing for the press. The mere saving of time and labour in my own case may be regarded as no inconsiderable addition to my term of life.--Some modifications of this doctrine there must of course be in accordance with the strength or weakness of the natural faculty of expression by language: but I speak as strongly as I have just done because I have no reason to believe that the natural aptitude was particularly strong in myself. I believe that such facility as I have enjoyed has been mainly owing to my unconscious preparatory discipline; and especially in the practice of translation from various languages, as above related. And, again, after seeing the manuscripts or proof-sheets of many of the chief authors of my own time, I am qualified to say that the most marked mannerists of their day are precisely those whose manuscripts show most erasures and their proof-sheets most alterations.
Next, our beloved brother, who had always shown a tendency to
consumption, ruptured a blood-vessel in the lungs, and had to give
up his practice and professional offices, and to go, first into Devonshire,
and afterwards to Madeira, whence he never returned. He died at sea, on his
way home. I went with him and his wife into Devonshire, for the spring of
1823; and it was my office to read aloud for many hours of every day, which
I did
with great satisfaction, and with inestimable profit from his comments and unsurpassed conversation. Before breakfast, and while he enjoyed his classical reading on the sofa, I rambled about the neighbourhood of Torquay,--sometimes sketching, sometimes reading, sometimes studying the sea from the shelter of the caves, and, on the whole, learning to see nature, under those grave circumstances, with new eyes. Soon after our return, their child was born; and never was infant more beloved. It was my great solace during the dreary season of dismantling that home which we had had so much delight in forming, and sending those from us who were the joy of our lives. It was then that I learned the lesson I spoke of,--of our peace of mind being, at least in times of crisis, independent of external circumstances. Day by day, I had been silently growing more heartsick at the prospect of the parting; and I especially dreaded the night before;--the going to bed, with the thoughtful night before me, after seeing every thing packed, and knowing that the task of the coming day was the parting. Yet that night was one of the happiest of my life. It is easy to conceive what the process of thought was, and what the character of the religious emotion which so elevated me. The lesson was a sound one, whatever might be the virtue of the thoughts and feelings involved. The next day, all was over at length. I was the last who held the dear baby,--even to the moment of his being put into the carriage. The voyage was injurious to him; and it was probably the cause of his death, which took place soon after reaching Madeira. There was something peaceful, and very salutary in the next winter, though it could not reasonably be called a very happy one. There was a close mutual reliance between my mother and myself,--my sister Rachel being absent, and our precious little Ellen, the family darling, at school. We kept up a close correspondence with our absent ones; and there were the beautiful Madeira letters always to look for. I remember reading Clarendon's Rebellion aloud to my mother in the evenings; and we took regular walks in all weathers. I had my own troubles and anxieties, however. A dream had passed before me since the visit of a student friend of my brother James's, which
some words of my father's and mother's had strengthened into hope and trust. This hope was destined to be crushed for a time in two hearts by the evil offices of one who had much to answer for in what he did. This winter was part of the time of suspense. Under my somewhat heavy troubles my health had some time before begun to give way; and now I was suffering from digestive derangement which was not cured for four years after; and then only after severe and daily pain from chronic inflammation of the stomach. Still, with an ailing body, an anxious and often aching heart, and a mind which dreaded looking into the future, I regarded this winter of 1823-4 as a happy one;--the secret of which I believe to have been that I felt myself beloved at home, and enjoyed the keen relish of duties growing out of domestic love. At the end of the next June, my brother died. We were all prepared for the event, as far as preparation is ever possible; but my dear father, the most unselfish of men, who never spoke of his own feelings, and always considered other people's, never, we think, recovered from this grief. He was very quiet at the time; but his health began to go wrong, and his countenance to alter; and during the two remaining years of his life, he sustained a succession of cares which might have broken down a frame less predisposed for disease than his had become. In our remembrance of him there is no pain on the ground of any thing in his character. Humble, simple, upright, self-denying, affectionate to as many people as possible, and kindly to all, he gave no pain, and did all the good he could. He had not the advantage of an adequate education; but there was a natural shrewdness about him which partly compensated for the want. He was not the less, but the more, anxious to give his children the advantages which he had never received; and the whole family have always felt that they owe a boundless debt of gratitude to both their parents for the self-sacrificing efforts they made, through all the vicissitudes of the times, to fit their children in the best possible manner for independent action in life. My father's business, that of a Norwich manufacturer, was subject to the fluctuations to which all manufacture was liable during the war, and to others of its own; and our parents'
method was to have no reserves from their children, to let us know precisely the state of their affairs, and to hold out to us, in the light of this evidence, the probability that we might sooner or later have to work for our own living,--daughters as well as sons,--and that it was improbable that we should ever be rich. The time was approaching which was to prove the wisdom of their method. My father's business, never a very enriching one, had been for some time prosperous; and this year (1824) he indulged my brother James and myself with a journey;--a walking tour in Scotland, in the course of which we walked five hundred miles in a month. I am certainly of opinion now that that trip aggravated my stomach-complaint; and I only wonder it was no worse. I spent the next winter with my married sister, my sister-in-law, and other friends, and returned to Norwich in April, to undergo long months,--even years--of anxiety and grief.
In the reviews of my "History of the Thirty Years'
Peace," one chapter is noticed more emphatically than all the
rest;--the chapter on the speculations, collapse, and crash of 1825
and 1826. If that chapter is written with some energy, it is no wonder; for
our family fortunes were implicated in that desperate struggle, and its
issue determined the whole course of life of the younger members of our
family,--my own among the rest. One point on which my narrative in the
History is emphatic is the hardship on the sober man of business of being
involved in the destruction which overtook the speculator; and I had family
and personal reasons for saying this. My father never speculated; but he
was well nigh ruined during that calamitous season by the deterioration in
value of his stock. His stock of manufactured goods was larger, of course,
than it would have been in a time of less enterprise; and week by week its
value declined, till, in the middle of the winter, when the banks were
crashing down all over England, we began to contemplate absolute ruin.
My.father was evidently a dying man;--not from anxiety of mind, for
his liver disease was found to be owing to obstruction caused by a
prodigious gall-stone: but his illness was no doubt aggravated
and rendered more harassing by his cares for his
family. In the spring he was sent to Cheltenham, whence he returned after some weeks with the impression of approaching death on his face. He altered his Will, mournfully reducing the portions left to his daughters to something which could barely be called an independence. Then, three weeks before his death, he wisely, and to our great relief, dismissed the whole subject. He told my brother Henry, his partner in the business, that he had done what he could while he could: that he was now a dying man, and could be of no further use in the struggle, and that he wished to keep his mind easy for his few remaining days: so he desired to see no more letters of business, and to hear no more details. For a few more days, he sunned himself on the grass-plat in the garden, in the warm June mornings: then could not leave the house; then could not come down stairs; and, towards the end of the month died quietly, with all his family round his bed.--As for my share in this family experience,--it was delightful to me that he took an affectionate pleasure in my poor little book,--of value to me now for that alone,--"Addresses, Prayers and Hymns, for the use of families and school." It was going through the press at that time; and great was my father's satisfaction; and high were his hopes, I believe, of what I should one day be and do. Otherwise, I have little comfort in thinking of his last illness. The old habit of fear came upon me, more irresistibly than ever, on the assembling of the family; and I mourn to think how I kept out of the way, whenever it was possible, and how little I said to my father of what was in my heart about him and my feelings towards him. The more easily his humility was satisfied with whatever share of good fell to him, the more richly he should have been ministered to. By me he was not,--owing to this unhappy shyness. My married sister, who was an incomparable nurse, did the duty of others besides her own; and mine among the rest, while I was sorrowing and bitterly chiding myself in silence, and perhaps in apparent insensibility.
And now my own special trial was at hand. It is not necessary to go into
detail about it. The news which got abroad that we had grown comparatively
poor,--and the evident certainty
that we were never likely to be rich, so wrought upon the mind of one friend as to break down the mischief which I have referred to as caused by ill-offices. My friend had believed me rich, was generous about making me a poor man's wife, and had been discouraged in more ways than one. He now came to me, and we were soon virtually engaged. I was at first very anxious and unhappy. My veneration for his morale was such that I felt that I dared not undertake the charge of his happiness: and yet I dared not refuse, because I saw it would be his death blow. I was ill,--I was deaf,--I was in an entangled state of mind between conflicting duties and some lower considerations; and many a time did I wish, in my fear that I should fail, that had never seen him. I am far from wishing that now;--now that the beauty of his goodness remains to me, clear of all painful regrets. But there was a fearful period to pass through. Just when I was growing happy, surmounting my fears and doubts, and enjoying his attachment, the consequences of his long struggle and suspense overtook him. He became suddenly insane; and after months of illness of body and mind, he died. The calamity was aggravated to me by the unaccountable insults I received from his family, whom I had never seen. years afterwards, when his sister and I met, the mystery was explained. His family had been given to understand, by cautious insinuations, that I was actually engaged to another, while receiving my friend's addresses! There has never been any doubt in my mind that, considering what I was in those days, it was happiest for us both that our union was prevented by any means. I am, in truth, very thankful for not having married at all. I have never since been tempted, nor have suffered any thing at all in relation to that matter which is held to be all-important to woman,--love and marriage. Nothing, I mean, beyond occasional annoyance, presently disposed of. Every literary woman, no doubt, has plenty of importunity of that sort to deal with; but freedom of mind and coolness of manner dispose of it very easily: and since the time I have been speaking of, my mind has been wholly free from all idea of love affairs. My subsequent literary life in London was clear from all difficulty and embarrassment,
--no doubt because I was evidently too busy, and too full of interests of other kinds to feel any awkwardness,--to say nothing of my being then thirty years of age; an age at which, if ever, a woman is certainly qualified to take care of herself. I can easily conceive how I might have been tempted,--how some deep springs in my nature might have been touched, then as earlier; but, as a matter of fact, they never were; and I consider the immunity a great blessing, under the liabilities of a moral condition such as mine was in the olden time. If I had had a husband dependent on me for his happiness, the responsibility would have made me wretched. I had not faith enough in myself to endure avoidable responsibility. If my husband had not depended on me for his happiness, I should have been jealous. So also with children. The care would have so overpowered the joy,--the love would have so exceeded the ordinary chances of life,--the fear on my part would have so impaired the freedom on theirs, that I rejoice not to have been involved in a relation for which I was, or believed myself unfit. The veneration in which I hold domestic life has always shown me that that life was not for those whose self-respect had been early broken down, or had never grown. Happily, the majority are free from this disability. Those who suffer under it had better be as I,--as my observation of married, as well as single life assures me. When I see what conjugal love is, in the extremely rare cases in which it is seen in its perfection, I feel that there is a power of attachment in me that has never been touched. When I am among little children, it frightens me to think what my idolatry of my own children would have been. But, through it all, I have ever been thankful to be alone. My strong will, combined with anxiety of conscience, makes me fit only to live alone; and my taste and liking are for living alone. The older I have grown, the more serious and irremediable have seemed to me the evils and disadvantages of married life, as it exists among us at this time: and I am provided with what it is the bane of single life in ordinary cases to want,--substantial, laborious and serious occupation. My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have
thought and learned. The freedom is itself a positive and never-failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early life. My work and I have been fitted to each other, as is proved by the success of my work and my own happiness in it. The simplicity and independence of this vocation first suited my infirm and ill-developed nature, and then sufficed for my needs, together with family ties and domestic duties, such as I have been blessed with, and as every woman's heart requires. Thus, I am not only entirely satisfied with my lot, but think it the very best for me,--under my constitution and circumstances: and I long ago came to the conclusion that, without meddling with the case of the wives and mothers, I am probably the happiest single woman in England. Who could have believed, in that awful year 1826, that such would be my conclusion a quarter of a century afterwards!
My health gave way, more and more; and my suffering throughout the year
1827 from the pain which came on every evening was such as it is
disagreeable to think of now. For pain of body and mind it was truly a
terrible year, though it had its satisfactions, one of the chief of which
was a long visit which I paid to my brother Robert and his wife (always a
dear friend of mine to this day) at their home in Dudley. I remember our
walks in the grounds of Dudley Castle, and the organ-playing at
home, after my brother's business hours, and the inexhaustible charm
of the baby, as gleams amidst the darkness of that season. I found then the
unequalled benefit of long solitary walks in such a case as mine. I had
found it even at Norwich, in midwinter, when all was bleak on that exposed
level country; and now, amidst the beauty which surrounds Dudley, there was
no end of my walks or of my relish for them; and I always came home with a
cheered and lightened heart. Such poetry as I wrote (I can't bear to
think of it) I wrote in those days. The mournful pieces, and those which
assume not to be mournful, which may be found in my
"Miscellanies" (published in America) may be referred to that
period. And so may some dull and doleful prose writings, published by the
solemn old Calvinistic publisher, Houlston, of Wellington in Shropshire. An
acquaintance
of mine had some time before put me in the way of correspondence with Houlston; and he had accepted the first two little eightpenny stories I sent him. I remember the amusement and embarrassment of the first piece of pecuniary success. As soon as it was known in the house that the letter from Wellington contained five pounds, every body wanted, and continued to want all day, to borrow five pounds of me. After a pause, Houlston wrote to ask for another story of somewhat more substance and bulk. My Globe newspaper readings suggested to me, the subject of Machine-breaking as a good one,--some recent outrages of that sort having taken place: but I had not remotest idea that I was meditating writing on Political Economy, the very name of which was then either unknown to me, or conveyed no meaning. I wrote the little story called "The Rioters;" and its success was such that some hosiers and lacemakers of Derby and Nottingham sent me a request to write a tale on the subject of Wages, which I did, calling it "The Turn Out." The success of both was such as to dispose Mr. Houlston to further dealings; and I wrote for him a good many tracts, which he sold for a penny, and for which he gave me a sovereign apiece. This seems to be the place in which to tell a fact or two about the use made of those early writings of mine, by the old man's sons and successors. Old Houlston died not very long afterwards, leaving among his papers, (I now remember,) a manuscript story of mine which I suppose lies there still; about a good governess, called, I think, "Caroline Shirley." I mention this that, if that story should come out with my name after my death, it may be known to have been written somewhere about this time,--1827. Old Houlston died, on perfectly good terms with me, as far as I remember. The next thing I heard was (and I heard it from various quarters) that those little tracts of mine, and some of my larger tales, were selling and circulating as Mrs. Sherwood's,--Houlston being her publisher. This was amusing; and I had no other objection to it than that it was not true. Next, certain friends and relations of my own who went to the Houlstons' shop in Paternoster Row, and asked for any works by me, had foisted upon them any rubbish that was
convenient, under pretence of its being mine. A dear old aunt was very mysterious and complimentary to me, one day, on her return from London, about "Judith Potts;" and was puzzled to find all her allusions lost upon me. At length, she produced a little story so entitled, which had been sold to her as mine over the Houlstons' counter, and, as she believed, by Mr. Houlston himself. This was rather too bad; for "Judith Potts" was not altogether a work that one would wish to build one's fame on: but there was worse to come. Long years after, when such reputation as I have had was at its height, (when I was ill at Tynemouth, about 1842) there had been some machine breaking; and Messrs. Houlston and Stoneman (as the firm then stood) brought out afresh my poor little early story of "The Rioters," with my name in the title-page for the first time, and not only with every external appearance of being fresh, but with interpolations and alterations which made it seem really so. For instance, "His Majesty" was altered to "Her Majesty." By advice of my friends, I made known the trick far and wide; and I wrote to Messrs. Houlston and Stoneman, to inform them that I was aware of their fraudulent transaction, and that it was actionable. These caterers for the pious needs of the religious world replied with insults, having nothing better to offer. They pleaded my original permission to their father to use my name or not; which was a fact, but no excuse for the present use of it: and to the gravest part of the whole charge,--that of illegal alterations for the fraudulent purpose of concealing the date of the book, they made no reply whatever. I had reason to believe, however, that by the exertions of my friends, the trick was effectually exposed. As far as I remember, this is almost the only serious complaint I have had to make of any publisher, during my whole career.
Meantime, in 1827 I was on excellent terms with old Houlston, and
writing for him a longer tale than I had yet tried my hand on. It was
called "Principle and Practice;" and it succeeded well enough
to induce us to put forth a "Sequel to Principle and Practice"
three or four years after. These were all that I wrote for Houlston, as far
as I remember, except a little
book whose appearance made me stand aghast. A most excellent young servant of ours, who had become quite. a friend of the household, went out to Madeira with my brother and his family, and confirmed our attachment to her by her invaluable services to them. Her history was a rather remarkable, and a very interesting one; and I wrote it in the form of four of Houlston's penny tracts. lie threw them together, and made a little book of them; and the heroine, who would never have heard of them as tracts, was speedily put in possession of her Memoirs in the form of the little book called "My Servant Rachel." An aunt of mine, calling on her one day, found her standing in the middle of the floor, and her husband reading the book over her shoulder. She was hurt at one anecdote,--which was certainly true, but which she had forgotten: but, as a whole, it could not but have been most gratifying to her. She ever after treated me with extreme kindness, and even tenderness; and we are hearty friends still, whenever we meet.--And here ends the chapter of my authorship in which Houlston, my first patron, was concerned.
It was in the autumn of 1827, I think, that a neighbour lent my sister
Mrs. Marcet's "Conversations on Political Economy." I
took up the book, chiefly to see what Political Economy precisely was; and
great was my surprise to find that I had been teaching it unawares, in my
stories about Machinery and Wages. It struck me at once that the principles
of the whole science might be advantageously conveyed in the same
way,--not by being smothered up in a story, but by being exhibited in
their natural workings in selected passages of social life. It has always
appeared very strange to me that so few people seem to have understood
this. Students of all manner of physical sciences afterwards wanted me to
"illustrate" things of which social life (and therefore
fiction) can afford no illustration. I used to say till I was tired that
none but moral and political science admitted of the method at all; and I
doubt whether many of those who talk about it understand the matter, to
this day. In the Edinburgh Review of my Political Economy series,--a
review otherwise as weak as it is kind,--there is the best
appreciation of
the principle of the work that I have seen any where; --a page or so* of perfect understanding of my view and purpose. That view and purpose date from my reading of Mrs. Marcet's Conversations. During that reading, groups of personages rose up from the pages, and a procession of action glided through its arguments, as afterwards from the pages of Adam Smith, and all the other Economists. I mentioned my notion, I remember, when we were sitting at work, one bright afternoon at home. Brother James nodded assent; my mother said "do it;" and we went to tea, unconscious what a great thing we had done since dinner.
There was meantime much fiddle-faddling to be gone through, with
such work as "Principle and Practice" and the like. But a new
educational period was about to open.--My complaint grew so serious,
and was so unbearably painful, and, in truth, medically mismanaged at
Norwich, that my family sent me to Newcastle, to my sister's, where
her husband treated me successfully, and put me in the way of entire cure.
It was a long and painful business; but the method succeeded; and, in the
course of time, and by the unremitting care of my host and hostess, I was
sent home in a condition to manage myself. It was some years before the
stomach entirely recovered its tone; but it was thoroughly healthy from
that time forward.
While I was at Newcastle, a spirited advertisement from the new editor
of the Monthly Repository, Mr. Fox, met my eye, appealing for literary aid
to those who were interested in its objects. I could not resist sending a
practical reply; and I was gratified to learn, long afterwards, that when
my name was mentioned to Mr. Fox, before he issued his appeal, he had said
that he wished for my assistance from the moment when he, as editor,
discovered from the office books that I was the writer of certain papers
which had fixed his attention: but that he could not specially invite
my contributions while he had no funds which could enable him to offer due
remuneration. His reply to my first letter was so cordial that I was
animated to offer him extensive assistance; and if he had then no money to
send me,
___________________*Edinburgh Review. Vol.
lvii.,
pp. 6 and 7.
Page 107
he paid me in something more valuable--in a course of frank and generous criticism which was of the utmost benefit to me. His editorial correspondence with me was unquestionably the occasion, and in great measure the cause, of the greatest intellectual progress I ever made before the age of thirty. I sent him Essays, Reviews and poetry (or what I called such)--the best specimens of which may be found in the "Miscellanies," before mentioned.--The Diffusion Society was at that time the last novelty. A member of the Committee who overrated his own influence, invited me to write a Life of Howard the Philanthropist, which I did, with great satisfaction, and under the positive promise of thirty pounds for it. From time to time, tidings were sent to me of its being approved, and at length of its being actually in type. In the approaching crisis of my fortunes, when I humbly asked when I might expect any part of the payment, I could obtain no clear answer: and the end of the matter was that it was found that half-a-dozen or more Lives of Howard had been ordered in a similar manner, by different members of the Committee; that my manuscript was found, after several years, at the bottom of a chest,--not only dirty, but marked and snipped,--its contents having been abundantly used without any acknowledgment,--as was afterwards admitted to me by some of the members who were especially interested in the prison question. I am far from regretting the issue now, because new materials have turned up which would have shamed that biography out of existence: but the case is worth mentioning, as an illustration of the way in which literary business is managed by corporate directories. I believe most people who ever had any connexion with the Diffusion Society have some similar story to tell.
While I was at Newcastle, a change, which turned out a very happy one,
was made in our domestic arrangements. My cousin, James Martineau Lee, who
had succeeded my brother as a surgeon at Norwich, having died that year,
his aged mother,--(my father's only surviving sister) came to
live with us; and with us she remained till her death in 1840. She was
hardly settled with us when the last of our series of family misfortunes
occurred. I call it a misfortune, because in common parlance it would be so treated; but I believe that my mother and all her other daughters would have joined heartily, if asked, in my conviction that it was one of the best things that ever happened to us. My mother and her daughters lost, at a stroke, nearly all they had in the world by the failure of the house,--the old manufactory,--in which their money was placed. We never recovered more than the merest pittance; and at the time, I, for one, was left destitute;--that is to say, with precisely one shilling in my purse. The effect upon me of this new "calamity," as people called it, was like that of a blister upon a dull, weary pain, or series of pains. I rather enjoyed it, even at the time; for there was scope for action; whereas, in the long, dreary series of preceding trials, there was nothing possible but endurance. In a very short time, my two sisters at home and I began to feel the blessing of a wholly new freedom. I, who had been obliged to write before breakfast, or in some private way, had henceforth liberty to do my own work in my own way; for we had lost our gentility. Many and many a time since have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing, and economizing, and growing narrower every year: whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead of vegetated.
It was in June, 1829, that the old Norwich house failed. I had been
spending a couple of days at a country town, where the meeting of the
provincial Unitarian Association took place. Some of the members knew, on
the last day, what had happened to us; but I heard it first in the streets
of Norwich on my way to our own house. As well as I can remember, a pretty
faithful account of the event is given in one of my Political Economy
tales,- "Berkeley the Banker;" mixed up however with a
good many facts about other persons and times. I need not give the story
over again here, nor any part of it but what is concerned in the history of
my own mind and my own work.--
It was presently settled that my mother, my dear old aunt and I should live on in the family house. One sister went forth to earn the independence which she achieved after busy and honourable years of successful exertion. The youngest was busy teaching and training the children, chiefly, of the family, till her marriage.
The question was--what was I to do, with my deafness
precluding both music and governessing. I devised a plan for guiding the
studies of young people by correspondence, and sent out written
proposals: but, while every body professed to approve the scheme, no
pupil ever offered. I was ere long very glad of this; for the toil of the
pen would have been great, with small results of any kind, in comparison to
those which accrued from what I did write.--In the first place, I
inquired about my "Life of Howard," and found, to my interior
consternation, that there was no prospect in that quarter. Nobody knew that
I was left with only one shilling, insomuch that I dreaded the arrival of a
thirteenpenny letter, in those days of dear postage. The family supposed me
to be well-supplied, through Houlston's recent payment for one
of my little books: but that money had gone where all the rest was.
The sale of a ball-dress brought me three pounds. That was
something. I hoped, and not without reason, that my needle would bring me
enough for my small expenses, for a time; and I did earn a good many pounds
by fancy-work, in the course of the next year,--after which it
ceased to be necessary. For two years, I lived on fifty pounds a year. My
mother, always generous in money matters, would not hear of my paying my
home expenses till she saw that I should be the happier for her allowing
it: and then she assured me, and proved to me, that, as she had to
keep house at all events, and as my habits were exceedingly frugal (taking
no wine, &c.) thirty pounds a year would repay her for my residence.
Twenty pounds more sufficed for clothes, postage and sundries: and
thus did I live, as long as it was necessary, on fifty pounds a
year.--I must mention here a gift which dropped in upon me at that
time which gave me more pleasure than any money-gift that I ever
received. Our rich relations made boun-
tiful presents to my sisters, for their outfit on leaving home: but they supposed me in possession of the money they knew I had earned, and besides concluded that I could not want much, as I was to stay at home. My application about the Howard manuscript however came to the knowledge of a cousin of mine,--then and ever since, to this hour, a faithful friend to me; and he, divining the case, sent me ten pounds, in a manner so beautiful that his few lines filled me with joy. That happened on a Sunday morning; and I well remember what a happy morning it was. I had become too deaf now for public worship; and I went every fair Sunday morning over the wildest bit of country near Norwich,--a part of Mousehold, which was a sweet breezy common, overlooking the old city in its most picturesque aspect. There I went that Sunday morning; and I remember well the freshness of the turf and the beauty of the tormentilla which bestarred it, in the light and warmth of that good cousin's kindness
I now wrote to Mr. Fox, telling him of my changed circumstances, which
would compel me to render less gratuitous service than hitherto to the
"Repository." Mr. Fox replied by apologetically placing at my
disposal the only sum at his command at that time,--fifteen pounds a
year, for which I was to do as much reviewing as I thought proper. With
this letter arrived a parcel of nine books for review or notice.
Overwhelming as this was, few letters that I had ever received had given me
more pleasure than this. Here was, in the first place, work; in the next,
continued literary discipline under Mr. Fox; and lastly, this money would
buy my clothes. So to work I went, with needle and pen. I had before begun
to study German; and now, that study was my recreation; and I found a new
inspiration in the world of German literature, which was just opening,
widely and brightly, before my eager and awakened mind. it was truly
life that I lived during those days of strong intellectual and
moral effort.
After I had received about a dozen books, Mr. Fox asked me to send him
two or three tales, such as his "best readers" would not pass
by. I was flattered by this request; but I had no idea
that I could fulfil his wish, any more than I could refuse to try. Now was the time to carry out the notion I had formed on reading "Helon's Pilgrimage to Jerusalem,"--as I related above. I wrote "The Hope of the Hebrew" (the first of the "Traditions of Palestine,") and two others, as unlike it and each other as I could make them:--viz, "Solitude and Society," and "The Early Sowing,"--the Unitarian City Mission being at that time under deliberation.
I carried these stories to London myself, and put them into Mr.
Fox's own hands,--being kindly invited for a long stay at the
house of an uncle, in pursuit of my own objects. The Hebrew tale was put
forth first; and the day after its appearance, such inquiries were made of
Mr. Fox at a public dinner in regard to the authorship that I was at once
determined to make a volume of them; and the "Traditions of
Palestine" appeared accordingly, in the next spring. Except that
first story, the whole volume was written in a fortnight. By this little
volume was my name first made known in literature. I still love the memory
of the time when it was written, though there was little other
encouragement than my own pleasure in writing, and in the literary
discipline which I continued to enjoy under Mr. Fox's editorship.
With him I always succeeded; but I failed in all other directions during
that laborious winter and spring. I had no literary acquaintance or
connexion whatever; and I could not get any thing that I wrote even looked
at; so that every thing went into the "Repository" at last. I
do not mean that any amount of literary connexion would necessarily have
been of any service to me; for I do not believe that
"patronage," "introductions" and the like are of
any avail, in a general way. I know this;--that I have always been
anxious to extend to young or struggling authors the sort of aid which
would have been so precious to me in that winter of 1829-1830, and
that, in above twenty years, I have never succeeded but once. I obtained
the publication of "The Two Old Men's Tales,"--the
first of Mrs. Marsh's novels: but, from the time of my own
success to this hour, every other attempt, of the scores I have made, to
get a hearing for young or new aspirants has failed. My own
heart was often very near sinking,--as were my bodily forces; and with reason. During the daylight hours of that winter, I was poring over fine fancy-work, by which alone I earned any money; and after tea, I went upstairs to my room, for my day's literary labour. The quantity I wrote, at prodigious expenditure of nerve, surprises me now,--after my long breaking-in to hard work. Every night that winter, 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. The worst apprehension I felt,--far worse than that of disappointment, mortification and poverty,--was from the intense action of my mind. Such excitement as I was then sustaining and enjoying could not always last; and I dreaded the reaction, or the effects of its mere cessation. I was beginning, however, to learn that the future,--our intellectual and moral future,--had better be left to take care of itself, as long as the present is made the best use of; and I found, in due course, that each period of the mind's training has its own excitements, and that the less its condition is quacked, or made the subject of anticipation at all, the better for the mind's health. But my habit of anxiety was not yet broken. It was scarcely weakened. I have since found that persons who knew me only then, do not recognize me or my portraits now,--or at any tine within the last twenty years. The frown of those old days, the rigid face, the sulky mouth, the forbidding countenance, which looked as if it had never had a smile upon it, told a melancholy story which came to an end long ago: but it was so far from its end then that it amazes me now to think what liberality and forbearance were requisite in the treatment of me by Mr. Fox
and the friends I met at his house, and how capable they were of that liberality. My Sabbatarian strictness, and my prejudices on a hundred subjects must have been absurd and disagreeable enough to them: but their gentleness, respect and courtesy were such as I now remember with gratitude and pleasure. They saw that I was outgrowing my shell, and they had patience with me till I had rent it and cast it off; and if they were not equally ready with their sympathy when I had found freedom, but disposed to turn from me, in proportion as I was able to take care of myself, to do the same office for other incipient or struggling beings, this does not lessen my sense of obligation to them for the help and support they gave me in my season of intellectual and moral need.
My griefs deepened towards the close of that London visit. While failing
in all my attempts to get my articles even looked at, proposals were made
to me to remain in town, and undertake proof-correcting and other
literary drudgery, on a salary which would, with my frugal habits, have
supported me, while leaving time for literary effort on my own account. I
rejoiced unspeakably in this opening, and wrote home in high satisfaction
at the offer which would enable my young sister,--then only
eighteen,--to remain at home, pursuing her studies in companionship
with a beloved cousin of nearly her own age, and gaining something like
maturity and self-reliance before going out into the cold dark
sphere of governessing. But, to my disappointment,--I might almost
say, horror,--my mother sent me peremptory orders to go home, and to
fill the place which my poor young sister was to vacate. I rather wonder
that, being seven and twenty years old, I did not assert my independence,
and refuse to return,--so clear as was, in my eyes, the injustice of
remanding me to a position of helplessness and dependence, when a career of
action and independence was opening before me. If I had known what my young
sister was thinking and feeling, I believe I should have taken my own way,
for her sake: but I did not know all: the instinct and habit of
old obedience prevailed, and I went home, with some resentment, but far
more grief and desolation in my heart. My mother afterwards looked
back with surprise upon the peremptoriness with which she had assumed the direction of my affairs; and she told me, (what I had suspected before) that my well-meaning hostess, who knew nothing of literature, and was always perplexing me with questions as to "how much I should get" by each night's work, had advised my return home, to pursue,--not literature but needlework, by which, she wrote, I had proved that I could earn money, and in which career I should always have the encouragement and support of herself and her family. (Nothing could be more gracious than the acknowledgment of their mistake volunteered by this family at a subsequent time.) My mother was wont to be guided by them, whenever they offered their counsel; and this time it cost me very dear. I went down to Norwich, without prospect,--without any apparent chance of independence; but as fully resolved against being dependent as at any time before or after.
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; and I, for my part,
could not trust myself to utter a word of what was swelling in my heart. I
arrived worn and weary with a night journey; and my mother was so uneasy at
my looks that she made me lie down on her bed after breakfast, and, as I
could not sleep, came and sat by me for a talk.--My news was that the
Central Unitarian Association had advertized for prize Essays, by which
Unitarianism was to be presented to the notice of Catholics, Jews, and
Mohammedans. The Catholic one was to be adjudicated on at the end of
September (1830) and the other two in the following March. Three
sub-committees were appointed for the examination of the manuscripts
sent in, and for decision on them: and these sub-committees
were composed of different members, to bar all suspicion of partiality. The
essays were to be superscribed with a motto; and the motto was to be
repeated on a sealed envelope, containing the writer's name, which
was not to be looked at till the prize was awarded; and then only in the
ease of the successful candidate. The prizes were, ten guineas for the
Catholic, fifteen for the Jewish, and twenty for the Mohammedan essay. I
told my mother, as
she sat by the bedside, of this gleam of a prospect for me; and she replied that she thought it might be as well to try for one prize. My reply was "If I try at all, it shall be for all." The money reward was trifling, even in the eyes of one so poor and prospectless as I was; but I felt an earnest desire to ascertain whether I could write, as Mr. Fox and other personal friends said I could. I saw that it was a capital opportunity for a fair trial of my competency in comparison with others; and I believe it was no small consideration to me that I should thus, at all events, tide over many months before I need admit despair. My mother thought this rather desperate work; but she gave me her sympathy and encouragement during the whole period of suspense,--as did the dear old aunt who lived with us. No one else was to know; and my secret was perfectly kept. The day after my return, I began to collect my materials; and before the week was done, I had drawn out the scheme of my Essay, and had begun it. It was done within a month; and then had to be copied, lest any member of the sub-committee should know my hand. I discovered a poor school-boy who wrote a good hand; and I paid him a sovereign which I could ill spare for his work. The parcel was sent in a circuitous way to the office in London: and then, while waiting in suspense, I wrote the Tale called "Five Years of Youth," which I have never looked at since, and have certainly no inclination to read. Messrs. Darton and Harvey gave me twenty pounds for this; and most welcome was such a sum at that time. It set me forward through the toil of the Mohammedan Essay, which I began in October, I think. The "Monthly Repository" for October contained a notification that the sub-committee sitting on the first of the three occasions had adjudged the prize for the Catholic Essay to me; and the money was presently forwarded. That announcement arrived on a Sunday morning and again I had a charming walk over Mousehold, as in the year before, among the heather and the bright tormentilla.
Next day, I went to the Public Library, and brought home Sale's
Koran. A friend whom I met said "What do you bore yourself with that
book for? You will never get through it."
He little guessed what I meant to get out of it, and out of Sale's preliminary Essay. It occurred to me that the apologue form would suit the subject best; and I ventured upon it, though fearing that such daring might be fatal. One of the sub-committee, an eminent scholar, told me afterwards that it was this which mainly influenced his suffrage in my favour. In five weeks, the work was done: but my tribulation about its preparation lasted much longer; for the careless young usher who undertook the copying was not only idle but saucy; and it was doubtful to the last day whether the parcel could be in London by the first of March. Some severe threatening availed however; and that and the Jewish Essay, sent round by different hands (the hands of strangers to the whole scheme) done up in different shapes, and in different kinds of paper, and sealed with different wax and seals, were deposited at the office on the last day of February. The Jewish Essay was beautifully copied by a poor woman who wrote a clerk-like hand. The titles of titles three Essays were--
"The Essential Faith of the Universal Church" (to
Catholics).
"The Faith as Unfolded by Many Prophets" (to
Mohammedans).
"The Faith as Manifested through Israel" (to Jews).
The last of these was grounded on Lessing's "Hundred
Thoughts on the Education of the Human Race," which had taken my
fancy amazingly, in the course of my German studies,--fancy then being
the faculty most concerned in my religious views. Though my mind was
already largely prepared for this piece of work by study, and by having
treated the theory in the "Monthly Repository," and though I
enjoyed the task in a certain sense, it became very onerous before it was
done. I was by that time nearly as thin as possible; and I dreamed of the
destruction of Jerusalem, and saw the burning of the Temple, almost every
night. I might well be exhausted by that great and portentous first of
March; for the year had been one of tremendous labour. I think it was in
that year that a prize was offered by some Unitarian authority or other for
any Essay on Baptism, for which I competed, but came in only third. If that
was the year, my work stood thus:--my literary work, I
mean; for, in that season of poverty, I made and mended every thing I wore,--knitting stockings while reading aloud to my mother and aunt, and never sitting idle a minute. I may add that I made considerable progress in the study of German that year. My writings within the twelve months were as follows:
"Traditions of Palestine" (except the first tale).
"Five Years of Youth."
Seven tracts for Houlston.
Essay on Baptism.
Three Theological Essays for prizes, and
Fifty-two articles for the Monthly Repository.
By this time my mother was becoming aware of the necessity of my being a
good deal in London, if I was to have any chance in the field of
literature; and she consented to spare me for three months in the spring of
every year. An arrangement was made for my boarding at the house of a
cousin for three months from the first of March; and up I went, little
dreaming what would be happening, and how life would be opening before me,
by that day twelvemonths. One of my objects in the first instance was
improving myself in German. An admirable master brought me forward very
rapidly, on extremely low terms, in consideration of my helping him with
his English prefaces to some of his works. After a few weeks of hard work,
writing and studying, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days with
some old friends in Kent. There I refreshed myself among pretty scenery,
fresh air, and pleasant drives with hospitable friends, and with the study
of Faust at night, till a certain day, early in May, which was to prove
very eventful to me. I returned on the outside of the coach, and got down,
with my heavy bag, at my German master's door, where I took a lesson.
It was very hot; and I dragged myself and my bag home, in great fatigue,
and very hungry. Dinner was ordered up again by my hostess, and I sat an
hour, eating my dinner, resting and talking. Then I was leaving the room,
bonnet in hand, when a daughter of my hostess seemed to recollect
something, and called after me to say, "O, I forgot! I suppose"
(she was a very slow
and hesitating speaker)-"I suppose......you know......you know about......those prizes......those prize essays, you know."
"No ...... not I! What do you mean?"
"O! well, we thought ......... we thought you knew ......
"
"Well,--but what?"
"O! you have ......... why, ... you have got all the
prizes."
"Why J! why did you not tell me so before?"
"O! I thought ...... I thought you might know."
"How should I,--just up from the country? But what do
you know?"
"Why, only ......... only the Secretary of the Unitarian
Association has been here,--with a message,--with the news from
the Committee."--It was even so.
The next day was the Unitarian May Meeting; and I had come up from Kent
to attend it. I was shocked to hear, after the morning service, that, in
reading the Report in the evening, the whole story of the Essays must be
told, with the announcement of the result. I had reckoned for weeks on that
meeting, at which Rammohun Roy was to be present, and where the speaking
was expected to be particularly interesting; and neither liked to stay away
nor to encounter the telling of my story. Mr. and Mrs. Fox promised to put
me into a quiet pew if I would go as soon as the gates were opened. I did
so; but the Secretary came, among others, to be introduced, and to
congratulate; and I knew when the dreaded moment was coming, amidst his
reading of the Report, by a glance which he sent in my direction, to see if
his wife, who sat next me, was keeping up my attention. I thought the story
of all the measures and all the precautions taken by the various Committees
the longest I had ever sat under, and the silence with which it was
listened to the very deadest. I heard little indeed but the beating of my
own heart. Then came the catastrophe, and the clapping and the "Hear!
Hear!" I knew that many of my family connexions must be present, who
would be surprised and gratified. But there was one person more than I
expected. I slipped out before the meeting was over, and in the vestibule
was met by my young sister with open arms, and with an offer to go home
with me for the night. She was in the midst of an uncomfortable brief experiment of governessing, a few miles from town, and had been kindly indulged with a permission to go to this meeting, too late to let me know. She had arrived late, and got into the gallery; and before she had been seated many minutes, heard my news, so strangely told! She went home with me; and, after we had written my mother the account of the day, we talked away nearly all the rest of that May night.--It was truly a great event to me,--the greatest since my brother's reception of my first attempt in print. I had now found that I could write, and I might rationally believe that authorship was my legitimate career.
Of course, I had no conception at that time of the thorough weakness and
falseness of the views I had been conveying with so much pains and so much
complacency. This last act in connexion with the Unitarian body was a
bonâ fide one; but all was prepared for
that which ensued,--a withdrawal from the body through those regions
of metaphysical fog in which most deserters from Unitarianism abide for the
rest of their time. The Catholic essay was ignorant and metaphysical, if my
recollection of it is at all correct; and the other two mere fancy
pieces: and I can only say that if either Mohammedans or Jews have
ever been converted by them, such converts can hardly be rational enough to
be worth having. I had now plunged fairly into the spirit of my
time,--that of self-analysis, pathetic self-pity,
typical interpretation of objective matters, and scheme-making, in
the name of God and Man. That such was the stage then reached by my mind,
in its struggles upward and onward, there is outstanding proof in that
series of papers called "Sabbath Musings" which may be found in
the "Monthly Repository" of 1831. There are the papers:
and I hereby declare that I considered them my best production, and
expected they would outlive every thing else I had written or should write.
I was, in truth, satisfied that they were very fine writing, and believed
it for long after,--little aware that the time could ever come when I
should write them down, as I do now, to be morbid, fantastical, and
therefore unphilosophical and untrue. I cannot wonder that it
did not occur to the Unitarians (as far as they thought of me at all) that I was really not of them, at the time that I had picked up their gauntlet, and assumed their championship. If it did not occur to me, no wonder it did not to them. But the clear-sighted among them might and should have seen, by the evidence of those essays themselves, that I was one of those merely nominal Christians who refuse whatever they see to be impossible, absurd or immoral in the scheme or the records of Christianity, and pick out and appropriate what they like, or interpolate it with views, desires and imaginations of their own. I had already ceased to be an Unitarian in the technical sense. I was now one in the dreamy way of metaphysical accommodation, and on the ground of dissent from every other form of Christianity: the time was approaching when, if I called myself so at all, it was only in the free-thinking sense. Then came a few years during which I remonstrated with Unitarians in vain against being claimed by them, which I considered even more injurious to them than to me. They were unwilling, as they said, and as I saw, to recognize the complete severance of the theological bond between us: and I was careful to assert, in every practicable way, that it was no doing of mine if they were taunted by the orthodox with their sectarian fellowship with the writer of "Eastern Life." At length, I hope and believe my old co-religionists understand and admit that I disclaim their theology in toto, and that by no twisting of language or darkening of its meanings can I be made out to have any thing whatever in common with them about religious matters. I perceive that they do not at all understand my views or the grounds of them, or the road to them: but they will not deny that I understand theirs,--chosen expositor as I was of them in the year 1831; and they must take my word for it that there is nothing in common between their theology and my philosophy. Our stand-point is different; and all our views and estimates are different accordingly. Of course, I consider my stand-point the truer one; and my views and estimates the higher, wider, and more accurate, as I shall have occasion to show. I consider myself the best qualified of the two parties to judge of the relative value of the views
of either, because I have the experience of both, while I see that they have no comprehension of mine: but the point on which we may and ought to agree is that my severance from their faith was complete and necessarily final when I wrote "Eastern Life," though many of them could not be brought to admit it, nor some (whom I asked) to assert it at the time. While I saw that many Unitarians resented as a slander the popular imputation that their sect is "a harbourage for infidels," I did not choose that they should have that said of them in my case: and it is clear that if they were unwilling to exchange a disownment with me, they could have no right to quarrel with that imputation in future.
resolved to sustain my health under the suspense, if possible, by keeping up a mood of steady determination, and unfaltering hope. Next, I resolved never to lose my temper, in the whole course of the business. I knew I was right; and people who are aware that they are in the right need never lose temper. Lastly, I resolved to refuse, under any temptation whatever, to accept any loan from my kind mother and aunt. I felt that I could never get over causing them any pecuniary loss,--my mother having really nothing to spare, and my aunt having been abundantly generous to the family already. My own small remnant of property (which came to nothing after all) I determined to risk; and, when the scheme began to take form, I accepted small loans from two opulent friends, whom I was able presently to repay. They knew the risks as well as I; and they were men of business; and there was no reason for declining the timely aid, so freely and kindly granted. What those months of suspense were like, it is necessary now to tell.
I wrote to two or three publishers from Dublin, opening my scheme; but
one after another declined having any thing to do with it, on the ground of
the disturbed state of the public mind, which afforded no encouragement to
put out new books. The bishops had recently thrown out the Reform Bill; and
every body was watching the progress of the Cholera,--then regarded
with as much horror as a plague of the middle ages. The terrifying Order in
Council which froze men's hearts by its doleful commands and
recommendations, was issued just at the same time with my poor proposals;
and no wonder that I met only refusals. Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock,
however, requested me to take London on my way back to Norwich, that we
might discuss the subject. I did so; and I took with me as a witness a
lawyer cousin who told me long afterwards what an amusing scene it was to
him. Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock sat superb in their arm-chairs, in
their brown wigs, looking as cautious as possible, but relaxing visibly
under the influence of my confidence. My cousin said that, in their place,
he should have felt my confidence a sufficient guarantee,--so fully as
I assigned the grounds of it: and Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock seemed
to be
nearly of the same mind, though they brought out a long string of objections, beginning with my proposed title, and ending with the Reform Bill and the Cholera. They wanted to suppress the words Political Economy altogether: but I knew that science could not be smuggled in anonymously. I gave up the point for the time, feeling assured that they would find their smuggling scheme impracticable. "Live and let live" was their title; and its inadequacy was vexatious enough, as showing their imperfect conception of the plan: but it was necessary to let them have their own way in the matter of preliminary advertising. They put out a sort of feeler in the form of an advertisement in some of the Diffusion Society's publications; but an intimation so vague and obscure attracted no notice. This melancholy fact Messrs. Baldwin and Cradock duly and dolefully announced to me. Still, they did not let go for some time; and I afterwards heard that they were so near becoming my publishers that they had actually engaged a stitcher for my monthly numbers. Fortunately for me, as it turned out, but most discouragingly at the time, they withdrew, after a hesitation of many weeks. They had read and approved of a part of the manuscript of "Life in the Wilds,"--my first number: but they went on doubting; and at last wrote to me that, considering the public excitement about the Reform Bill and the Cholera, they dared not venture.
Here was the whole work to begin again. I stifled my sighs, and
swallowed my tears, and wrote to one publisher after another, receiving
instant refusals from all, except Messrs. Whittaker. They kept up the
negotiation for a few posts, but at length joined the general chorus about
the Reform Bill and the Cholera. They offered, however, to do their best
for the work as mere publishers, on the usual terms of commission. My
mother and aunt re-urged my accepting a loan from them of money
which they were willing to risk in such a cause: but of course I
would not hear of this. Mr. Fox appeared at that time earnest in the
project; and a letter from him came by the same post with Messrs.
Whittakers' last, saying that booksellers might be found to share the
risk; and he named one (who, like Baldwin and Cradock, afterwards failed)
who would be likely to go
halves with me in risk and profit. I did not much relish either the plan or the proposed publisher; but I was in no condition to refuse suggestions. I said to my mother, "You know what a man of business would do in my case."--"What?"--"Go up to town by the next mail, and see what is to be done."--"My dear, you would not think of doing such a thing, alone, and in this weather!"--"I wish it."--"Well, then, let us show Henry the letters after dinner, and see what he will say."--As soon as the cloth was removed, and we had drawn round the fire, I showed my brother Henry the letters, with the same remark I had made to my mother. He sat looking into the fire for several minutes, while nobody spoke: and then he turned to me, and said oracularly "Go!"--I sprang up,--sent to have my place taken by the early morning coach, tied up and dispatched borrowed books, and then ran to my room to pack. There I found a fire, and my trunk airing before it. All was finished an hour before tea time; and I was at leisure to read to my old ladies for the rest of the evening. On my mother observing that she could not have done it, my aunt patted me on the shoulder, and said that, at least, the back was fitted to the burden. This domestic sympathy was most supporting to me; but, at the same time, it rendered success more stringently necessary.
My scheme of going to London was not at all a wild one, unless the speed
of the movement, and the state of the weather made it so. It was the
beginning of December, foggy and sleety. I was always sure of a home in
London, with or without notice; and without notice I presented myself at my
cousin's door that dreary December Saturday night. It was a great
Brewery house, always kept open, and cooking daily going on, for the use of
the partners. My kind cousin and his family were to leave home the next
morning, for three weeks: but, as he observed, this would rather aid
than hinder my purposes, as I went for work. I was really glad to be alone
during those three eventful weeks,--feeling myself no intruder, all
the while, and being under the care of attentive servants.
My first step on Monday was seeing the publisher mentioned
by Mr. Fox. He shook his head; his wife smiled; and he begged to see the opening chapters, promising to return them, with a reply, in twenty-four hours. His reply was what was already burnt in upon my brain. He had "no doubt of the excellence,--wished it success--but feared that the excitement of the public mind about the Reform Bill and the Cholera would afford it no chance," &c., &c. I was growing as sick of the Reform Bill as poor King William himself. I need not detail, even if I could remember, the many applications I made in the course of the next few days. Suffice it that they were all unsuccessful, and for the same alleged reasons. Day after day, I came home weary with disappointment, and with trudging many miles through the clay of the streets, and the fog of the gloomiest December I ever saw. I came home only to work; for I must be ready with two first numbers in case of a publisher turning up any day. All the while, too, I was as determined as ever that my scheme should be fulfilled. Night after night, the Brewery clock struck twelve, while the pen was still pushing on in my trembling hand. I had promised to take one day's rest, and dine and sleep at the Foxes'. Then, for the first time, I gave way, in spite of all my efforts. Some trifle having touched my feelings before saying "Good-night," the sluices burst open, and I cried all night. In the morning, Mr. Fox looked at me with great concern, stepped into the next room, and brought a folded paper to the breakfast table, saying "Don't read this now. I can't bear it. These are what may be called terms from my brother." (A young bookseller who did not pretend to have any business, at that time.) "I do not ask you even to consider them; but they will enable you to tell publishers that you hold in your hand terms offered by a publisher: and this may at least procure attention to your scheme." These were, to the subsequent regret of half a score of publishers, the terms on which my work was issued at last.
I immediately returned to town, and went straight to Whittaker's.
Mr. Whittaker looked bored, fidgeted, yawned, and then said, with extreme
rudeness, "I have told you already that these are not times for new
enterprises." "Then," said I, rising,
"it is now time for me to consider the terms from another publisher which I hold in my hand." "O, indeed,--really, Ma'am?" said he, reviving. "Do me the favour to give me a short time for consideration. Only twenty-four hours, Ma'am." I refreshed his memory about the particulars, and endeavoured to make him see why the times were not unseasonable for this special work, though they might be for light literature.
It was next necessary to look at the paper I had been carrying. I read
it with dismay. The very first stipulation was that the work should be
published by subscription: and, moreover, the subscription must be
for five hundred copies before the work began. Subscribers were to be
provided by both parties; and Charles Fox was to have half the profits,
besides the usual bookseller's commission and privileges. The
agreement was to cease at the end of any five numbers, at the wish of
either party. As Charles Fox had neither money nor connexion, I felt that
the whole risk was thrown upon me; and that I should have all the peril, as
well as the toil, while Charles Fox would enjoy the greater part of the
proceeds, in case of success, and be just where he was before, in case of
failure. In fact, he never procured a single subscriber; and he told me
afterwards that he knew from the beginning that he never should. After
pondering this heart-sickening Memorandum, I looked with no small
anxiety for Whittaker's final reply. I seemed to see the dreaded
words through the envelope; and there they were within. Mr. Whittaker
expressed his "regrets that the public mind being so engrossed with
the Reform Bill and the approach of the Cholera," &c., &c.
The same story to the end! Even now, in this low depth of disappointment,
there were lower depth to be explored. The fiercest trial was now at
hand.
I remonstrated strongly with Mr. Fox about the subscription stipulation;
but in vain. The mortification to my pride was not the worst part of it,
though that was severe enough. I told him that I could not stoop to that
method, if any other means were left; to which he replied "You will
stoop to conquer." But he had no consolation to offer under the far
more serious anxiety which I strove to impress on his mind as my main
ob-
jection to the scheme. Those persons from whom I might hope for pecuniary support were precisely those to whom I despaired of conveying any conception of my aim, or of the object and scope of my work. Those who would, I believed, support it were, precisely, persons who had never seen or heard of me, and whose support could not be solicited. My view was the true one, as I might prove by many pages of anecdote. Suffice it that, at the very time when certain members of parliament were eagerly inquiring about the announced work, the wife of one of them, a rich lady of my acquaintance, to whom a prospectus had been sent, returned it, telling me that she "knew too well what she was about to buy a pig in a poke:" and the husband of a cousin of mine, a literary man in his way, sent me, in return for the prospectus, a letter, enclosing two sovereigns, and a lecture against my rashness and presumption in supposing that I was adequate to such work as authorship, and offering the enclosed sum as his mite towards the subscription; but recommending rather a family subscription which might eke out my earnings by my needle. I returned the two sovereigns, with a declaration that I wished for no subscribers but those who expected full value for their payment, and that I would depend upon my needle and upon charity when I found I could not do better, and not before. This gentleman apologised handsomely afterwards. The lady never did. It should be remembered that it is easy enough to laugh at these incidents now; but that it was a very different matter then, when success seemed to be growing more and more questionable and difficult every day. I had no resource, however, but to try the method I heartily disapproved and abhorred. I drew up a Prospectus, in which I avoided all mention of a subscription, in the hope that it might soon be dispensed with, but fully explanatory of the nature and object of the work. To this I added in my own handwriting an urgent appeal to all whom I could ask to be subscribers. I went to Mr. Fox's, one foggy morning, to show him one of these, and the advertisement intended for the next day's papers, announcing the first of February as the day of publication: (for it was now too late to open with the year). I found Mr. Fox in a mood as gloomy
as the day. He had seen Mr. James Mill, who had assured him that my method of exemplification,--(the grand principle of the whole scheme) could not possibly succeed; and Mr. Fox now required of me to change my plan entirely, and issue my Political Economy in a didactic form! Of course, I refused. He started a multitude of objections,--feared every thing, and hoped nothing. I saw, with anguish and no little resentment, my last poor chance slipping from me. I commanded myself while in his presence. The occasion was too serious to be misused. I said to him "I see you have taken fright. If you wish that your brother should draw back, say so now. Here is the advertisement. Make up your mind before it goes to press." He replied, "I do not wish altogether to draw back." "Yes, you do," said I: "and I had rather you would say so at once. But I tell you this:---the people want this book, and they shall have it." "I know that is your intention," he replied: "but I own I do not see how it is to come to pass."--"Nor I: but it shall. So, say that you have done with it, and I will find other means." "I tell you, I do not wish altogether to draw out of it; but I cannot think of my brother going on without decisive success at the outset." "What do you mean, precisely?" "I mean that he withdraws at the end of two numbers, unless the success of the work is secured in a fortnight." "What do you mean by success being secured?" "You must sell a thousand in a fortnight." "In a fortnight! That is unreasonable! Is this your ultimatum?" "Yes." "We shall not sell a thousand in the first fortnight: nevertheless, the work shall not stop at two numbers. It shall go on to five, with or without your brother." "So I perceive you say." "What is to be done with this advertisement?" I inquired. "Shall I send it,--yes or no?" "Yes: but remember Charles gives up at the end of two numbers, unless you sell a thousand in the first fortnight."
I 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 Shoreditch, I became too giddy to
stand without 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." I moved on as soon as I could, apprehending that the passers-by took me to be drunk: but the pavement swam before my eyes so that I was glad enough to get to the Brewery. I tried to eat some dinner; but the vast rooms, the plate and the liveried servant were too touching a contrast to my present condition; and I was glad to go to work, to drown my disappointment in a flow of ideas. Perhaps the piece of work that I did may show that I succeeded. I wrote the Preface to my "Illustrations of Political Economy" that evening; and I hardly think that any one would discover from it that I had that day sunk to the lowest point of discouragement about my scheme.--At eleven o'clock, I sent the servants to bed. I finished the Preface just after the Brewery clock had struck two. I was chilly and hungry: the lamp burned low, and the fire was small. I knew it would not do to go to bed, to dream over again the bitter disappointment of the morning. I began now, at last, to doubt whether my work would ever see the light. I thought of the multitudes who needed it,--and especially of the poor,--to assist them in managing their own welfare. I thought too of my own conscious power of doing this very thing. Here was the thing wanting to be done, and I wanting to do it; and the one person who had seemed best to understand the whole affair now urged me to give up either the whole scheme, or, what was worse, its main principle! It was an inferior consideration, but still, no small matter to me, that I had no hope or prospect of usefulness or independence if this project failed: and I did not feel that night that I could put my heart into any that might arise. As the fire crumbled, I put it together till nothing but dust and ashes remained; and when the lamp went out, I lighted the chamber candle; but at last it was necessary to go to bed; and at four o'clock I went, after crying for two hours, with my feet on the fender. I cried in bed till six, when I fell asleep; but I was at the breakfast table by half-past eight, and ready for the work of the day.
The work of the day was to prepare and send out my Circulars. After
preparing enough for my family, I took into my
confidence the before-mentioned cousin,--my benefactor and my host at that time. He was regarded by the whole clan as a prudent and experienced man of business; and I knew that his countenance would be of great value to me. That countenance he gave me, and some good suggestions, and no discouragement.--It was very disagreeable to have to appeal to monied relations whose very confidence and generosity would be a burden on my mind till I had redeemed my virtual pledges; while the slightest indulgence of a critical spirit by any of them must be exceedingly injurious to my enterprise. It was indeed not very long before I had warnings from various quarters that some of my relations were doing me "more harm by their tongues than they could ever do good by their guineas." This was true, as the censors themselves have since spontaneously and handsomely told me. I could not blame them much for saying what they thought of my rashness and conceit, while I cordially honer the candour of their subsequent confession: but their sayings were so much added to the enormous obstructions of the case. From my first act of appeal to my monied relations, however, I derived such singular solace that every incident remains fresh in my mind, and I may fairly indulge in going over it once more.
My oldest surviving uncle and his large family, living near Clapham, had
always been ready and kind in their sympathy; and I was now to find the
worth of it more than ever in connexion with the greatest of my
enterprises. On the next Sunday, I returned with them when they went home
from Chapel. While at luncheon, my uncle told me that he understood I had
some new plan, and he was anxious to know what it was. His daughters
proposed that I should explain it after dinner, when their brothers would
be present. After dinner, accordingly, I was called upon for my
explanation, which I gave in a very detailed way. All were silent, waiting
for my uncle to make his remark, the very words of which I distinctly
remember, at the distance of nearly a quarter of a century. In his gentle
and gracious manner he said, "You are a better judge, my dear, than
we of this scheme; but we know that your industry and energy are the pride
of us all, and ought to have our support." When we
ladies went to the drawing-room, I knew there would be a consultation between my uncle and his sons: and so there was. At the close of the pleasant evening, he beckoned to me, and made me sit beside him on the sofa, and told me of the confidence of his family and himself that what I was doing would be very useful: that his daughters wished for each a copy of the Series, his sons two each; and that he himself must have five. "And," he concluded, "as you will like to pay your printer immediately, you shall not wait for our money." So saying, he slipped a packet of bank notes and gold into my hand, to the amount of payment for fourteen copies of the whole series! To complete the grace of his hospitality, he told me that he should go to town late the next morning, and would escort me; and he desired me to sleep as late as I liked. And I did sleep,--the whole night through, and awoke a new creature. Other members of the family did what they thought proper, in the course of the week; and then I had only to go home, and await the result.
I was rather afraid to show myself to my mother,--thin as I was,
and yellow, and coughing with every breath; and she was panic-struck
at the evident symptoms of liver-complaint which the first
half-hour disclosed. I was indeed in wretched health; and during the
month of April following, when I was writing "Demerara," I was
particularly ill. I do not think I was ever well again till, at the close
of 1833, I was entirely laid aside, and confined to my bed for a month, by
inflammation of the liver. I am confident that that serious illness began
with the toils and anxieties, and long walks in fog and mud, of two years
before. My mother took my health in hand anxiously and most tenderly. In
spite of my entreaties, she would never allow me to be wakened in the
morning; and on Sundays, the day when Charles Fox's dispatches came
by a manufacturer's parcel, my breakfast was sent up to me, and I was
not allowed to rise till the middle of the day. For several weeks I dreaded
the arrival of the publisher's weekly letter. He always wrote
gloomily, and sometimes rudely. The subscription proceeded very little
better than I had anticipated. From first to last, about three hundred
copies were subscribed for: and before that number had been reached,
the
success of the work was such as to make the subscription a mere burden. It was a thoroughly vexatious part of the business altogether,--that subscription. A clever suggestion of mother's, at this time, had, I believe, much to do with the immediate success of the book. By her advice, I sent, by post, a copy of my Prospectus (without a word about subscription in it) to almost every member of both Houses of Parliament. There was nothing of puffery in this,--nothing that I had the least objection to do. It was merely informing our legislators that a book was coming out on their particular class of subjects.
I may as well mention in this place, that I had offered (I cannot at all
remember when) one of my tales,--the one which now stands as
"Brooke and Brooke Farm,"--to the Diffusion Society,
whence it had been returned. Absurd as were some the stories afterwards set
afloat about this transaction, there was thus much foundation for them. Mr.
Knight, then the publisher of the Society, sent me a note of cordial and
generous encouragement; but a sub-committee, to whose judgment the
manuscript was consigned, thought it "dull," and pronounced
against its reception accordingly. I knew nothing about this
sub-committee, or about the method employed, and had in fact
forgotten, among so many failures, that particular one, when, long after, I
found to my regret and surprise, that the gentlemen concerned had been
supposing me offended and angry all the while, and somehow an accomplice in
Lord Brougham's mockery of their decision. In vain I told them that I
now thought them perfectly right to form and express their own judgment,
and that I had never before heard who had been my judges. I fear the
soreness remains in their minds to this day, though there never was any in
mine. Lord Brougham's words travelled far and wide, and were
certainly anything but comfortable to the subcommittee. He said he should
revive the torture for their sakes, as hanging was too good for them. He
tore his hair over the tales, he added, unable to endure that the whole
Society, "instituted for the very purpose, should be driven out of
the field by a little deaf woman at Norwich."--As I have said, I
cannot remember at what time I made my application; but I imagine
it must have been during that eventful year 1831,--in which case the writing of that story must come into the estimate of the work of that year.
A cheering incident occurred during the interval of awaiting the effects
of the Circular. Every body knows that the Gurneys are the great bankers of
Norwich. Richard Hanbury Gurney, at that time one of the Members for
Norfolk, was in the firm; and he was considered to be one of the
best-informed men in England on the subject of Currency. The head
officer of the bank, Mr. Simon Martin, deserved the same reputation, and
had it, among all who knew him. He sent for my brother Henry, who found him
with my Circular before him. He said that he had a message to communicate
to me from the firm: and the message was duly delivered, when Mr.
Martin had satisfied himself that my brother conscientiously believed me
adequate to my enterprise. Messrs. Gurney considered the scheme an
important one, promising public benefit: they doubted whether it
would be immediately appreciated: they knew that I could not afford
to go on at a loss, but thought it a pity that a beneficial enterprise
should fall to the ground for want of immediate support: and they
therefore requested that, in case of discouragement in regard to the sale,
I should apply to them before giving up. "Before she gives up, let
her come to us," were their words: words which were as pleasant
to me in the midst of my success as they could have been if I had needed
the support so generously offered.
Meantime the weekly letter grew worse and worse. But on the Sunday
preceding the day of publication came a bit of encouragement in the shape
of a sentence in these, or nearly these words. "I see no chance of
the work succeeding unless the trade take it up better. We have only one
considerable booksellers' order--from A and B for a hundred
copies." "Why, there," said my mother, "is a
hundred towards your thousand!" "Ah, but," said I,
"where are the other nine hundred to come from, in a
fortnight?" The edition consisted of fifteen hundred.
To the best of my recollection, I waited ten days from the day
of publication, before I had another line from the publisher. My mother, judging from his ill-humour, inferred that he had good news to tell: whereas I supposed the contrary. My mother was right; and I could now be amused at his last attempts to be discouraging in the midst of splendid success. At the end of those ten days, he sent with his letter a copy of my first number, desiring me to make with all speed any corrections I might wish to make, as he had scarcely any copies left. He added that the demand led him to proposed that we should now print two thousand. A postscript informed me that since he wrote the above, he had found that we should want three thousand. A second postscript proposed four thousand, and a third five thousand. The letter was worth having, now it had come. There was immense relief in this; but I remember nothing like intoxication;--like any painful reaction whatever. I remember walking up and down the grassplat in the garden (I think it was on the tenth of February) feeling that my cares were over. And so they were. From that hour, I have never had any other anxiety about employment than what to choose, nor any real care about money. Eight or nine years after, I found myself entirely cut off by illness from the power of working; and then my relations and friends aided me in ways so generous as to make it easy for me to accept the assistance. But even then, I was never actually pinched for money; and, from the time that the power of working was restored, I was at once as prosperous as ever, and became more and more so till now, when illness has finally visited me in a condition of independence. I think I may date my release from pecuniary care from that tenth of February, 1832.
The entire periodical press, daily, weekly, and, as soon as possible,
monthly, came out in my favour; and I was overwhelmed with newspapers and
letters, containing every sort of flattery. The Diffusion Society wanted to
have the Series now; and Mr. Hume offered, on behalf of a new society of
which he was the head, any price I would name for the purchase of the
whole. I cannot precisely answer for the date of these and other
applications; but, as far as I remember, there was, from the middle of
February onwards, no remission of such applications, the meanest of which I should have clutched at a few weeks before. Members of Parliament sent down blue books through the post-office, to the astonishment of the postmaster, who one day sent word that I must send for my own share of the mail, for it could not be carried without a barrow;--an announcement which, spreading in the town, caused me to be stared at in the streets. Thus began that sort of experience. Half the hobbies of the House of Commons, and numberless notions of individuals, anonymous and other, were commended to me for treatment in my Series, with which some of them had no more to do than geometry or the atomic theory. I had not calculated on this additional labour, in the form of correspondence; and very weary I often was of it, in the midst of the amusement. One necessity arose out of it which soon became very clear,--that I must reside in London, for the sake of the extensive and varied information which I now found was at my service there, and which the public encouragement of my work made it my duty to avail myself of.
It seemed hard upon my kind mother and aunt that the first consequence
of the success they buoyed me up in hoping for should be to take me to
London, after all: but the events of the summer showed them the
necessity of the removal. We treated it as for a time; and I felt that my
mother would not endure a permanent separation. The matter ended in their
joining me in a small house in London, before many months were over:
and meantime, my mother stipulated for my being in the house of some family
well known to her. I obtained lodgings in the house of a tailor in Conduit
Street, whose excellent wife had been an acquaintance of ours from her
childhood to her marriage. There I arrived in November, 1832; and there I
lodged till the following September, when I went, with my mother and aunt,
into a house (No. 17) in Fludyer Street, Westminster, where I resided till
the breakdown of my health (which took place in 1839) removed me from
London altogether.
Here I stop, thinking that the third period of my life may be considered
as closing with the conquest of all difficulty about
getting a hearing from the public for what I felt I had to say. Each period of my life has had its trials and heart-wearing difficulties,--except (as will be seen) the last; but in none had the pains and penalties of life a more intimate connexion with the formation of character than in the one which closes here. And now the summer of my life was bursting forth without any interval of spring. My life began with winter, burst suddenly into summer, and is now ending with autumn,--mild and sunny. I have had no spring: but that cannot be helped now. It was a moral disadvantage, as well as a great loss of happiness: but we all have our moral disadvantages to make the best of; and "happiness" is not, as the poet says, "our being's end and aim," but the result of one faculty among many, which must be occasionally overborne by others, if there is to be any effectual exercise of the whole being. So I am satisfied in a higher sense than that in which the Necessarian is always satisfied. I cannot but know that in my life there has been a great waste of precious time and material: but I had now, by thirty years of age, ascertained my career, found occupation, and achieved independence; and thus the rest of my life was provided with its duties and its interests. Any one to whom that happens by thirty years of age may be satisfied; and I was so.
strongest call of duty could make me now live in a street; and if I allowed myself to give way to distress at the mysteries of human life, one of my greatest perplexities would be at so many people being obliged so to live. Now that I have dwelt for nine years in a field, where there is never any dust, never any smoke, never any noise; where my visitors laugh at the idea of the house ever being cleaned, because it never gets dirty; where there is beauty to be seen from every window, and in bad weather it is a treat to stand in the porch and see it rain, I cannot but wonder at my former contentment. I have visited and gone over our old house in Magdalen Street, at Norwich, within a few years; and I could not but wonder how my romantic days could ever have come on in such a place. There it stands,--a handsome, plain brick house, in a narrow street,--Norwich having nothing but narrow streets. There it is,--roomy and good-looking enough; but prosaic to the last degree. Except the vine on its back gable, there is not an element of naturalness or poetry about it. Yet there were my dreamy years passed. In my London lodging, a splendid vision was to open upon me,--one which I am glad to have enjoyed, because it was enjoyment; and because a diversified experience is good; and because I really gained much knowledge of human life and character from it. I became the fashion, and I might have been the "lion" of several seasons, if I had chosen to permit it. I detested the idea, and absolutely put down the practice in my own case: but I saw as much of a very varied society as if I had allowed myself to be lionised, and with a more open mind than if I had not insisted on being treated simply as a lady or let alone. The change from my life in Norwich to my life in London was certainly prodigious, and such as I did not dream of when I exchanged the one for the other. Before we lost our money, and when I was a young lady "just introduced," my mother insisted on taking me to balls and parties, though that sort of visiting was the misery of my life. My deafness was terribly in the way, both because it made me shy, and because underbred people, like the card-players and dancers of a provincial town, are awkward in such a case. Very few people spoke to me; and I
dare say I looked as if I did not wish to be spoken to. From the time when I went to London, all that was changed. People began with me as with a deaf person; and there was little more awkwardness about hearing, when they had once reconciled themselves to my trumpet. They came to me in good will, or they would not have come at all. They and I were not jumbled together by mere propinquity; we met purposely; and, if we continued our intercourse, it was through some sort of affinity. I now found what the real pleasures of social intercourse are, and was deeply sensible of its benefits: but it really does not appear to me that I was intoxicated with the pleasure, or that I over-rated the benefit. I think so because I always preferred my work to this sort of play. I think so because some sober friends,--two or three whom I could trust,--said, first, that I might and probably should say and do some foolish things, but that I should "prove ultimately unspoilable;" and afterwards that I was not spoiled. I think so because I altered no plan or aim in life on account of any social distinction; and I think so, finally, because, while vividly remembering the seven years from 1832 to 1839, and feeling as gratefully and complacently as ever the kindness and attachment of friends, and the good-will of a multitude of acquaintances, I had no inclination to return to literary life in London after my recovery at Tynemouth, and have for ten years rejoiced, without pause or doubt, in my seclusion and repose in my quiet valley. There is an article of mine on "Literary Lionism" in the London and Westminster Review of April, 1839, which was written when the subject was fresh in my thoughts and feelings. In consideration of this, and of my strong repugnance to detailing the incidents of my own reception in society, on entering the London world, while such an experience cannot be wholly passed over in an account of my life, I think the best way will be to cite that article,--omitting those passages only which are of a reviewing character. By this method, it will appear what my impressions were while in conflict with the practice of literary lionism; and I shall be spared the disgusting task of detailing old absurdities and dwelling on old flatterice, which had myself for their subject.
Many of the stories which I could tell are comic enough; and a few are exceedingly interesting: but they would be all spoiled, to myself and every body else, by their relating to myself. The result on my own convictions and feelings is all that it is necessary to give; and that result can be given in no form so trustworthy as in the record penned at the time. It must be remembered that the article appeared in an anonymous form, or some appearance of conceit and bad taste may hang about even that form of disclosure.--The statement and treatment of the subject will however lead forward so far into my London life that I must fill up an intermediate space. I must give some account of my work before I proceed to treat of my playhours.
In meditating on my course of life at that time, and gathering together
the evidences of what I was learning and doing, I am less disposed than I
used to be to be impatient with my friends for their incessant rebukes and
remonstrances about over-work. From the age of fifteen to the moment
in which I am writing, I have been scolded in one form or another, for
working too hard; and I wonder my friends did not find out thirty years ago
that there is no use in their fault-finding. I am heartily sick of
it, I own; and there may be some little malice in the satisfaction with
which I find myself dying, after all, of a disease which nobody can
possibly attribute to over-work. Though knowing all along that my
friends were mistaken as to what was moderate and what immoderate work, in
other cases than their own (and I have always left them free
to judge and act for themselves) I have never denied that less toil and
more leisure would be wholesome and agreeable to me. My pleas have been
that I have had no power of choice, and that my critics misjudged the
particular case. Almost every one of them has proceeded on the supposition
that the labour of authorship involved immense "excitement;"
and I, who am the quietest of quiet bodies, when let alone in my business,
have been warned against "excitement" till I am fairly sick of
the word. One comfort has always been that those who were witnesses of my
work-a-day life always came round to an agreement with me
that literary labour is not necessarily more hurtfully exciting than any
other
serious occupation. My mother, alarmed at a distance, and always expecting to hear of a brain fever, used to say, amidst the whirl of our London spring days, "My dear, I envy your calmness." And a very intimate friend, one of the strongest remonstrants, told me spontaneously, when I had got through a vast pressure of work in her country house, that she should never trouble me more on that head, as she saw that my authorship was the fulfillment of a natural function,--conducive to health of body and mind, instead of injurious to either. It would have saved me from much annoyance (kindly intended) if others had observed with the same good sense, and admitted conviction with equal candour. Authorship has never been with me a matter of choice. I have not done it for amusement, or for money, or for fame, or for any reason but because I could not help it. Things were pressing to be said; and there was more or less evidence that I was the person to say them. In such a ease, it was always impossible to decline the duty for such reasons as that I should like more leisure, or more amusement, or more sleep, or more of any thing whatever. If my life had depended on more leisure and holiday, I could not have taken it. What wanted to be said must be said, for the sake of the many, whatever might be the consequences to the one worker concerned. Nor could the immediate task be put aside, from the remote consideration, for ever pressed upon me, of lengthening my life. The work called for to-day must not be refused for the possible sake of next month or next year. While feeling far less injured by toil than my friends took for granted I must be, I yet was always aware of the strong probability that my life would end as the lives of hard literary workers usually end,--in paralysis, with months or years of imbecility. Every one must recoil from the prospect of being thus burdensome to friends and attendants; and it certainly was a matter of keen satisfaction to me, when my present fatal disease was ascertained, that I was released from that liability, and should die of something else, far less formidable to witnesses and nurses. Yet, the contemplation of such a probability in the future was no reason for declining the duty of the time; and I could not have written
a volume the less if I had foreknown that, at a certain future day and hour, I should be struck down like Scott and Southey, and many another faithful labourer in the field of literature.
One deep and steady conviction, obtained from my own experience and
observation, largely qualified any apprehensions I might have, and was
earnestly impressed by me upon my remonstrating friends; that enormous loss
of strength, energy and time is occasioned by the way in which people go to
work in literature, as if its labours were in all respects different from
any other kind of toil. I am confident that intellectual industry and
intellectual punctuality are as practicable as industry and punctuality in
any other direction. I have seen vast misery of conscience and temper arise
from the irresolution and delay caused by waiting for congenial moods,
favourable circumstances, and so forth. I can speak, after long experience,
without any doubt on this matter. I have suffered, like other writers, from
indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of
"inspiration," and all that: but I have also found that
sitting down, however reluctantly, with the pen in my hand, I have never
worked for one quarter of an hour without finding myself in full
train: so that all the quarter hours, arguing, doubting and
hesitation as to whether I should work or not which I gave way to in my
inexperience, I now regard as so much waste, not only of time but, far
worse, of energy. To the best of my belief, never but once in my life left
my work because I could not do it: and that single occasion was on
the opening day of an illness. When once experience had taught me that I
could work when I chose, and within a quarter of an hour of my determining
to do so, I was relieved, in a great measure, from those embarrassments and
depressions which I see afflicting many an author who waits for a mood
instead of summoning it, and is the sport, instead of the master, of his
own impressions and ideas.--As far as the grosser physical influences
are concerned, an author has his lot pretty much in his own hands, because
it is in his power to shape his habits in accordance with the laws of
nature: and an author who does not do this has no business with the
lofty vocation. I am very far indeed from desiring to set up my own practices as an example for others; and I do not pretend that they are wholly rational, or the best possible: but. as the facts are clear--that I have, without particular advantages of health and strength, done an unusual amount of work without fatal, perhaps without injurious consequences, and without the need of pernicious stimulants and peculiar habits,--it may be as well to explain what my methods were, that others may test them experimentally, if they choose.
As for my hours,--it has always been my practice to devote my best
strength to my work; and the morning hours have therefore been sacred to
it, from the beginning. I really do not know what it is to take any thing
but the pen in hand, the first thing after breakfast, except of course, in
travelling. I never pass a day without writing; and the writing is always
done in the morning. There have been times when I have been obliged to
"work double tides," and therefore to work at night: but
it has never been a practice; and I have seldom written any thing more
serious than letters by candlelight. In London, I boiled my coffee at seven
or haft-past, and went to work immediately till two, when it was
necessary to be at liberty for visitors till four o'clock. It was
impossible for me to make calls. I had an immense acquaintance, no
carriage, and no time: and I therefore remained at home always from
two till four, to receive all who came; and I called on nobody. I knew that
I should be quizzed or blamed for giving myself airs: but I could not
help that. I had engaged before I came to London to write a number of my
Series every month for two years; and I could not have fulfilled my
engagement and made morning visits too. Sydney Smith was one of the
quizzers. He thought I might have managed the thing better, by
"sending round an inferior authoress in a carriage to drop the
cards."
When my last visitor departed, I ran out for an hour's walk,
returning in time to dress and read the newspaper, before the carriage
came,--somebody's carriage being always sent--to take me
out to dinner. An evening visit or two closed the day's engagements.
I tried my best to get home by twelve or half-
past, in order to answer the notes I was sure to find on my table, or to get a little reading before going to rest between one and two. A very refreshing kind of visit was (and it happened pretty often) when I walked to the country, or semi-country house of an intimate friend, and slept there,--returning before breakfast, or in time to sit down to my morning's work. After my mother and aunt joined me in London, I refused Sunday visiting altogether, and devoted that evening to my old ladies. So much for the times of working.
I was deeply impressed by something which an excellent clergyman told me
one day, when there was nobody by to bring mischief on the head of the
relater. This clergyman knew the literary world of his time so thoroughly
that there was probably no author of any mark then living in England, with
whom he was not more or less acquainted. It must be remembered that a new
generation has now grown up. He told me that he had reason to believe that
there was no author or authoress who was free from the habit of taking some
pernicious stimulant;--either strong green tea, or strong coffee at
night, or wine or spirits or laudanum. The amount of opium taken, to
relieve the wear and tear of authorship, was, he said, greater than most
people had any conception of: and all literary workers
took something. "Why, I do not," said I. "Fresh air and
cold water are my stimulants."--"I believe you," he
replied. "But you work in the morning; and there is much in
that." I then remembered that when, for a short time, I had to work
at night (probably on one of the Poor-law tales, while my regular
work occupied the mornings) a physician who called on me observed that I
must not allow myself to be exhausted at the end of the day. He would not
advise any alcoholic wine; but any light wine that I liked might do me
good. "You have a cupboard there at your right hand," said he.
"Keep a bottle of hock and a wine-glass there, and help
yourself when you feel you want it."--"No, thank
you," said I. "If I took wine, it should not be when alone; nor
would I help myself to a glass. I might take a little more and a little
more, till my solitary glass might become a regular tippling habit. I shall
avoid the temptation altogether."
Physicians should consider well before they give such advice to brain-worn workers.
As for the method, in regard to the Political Economy Tales, I am not
sorry to have an opportunity of putting it on record.--When I began, I
furnished myself with aH the standard works on the subject of what I then
took to be a science. I had made a skeleton plan of the course,
comprehending the four divisions, Production, Distribution, Exchange and
Consumption: and, in order to save my nerves from being overwhelmed
with the thought of what I had undertaken, I resolved not to look beyond
the department on which I was engaged. The subdivisions arranged themselves
as naturally as the primary ones; and when any subject was episodical (as
Slave Labour) I announced it as such.--Having noted my own leading
ideas on the topic before me, I took down my books, and read the treatment
of that particular subject in each of them, making notes of reference on a
separate sheet for each book, and restraining myself from glancing even in
thought towards the scene and nature of my story till it should be
suggested by my collective didactic materials. It was about a
morning's work to gather hints by this reading. The next process,
occupying an evening, when I had one to spare, or the next morning, was
making the Summary of Principles which is found at the end of each number.
This was the most laborious part of the work, and that which I certainly
considered the most valuable.--By this time, I perceived in what part
of the world, and among what sort of people, the principles of my number
appeared to operate the most manifestly. Such a scene I chose, be it where
it might.
The next process was to embody each leading principle in a
character: and the mutual operation of these embodied principles
supplied the action of the story. It was necessary to have some
accessories,--some out-works to the scientific erection; but I
limited these as much as possible; and I believe that in every instance,
they really were rendered subordinate. An hour or two sufficed for the
outline of my story. If the scene was foreign, or in any part of England
with which I was not familiar, I sent to the library for books of travel or
topography: and the
collecting and noting down hints from these finished the second day's work. The third day's toil was the severest. I reduced my materials to chapters, making a copious table of contents for each chapter on a separate sheet, on which I noted down, not only the action of the personages and the features of the scene, but all the political economy which it was their business to convey, whether by exemplification or conversation,--so as to absorb all the materials provided. This was not always completed at one sitting, and it made me sometimes sick with fatigue: but it was usually done in one day. After that, all the rest was easy. I paged my paper; and then the story went off like a letter. I never could decide whether I most enjoyed writing the descriptions, the narrative, or the argumentative or expository conversations. I liked each best while I was about it.
As to the actual writing,--I did it as I write letters, and as I am
writing this Memoir,--never altering the expression as it came fresh
from my brain. On an average I wrote twelve pages a day,--on large
letter paper (quarto, I believe it is called) the page containing
thirty-three lines. In spite of all precautions, interruptions
occurred very often. The proof-correcting occupied some time; and so
did sitting for five portraits in the year and half before I went to
America. The correspondence threatened to become infinite. Many letters,
particularly anonymous ones, required or deserved no answer: but
there were others from operatives, young persons, and others which could be
answered without much expenditure of thought, and wear and tear of
interest: said I could not find in my heart to resist such clients.
Till my mother joined me, I never failed to send her a bulky packet weekly;
as much for my own satisfaction as for her's,--needing as I did
to speak freely to some one of the wonderful scenes which life was now
opening to me. Having no maid, I had a good deal of the business of common
life upon my hands. On the conclusion of a number, I sometimes took two
days' respite; employing it in visiting some country house for the
day and night, and indulging in eight hours' sleep, instead of the
five, or five and a half, with which I was otherwise obliged to be
satisfied: but it happened more than once that I finished one
num-
ber at two in the morning, and was at work upon another by nine. During the whole period of the writing of the three Series,--the Political Economy, Taxation, and Poor Laws,--I never remember but once sitting down to read whatever I pleased. That was a summer evening, when I was at home and my old ladies were out, and I had two hours to do what I liked with. I was about to go to the United States; and I sat down to study the geography and relations of the States of the American Union; and extremely interesting I found it,--so soon as I was hoping to travel through them.
The mode of scheming and constructing my stories having been explained,
it remains to be seen whence the materials were drawn. A review of the
sources of my material will involve some anecdotes which may be worth
telling, if I may judge by my own interest, and that which I witness in
others, in the history of the composition of any well-known
work.
If I remember right, I was busy about the twelfth
number,--"French Wines and Politics,"--when I went to
London, in November, 1832. That is, I had done with the department of
Production, and was finishing that of Distribution. The first three numbers
were written before the stir of success began: and the scenery was
furnished by books of travel obtained from the Public Library, and of
farming by the late Dr. Rigby of Norwich,--a friend of the late Lord
Leicester, (when Mr. Coke). The books of travel were Lichtenstein's
South Africa for "Life in the Wilds:" Edwards's
(and others') "West Indies" for
"Demerara:" and McCulloch's "Highlands and
Islands of Scotland" for the two Garveloch stories. Mr. Cropper of
Liverpool heard of the Series early enough to furnish me with some
statistics of Shvery for "Demerara;" and Mr. Hume, in time to
send me Blue Books on the Fisheries, for "Ella of
Garveloch."--My correspondence with Mr. Cropper deserves
mention, in honer of that excellent and devoted man. About the time that
the success of my scheme began to be apparent, there arrived in Norwich a
person who presented himself as an anti-slavery agent. It was the
well-known Elliott Cresson, associated with the American
Colonization scheme, which he
hoped to pass upon us innocent provincial Britons as the same thing as anti-slavery. Many even of the Quakers were taken in; and indeed there were none but experienced abolitionists, like the Croppers, who were qualified even to suspect,--much less to detect,--this agent of the slaveholders and his false pretenses. Kind-hearted people, hearing from Mr. Cresson that a slave could be bought and settled blissfully in Liberia for seven pounds ten shillings, raised the ransom in their own families and among their neighbours, and thought all was right. Mr. Cresson obtained an introduction to my mother and me, and came to tea, and described what certainly interested us very much, and offered to furnish me with plenty of evidence of the productiveness of Liberia, and the capabilities of the scheme, with a view to my making it the scene and subject of one of my tales. I was willing, thinking it would make an admirable framework for one of my pieces of doctrine; and I promised, not to write a story, but to consider of it when the evidence should have arrived. The papers arrived; and my conclusion was--not to write about Liberia. Some time after, I had a letter from Mr. Cropper, who was a perfect stranger to me, saying that Eliott Cresson was announcing every where from the platform in his public lectures that I had promised him to make the colony of Liberia one of my Illustrations of Political Economy: and it was the fact that the announcement was made in many places. Mr. Cropper offered to prove to me the unreliableness of Cresson's representations, and the true scope and aim of the Colonization scheme. He appealed to me not to publish in its favour till I had heard the other side; and offered to bear the expense of suppressing the whole edition, if the story was already printed. I had the pleasure of telling him by return of post that I had given no such promise to Mr. Cresson, and that I had not written, nor intended to write, any story about Liberia or American Colonization. Before I went to the United States, this agent of the slaveholders had exposed his true character by lecturing, all over England, in a libellous tone, against Garrison and the true abolitionists of America. When I had begun to see into the character and policy of the enterprise, and before
I had met a single abolitionist in America, I encountered Mr. Cresson, face to face, in the Senate Chamber at Washington. He was very obsequious; but I would have nothing to say to him. He was, I believe, the only acquaintance whom I ever "cut." It was out of this incident that grew the correspondence with Mr. Cropper which ended in his furnishing me with material for an object precisely the reverse of Elliott Cresson's.
On five occasions in my life I have found myself obliged to write and
publish what I entirely believed would be ruinous to my reputation and
prosperity. In no one of the five cases has the result been what I
anticipated. I find myself at the close of my life prosperous in name and
fame, in my friendships and in my affairs. But it may be considered to have
been a narrow escape in the first instance; for every thing was done that
low-minded recklessness and malice could do to destroy my credit and
influence by gross appeals to the prudery, timidity, and ignorance of the
middle classes of England. My own innocence of intention, and my refusal to
conceal what I thought and meant, carried me through: but there is no
doubt that the circulation of my works was much and long restricted by the
prejudices indecently and maliciously raised against me by Mr. Croker and
Mr. Lockhart, in the Quarterly Review. I mention these two names, because
Messrs. Croker and Lockhart openly assumed the honour of the wit which they
(if nobody else) saw in the deed; and there is no occasion to suppose any
one else concerned in it. As there is, I believe, some lingering feeling
still,--some doubt about my being once held in horror as a
"Malthusian," I had better tell simply all I know of the
matter.
When the course of my exposition brought me to the Population subject,
I, with my youthful and provincial mode of thought and
feeling,--brought up too amidst the prudery which is found in its
great force in our middle class,--could not but be sensible that I
risked much in writing and publishing on a subject which was not
universally treated in the pure, benevolent, and scientific spirit of
Malthus himself. I fell that the subject was one of science, and therefore
perfectly easy to treat in itself; but I was aware that some evil
associations had gathered about it,--though
I did not know what they were. While writing "Weal and Woe in Garveloch," the perspiration many a time streamed down my face, though I knew there was not a line in it which might not be read aloud in any family. The misery arose from my seeing how the simplest statements and reasoning might and probably would be perverted. I said nothing to any body; and, when the number was finished, I read it aloud to my mother and aunt. If there had been any opening whatever for doubt or dread, I was sure that these two ladies would have given me abundant warning and exhortation,--both from their very keen sense of propriety and their anxious affection for me. But they were as complacent and easy as they had been interested and attentive. I saw that all ought to be safe. But it was evidently very doubtful whether all would be safe. A few words in a letter from Mr. Fox put me on my guard. In the course of some remarks on the sequence of my topics, he wrote, "As for the Population question, let no one interfere with you. Go straight through it, or you'll catch it." I did go straight through it; and happily I had nearly done when a letter arrived from a literary woman, who had the impertinence to write to me now that I was growing famous, after having scarcely noticed me before, and (of all subjects) on this, though she tried to make her letter decent by putting in a few little matters besides. I will call her Mrs. Z. as I have no desire to point out to notice one for whom I never had any respect or regard. She expressed, on the part of herself and others, an anxious desire to know how I should deal with the Population question; said that they did not know what to wish about my treating or omitting it;--desiring it for the sake of society, but dreading it for me; and she finished by informing me that a Member of Parliament, who was a perfect stranger to me, had assured her that I already felt my difficulty; and that he and she awaited my decision with anxiety. Without seeing at the moment the whole drift of this letter, I was abundantly disgusted by it, and fully sensible of the importance of its being answered immediately, and in a way which should admit of no mistake. I knew my I reply was wanted for show; and I sent one by return of post which was
shown to some purpose. It stopped speculation in one dangerous quarter. I showed my letter to my mother and brother; and they emphatically approved it, though it was rather sharp. They thought, as I did, that some sharpness was well directed towards a lady who professed to have talked over difficulties of this nature, on my behalf, with an unknown Member of Parliament by her own fireside. My answer was this. I believe I am giving the very words; for the business impressed itself deeply on my mind. "As for the questions you put about the principles of my Series,--if you believe the Population question to be, as you say, the most serious now agitating society, you can hardly suppose that I shall omit it, or that I can have been heedless of it in forming my plan. I consider it, as treated by Malthus, a strictly philosophical question. So treating it, I find no difficulty in it; and there can be no difficulty in it for those who approach it with a single mind. To such I address myself. If any others should come whispering to me what I need not listen to, I shall shift my trumpet, and take up my knitting." I afterwards became acquainted with the Member of Parliament whom my undesired correspondent quoted; and I feel confident that his name was used very unwarrantably, for the convenience of the lady's prurient curiosity.--I also saw her. She called on me at my lodgings (to catch a couple of franks from a Member of Parliament) and she mentioned my letter,--obtaining no response from me. She was then a near neighbour and an acquaintance of an intimate friend of mine. One winter morning, I was surprised by a note from this friend, sent three miles by a special messenger, to say, "Mrs. Z. purposes to visit you this morning. I conjure you to take my advice. On the subject which she will certainly introduce, be deaf, dumb, blind and stupid. I will explain hereafter." The morning was so stormy that no Mrs. Anybody could come. My friend's explanation to me was this. Mrs. Z. had declared her anxiety to her, in a morning call, to obtain from me, for her own satisfaction and other people's, an avowal which might be reported as to the degree of my knowledge of the controversies which secretly agitated society on the true bearings of the Population question.
All this was no concern of mine; and much of it was beyond my comprehension. The whole interference of Mrs. Z. and her friends (if indeed there was anybody concerned in it but herself) was odious and impertinent nonsense in my eyes; and the fussy lady ever found me, as well as my friend, ready to be as "deaf, dumb, blind and stupid" as occasion might require.--I rather suspect that Mrs. Z. herself was made a tool of for the purposes of Mr. Lockhart, who employed his then-existing intimacy with her to get materials for turning her into ridicule afterwards. The connexion of Mr. Lockhart with this business presently appeared.
In an evening party in the course of the winter, I was introduced to a
lady whose name and connexions I had heard a good deal of. Instead of being
so civil as might be anticipated from her eagerness for an introduction,
she was singularly rude and violent, so as to make my hostess very
uncomfortable. She called me "cruel" and "brutal,"
and scolded me for my story--"Cousin Marshall." I saw that
she was talking at random, and asked her whether she had read the story.
She had not. I good-humouredly, but decidedly, told her that when
she had read it, we would discuss it, if she pleased; and that meantime we
would drop it. She declared she would not read it for the world; but she
presently followed me about, was kind and courteous, and finished by
begging to be allowed to set me down at my lodgings. When I alighted, she
requested leave to call. She did so, when my mother was with me for two or
three weeks, and invited us to dine at her house in the country, on the
first disengaged day. She called for us, and told us during our drive that
she had resisted the strongest entreaties from Mr. Lockhart to be allowed
to meet me that day. She had some misgiving, it appeared, which made her
steadily refuse; but she invited Lady G--, a relative of
Lockhart's, and an intimate friend of her own. Lady G. was as
unwilling as Lockhart was eager to come; and very surly she looked when
introduced. She sat within hearing of my host and me at dinner; and as soon
as we returned to the drawing-room, she took her seat by me, with a
totally changed manner, and conversed kindly and
agreeably. I was wholly unaware what lay under all this: but the fact soon came out that the atrocious article in the Quarterly Review which was avowedly intended to "destroy Miss Martineau," was at that time actually printed; and Mr. Lockhart wanted to seize an opportunity which might be the last for meeting me,--all unsuspecting as I was, and trusting to his being a gentleman, on the strength of meeting him in that house. I was long afterwards informed that Lady G. went to him early the next day, (which was Sunday) and told him that he would repent of the article, if it was what he had represented to her; and I know from the printers that Mr. Lockhart went down at once to the office, and cut out "all the worst passages of the review," at great inconvenience and expense. What he could have cut out that was worse than what stands, it is not easy to conceive.
While all this was going on without my knowledge, warnings came to me
from two quarters that something prodigious was about to happen. Mr. Croker
had declared at a dinner party that he expected a revolution under the
whigs, and to lose his pension; and that he intended to lay by his pension
while he could get it, and maintain himself by his pen; and that he had
"begun by tomahawking Miss Martineau in the Quarterly." An old
gentleman present, Mr. Whishaw, was disgusted at the announcement and at
the manner of it, and, after consulting with a friend or two, called to
tell me of this, and put me on my guard. On the same day, another friend
called to tell me that my printers (who also printed the Quarterly) thought
I ought to know that "the filthiest thing that had passed through the
press for a quarter of a century" was coming out against me in the
Quarterly. I could not conceive what all this meant; and I do not half
understand it now: but it was enough to perceive that the design was
to discredit me by some sort of evil imputation. I saw at ones what to do.
I wrote to my brothers, telling them what I had heard, and earnestly
desiring that they would not read the next Quarterly. I told them that the
inevitable consequence of my brothers taking up my quarrels would be to
close my career. I had entered upon it independently, and I would
pursue it alone. From the moment that any of them stirred about my affairs, I would throw away my pen; for I would not be answerable for any mischief or trouble to them. I made it my particular request that we might all be able to say that they had not read the article. I believe I am, in fact, the only member of the family who ever read it.--The day before publication, which happened to be Good Friday, a friend called on me,--a clergyman who occasionally wrote for the Quarterly,--and produced the forthcoming number from under his cloak. "Now," said he, "I am going to leave this with you. Do not tell me a word of what you think of it; but just mark all the lies in the margin: and I will call at the door for it, on my way home in the afternoon." I did it; sat down to my work again (secure from visitors on a Good Friday) and then went out, walking and by omnibus, to dine in the country. I remember thinking in the omnibus that the feelings called forth by such usage are, after all, more pleasurable than painful; and again, when I went to bed, that the day had been a very happy one. The testing of one's power of endurance is pleasurable; and the testing of one's power of forgiveness is yet sweeter: and it is no small benefit to learn something more of one's faults and weaknesses than friends and sympathisers either will or can tell. The compassion that I felt on this occasion for the low-minded and foul-mouthed creatures who could use their education and position as gentlemen to "destroy" a woman whom they knew to be innocent of even comprehending their imputations, was very painful: but, on the other hand, my first trial in the shape of hostile reviewing was over, and I stood unharmed, and somewhat enlightened and strengthened. I mentioned the review to nobody; and therefore nobody mentioned it to me. I heard, some years after, that one or two literary ladies had said that they, in my place, would have gone into the mountains or to the antipodes, and never have shown their faces again; and that there were inquiries in abundance of my friends how I stood it. But I gave no sign. The reply always was that I looked very well and happy,--just as usual.--The sequel of the story is that the writer of the original article, Mr. Poulett Scrope, requested a
mutual friend to tell me that he was ready to acknowledge the political economy of the article to be his; but that he hoped he was too much of a gentleman to have stooped to ribaldry, or even jest; and that I must understand that he was not more or less responsible for any thing in the article which we could not discuss face to face with satisfaction. Messrs. Lockhart and Croker made no secret of the ribaldry being theirs. When the indignation of the literary world was strong in regard to this and other offenses of the same kind, and Mr. Lockhart found he had gone too far in my case, he spared no intreaties to the lady who made Lady G. meet me to invite him,--professing great admiration and good-will, and declaring that I must know his insults to be mere joking. She was won upon at last, and came one day with her husband, to persuade me to go over to dinner to meet Mr. Lockhart. When I persisted in my refusal, she said, in some vexation,--"But what am I to say to Lockhart?--because I promised him." I replied, "I have nothing to do with what you say to Mr. Lockhart: but I will tell you that I will never knowingly meet Mr. Lockhart; and that, if I find myself in the same house with him, I will go out at one door of the drawing-room when he comes in at the other." Her husband, hitherto silent, said, "You are quite right. I would on no account allow you to be drawn in to an acquaintance with Lockhart at our house: and the only excuse I can offer for my wife's rashness is that she has never read that Quarterly article." From other quarters I had friendly warnings that Lockhart had set his mind on making my acquaintance, in order to be able to say that I did not mind what he had done. He was the only person but two whose acquaintance I ever refused. I never saw him but once; and that was twenty years afterwards, when he wore a gloomy and painful expression of countenance, and walked listlessly along the street and the square, near his own house, swinging his cane. My companion told me who he was; and we walked along the other side of the street, having a good and unobserved view of him till he reached his own house. The sorrows of his later years had then closed down upon him, and he was sinking under them: but the pity which I felt for him
then was not more hearty, I believe, than that which filled my mind on that Good Friday, 1833, when he believed he had "destroyed" me.
As for destroying me,--it was too late, for one thing. I had won my
public before Croker took up his "tomahawk." The simple fact,
in regard to the circulation of my Series, was that the sale increased
largely after the appearance of the Quarterly review of it, and diminished
markedly and immediately on the publication of the flattering article on it
in the Edinburgh Review. The Whigs were then falling into disrepute among
the great body of the people; and every token of favour from whig quarters
was damaging to me, for a time. In the long run, there is no doubt that the
Quarterly injured me seriously. For ten years there was seldom a number
which had not some indecent jest about me,--some insulting
introduction of my name. The wonder is what could be gained that was worth
the trouble: but it certainly seems to me that this course of
imputation originated some obscure dread of me and my works among timid and
superficial readers. For one instance among many:--a lady,
calling on a friend of mine, wondered at seeing books of mine on the table,
within the children's reach;--they being "improper
books," she had been told,--declared to be so by the Quarterly
Review. My friend said "Though I don't agree with you, I know
what you are thinking of. You must carry this home, and read
it,"--taking down from the shelf the volume which contained the
Garveloch stories. The visitor hesitated, but yielded, and a few days
after, brought back the book, saying that this could not be the one, for it
was so harmless that her husband had read it aloud to the young people in
the evening. "Well," said my friend, "try another."
The lady and her husband read the whole series through in this way, and
never could find out the "improper book."
And what was all this for? I do not at all know. All that I know is that
a more simple-minded, virtuous man, full of domestic affections,
than Mr. Malthus, could not be found in all England; and that the desire of
his heart and the aim of his work were that domestic virtue and happiness
should be placed
within the reach of all, as Nature intended them to be. He found, in his day, that a portion of the people were underfed; and that one consequence of this was a fearful mortality among infants; and another consequence, the growth of a recklessness among the destitute which caused infanticide, corruption of morals, and, at best, marriage between pauper boys and girls, while multitudes of respectable men and women, who paid rates instead of consuming them, were unmarried at forty, or never married at all. Prudence as to the time of marriage, and to making due provision for it was, one would think, a harmless recommendation enough, under the circumstances. Such is the moral aspect of Malthus's work. As to its mathematical basis, there is no one, as I have heard Mr. Hallam say, who could question it that might not as well dispute the multiplication table. As for whether Mr. Malthus's doctrine, while mathematically indisputable, and therefore assailable in itself only by ribaldry and corrupt misrepresentation, may not be attacking a difficulty at the wrong end,--that is a fair matter of opinion. In my opinion, recent experience shows that it does attack a difficulty at the wrong end. The repeal of the corn-laws, with the consequent improvement in agriculture, and the prodigious increase of emigration have extinguished all present apprehension and talk of "surplus population,"--that great difficulty of forty or fifty years ago. And it should be remembered, as far as I am concerned in the controversy, that I advocated in my Series a free trade in corn, and exhibited the certainty of agricultural improvement, as a consequence; and urged a carefully conducted emigration; and, above all, education without limit. It was my business, in illustrating Political Economy, to exemplify Malthus's doctrine among the rest. It was that doctrine "pure and simple," as it came from his virtuous and benevolent mind, that I presented; and the presentment was accompanied by an earnest advocacy of the remedies which the great natural laws of Society put into our power,--freedom for bringing food to men, and freedom for men to go where food is plentiful; and enlightenment for all, that they may provide for themselves under the guidance of the best intelligence. Mr. Malthus, who did more
for social ease and virtue than perhaps any other man of his time, was the "best-abused man" of the age. I was aware of this; and I saw in him, when I afterwards knew him, one of the serenest and most cheerful men that society can produce. When I became intimate enough with the family to talk over such matters, I asked Mr. Malthus one day whether he had suffered in spirits from the abuse lavished on him. "Only just at first," he answered.--"I wonder whether it ever kept you awake a minute."--"Never after the first fortnight," was his reply. The spectacle of the good man tn his daily life in contrast with the representations of him in the periodical literature of the time, impressed upon me, more forcibly than anything in my own experience, the everlasting fact that the reformers of morality, personal and social, are always subject at the outset to the imputation of immorality from those interested in the continuance of corruption.--I need only add that all suspicious speculation, in regard to my social doctrines, seems to have died out long ago. I was not ruined by this first risk, any more than by any subsequent enterprises; but I was probably never so near it as when my path of duty led me among the snares and pitfalls prepared for the innocent and defenseless by Messrs. Croker and Lockhart, behind the screen of the Quarterly Review.
The behaviour of the Edinburgh was widely different. From the time of my
becoming acquainted with the literary Whigs who were paramount at that
time, I had heard the name of William Empson on all hands: and it
once or twice crossed my mind that it was odd that I never saw him. Once he
left the room as I entered it unexpectedly: and another time, he ran
in among us at dessert, at a dinner party, to deliver a message to the
hostess, and was gone, without an introduction to me,--the only
stranger in company. When his review of my Series in the Edinburgh was out,
and he had ascertained that I had read it, he caused me to he informed that
he had declined an introduction to me hitherto, because he wished to render
impossible all allegations that I had been favourably reviewed by a
personal friend: but that he was now only awaiting my permission to
pay his respects to me. The review was, to be sure extraordinarily
laudatory; but the praise did not seem to me to be very rational and sound; while the nature of the criticism showed that all accordance between Mr. Empson and me on some important principles of social morals was wholly out of the question. His objection to the supposition that society could exist without capital punishment is one instance of what I mean; and his view of the morality or immorality of opinions (apart from the process of forming them) is another. But there was some literary criticism which I was thankful for; and there was such kindliness and generosity in the whole character of the man's mind;--his deeds of delicate goodness came to my knowledge so abUndantly; and he bore so well certain mortifications about the review with which he had taken his best pains, that I was as ready as himself to be friends. And friends we were, for several years. We were never otherwise than perfectly friendly, though I could not help feeling that every year, and every experience, separated us more widely in regard to intellectual and moral sympathy. He was not, from the character of his mind, capable of having opinions; and he was, as is usual in such cases, disposed to be afraid of those who had. He was in a perpetual course of being swayed about by the companions of the day, on all matters but politics. There he was safe; for he was hedged in on every side by the dogmatic Whigs, who made him their chief dogmatist. He was full of literary knowledge;--an omnivorous reader with a weak intellectual digestion. He was not personally the wiser for his reading; but the profusion that he could pour out gave a certain charm to his conversation, and even to his articles, which had no other merit, except indeed that of a general kindliness of spirit. During my intercourse with him and his set, he married the only child of his old friend, Lord Jeffrey: and after the death of Mr. Napier, who succeeded Jeffrey in the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, Mr. Empson accepted the offer of it,--rather to the consternation of some of his best friends. He had been wont to shake his head over the misfortunes of the review in Napier's time, saying that that gentleman had no literary faculty or cultivation whatever. When he himself assumed the management, people said we should now have nothing but liter-
ature. Both he and his predecessor, however, inserted (it was understood) as a matter of course, all articles sent by Whig Ministers, or by their underlings, however those articles might contradict each other even in the same number. All hope of real editorship, of political and moral consistency, was now over; and an unlooked-for failure in modesty and manners in good Mr. Empson spoiled the literary prospect; so that the review lost character and reputation quarter by quarter, while under his charge. His health had so far, and so fatally, failed before he became Editor, that he ought not to have gone into the enterprise; and so his oldest and best friends told him. But the temptation was strong; and, unfortunately, he could not resist it. Unfortunately, if indeed it is desirable that the Edinburgh Review should live,--which may be a question. It is a great evil for such a publication to change its politics radically; and this must be done if the Edinburgh is to live; for Whiggism has become mere death in life,--a mere transitional state, now nearly worn out. When Mr. Empson's review of me appeared, however, the Whigs were new in office, Jeffrey's parliamentary career was an object of high hope to his party, and the Edinburgh was more regarded than the younger generation can now easily believe. Mr. Empson's work was therefore of some consequence to him, to me, and to the public. As I have said, the sale of my Series declined immediately,--under the popular notion that I was to be a pet of the Whigs. As for ourselves, we met very pleasantly at dinner, at his old friend, Lady S.'s, where nobody else was invited. Thence we all went together to an evening party; and I seldom entered a drawing-room afterwards without meeting my kind-hearted reviewer.--Such were the opposite histories of my first appearance in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.--I may as well add that I speak under no bias, in either case, of contributor or candidate interest; for I never wrote or desired to write for either review. I do not remember that I was ever asked; and I certainly never offered. I think I may trust my memory so far as to say this confidently.
To return to the subject of the materials furnished to me as I proceeded
in my work. There were still three more numbers
written in Norwich, besides those which I have mentioned. The Manchester operatives were eager to interest me in their controversies about Machinery and Wages; and it was from them that I received the bundles of documents which qualified me to write "A Manchester Strike."
It was while I was about this number that the crisis of the Reform Bill
happened. One May morning, I remember, the people of Norwich went out, by
hundreds and thousands, to meet the mail. At that time, little Willie
B--, the son of the Unitarian Minister at Norwich, used to come every
morning to say certain lessons to my mother, with whom he was a great
favourite. On that morning, after breakfast, in came Willie, looking solemn
and business-like, and stood before my mother with his arms by his
sides, as if about to say a lesson, and said, "Ma'am, papa
sends you his regards, and the Ministry has resigned." "Well,
Willie, what does that mean?" "I don't know,
Ma'am." We, however, knew so well that, for once, and I believe
for the only time in those busy years, I could not work. When my mother
came in from ordering dinner, she found me sitting beside Willie, mending
stockings. She expressed her amazement: and I told her, what pleased
her highly, that I really could not write about twopenny galloons, the
topic of the morning, after hearing of Lord Grey's resignation. We
went out early into the town, where the people were all in the streets, and
the church bells were muffled and tolling. I do not remember a more
exciting day. My publisher wrote a day or two afterwards, that the London
booksellers need not have been afraid of the Reform Bill, any more than the
Cholera, for that during this crisis, he had sold more of my books than
ever. Every thing, indeed, justified my determination not to defer a work
which was the more wanted the more critical became the affairs of the
nation,
In spite of all I could say, the men of Manchester persisted that
my hero was their hero, whose name however I had
never heard. It gratified me to find that my doctrine was well received,
and I may say, cordially agreed in, even at that time, by the leaders of
the genuine Manchester operatives; and they, for
their part, were gratified by their great topics of interest being discussed by one whom they supposed to have "spent all her life in a cotton-mill," as one of their favourite Members of Parliament told me they did.--It occurs to me that my life ought indeed to be written by myself or some one else who can speak to its facts; for, if the reports afloat about me from time to time were to find their way into print after my death, it would appear the strangest life in the world. I have been assigned a humbler life than that of the Cotton-mill. A friend of mine heard a passenger in a stage-coach tell another that I was "of very low origin,--having been a maid-of-all-work." This was after the publication of my model number of the "Guide to Service," done at the request of the Poor-law Commissioners. My reply to the request was that I would try, if the Maid-of-all-work might be my subject. I considered it a compliment, when I found I was supposed to have been relating my own experience. One aunt of mine heard my Series extolled (also in a coach) as wonderful for a young creature, seventeen and no more on her last birthday; and another aunt heard the same praise, in the same way, but on the opposite ground that I was wonderfully energetic for eighty-four! So many people beard that I was dreadfully conceited, and that my head was turned with success, that I began to think, in spite of very sober feelings and of abundant self-distrust, that the account must be true. A shopman at a printseller's was heard by a cousin of mine, after the publication of "Vanderput and Snoek," giving an impressive account of my residence in Holland: and, long after, Mr. Laing made inquiries of a relation about how long I had lived in Norway,--of which "Feats on the Fiord" were supposed to be an evidence: but I had visited neither country when I wrote of them, and shall die without seeing Norway now. Every body believed at one time that I had sought Lord Brougham's patronage;--and this report I did not like at all. Another,--that he had written the chief part of the books,--was merely amusing. Another gave me some little trouble, in the midst of the amusement;--that I had been married for two years before the Series was finished, and that I concealed the fact for conven-
ience. More than one of my own relations required the most express and serious assurance from me that this was not true before they would acquit me of an act of trickery so unlike me,--who never had any secrets. The husband thus assigned to me was a gentleman whom I had then never heard of, and whom I never saw till some years afterwards, when he had long been a married man. After my Eastern journey in 1846, it was widely reported, and believed in Paris, that my party and I had quarrelled, as soon as we landed in France; and that I had gone on by myself, and travelled through those eastern countries entirely alone. I could not conceive what could be the meaning of the compliments I received on my "wonderful courage," till I found how unwilling people were to credit that I had been well taken care of. My "Eastern Life" disabused all believers in this nonsense; and I hope this Memoir will discredit all the absurd reports which may yet be connected with my station and my doings in life, in the minds of those who know me only from rumour.
"Cousin Marshall," which treats of the Poor-laws, was
written and at press before Lord Brougham had devised his scheme of
engaging me to illustrate the operation of the Poor-laws. I obtained
my material, as to details, from a brother who was a Guardian, and from a
lady who took an interest in workhouse management. For
"Ireland" and "Homes Abroad," I obtained facts from
Blue-books on Ireland and Colonization which were among the many by
this time sent me by people who had "hobbies." These were all
that I wrote at Norwich.
Five of my numbers had appeared before Lord Brougham saw any of them, or
knew any thing about them. He was at Brougham in June, 1832, when Mr.
Drummond,--the Thomas Drummond of sacred memory in Ireland,--sent
him my numbers, up to "Ella of Garveloch" (inclusive). A friend
of both was at that time at Norwich, canvassing for the representation; and
Lord Brougham wrote to him, with his customary vehemence, extolling me and
my work, and desiring him to engage me to illustrate the poor-laws,
in aid of the Commission then appointed to the work of poor-law
inquiry. It was hardly right
in me to listen to any invitation to further work. That I should have done so for any considerations of fame or money can never have been believed by any who knew what proposals and solicitations from all manner of editors and publishers I refused. It was the extreme need and difficulty of poor-law reform that won me to the additional task. I had for many years been in a state of despair about national affairs, on account of this "gangrene of the state," as the French commissioners had reported it, "which it was equally impossible to remove and to let alone." When Lord Brougham wrote to his friend an account of the evidence which was actually obtained, and which would be placed at my disposal; and when he added that there was an apparent possibility of cure, declaring that his "hopes would be doubled" if I could be induced to help the scheme, the temptation to over-work was irresistible. When I met Lord Brougham in town, he urged me strongly to promise six numbers within a year. I was steady in refusing to do more than four altogether: and truly, that was quite enough, in addition to the thirty numbers of my own Series, (including the "Illustrations of Taxation.") These thirty-four little volumes were produced in two years and a half,--the greater part of the time being one unceasing whirl of business and social excitement. After my settlement in London, Lord Brougham called on me to arrange the plan. He informed me that the evidence would be all placed in my hands; and that my Illustrations would be published by the Diffusion Society. He then requested me to name my terms. I declined. He proceeded to assign the grounds of the estimate he was about to propose, telling me what his Society and others had given for various works, and why he considered mine worth more than some to which I likened it. Finally, he told me I ought not to have less than one hundred pounds apiece for my four numbers. He said that the Society would pay me seventy-five pounds on the day of publication of each; and that he then and there guaranteed to me the remaining twenty-five pounds for each. If I did not receive it from the Society, I should from him. He afterwards told the Secretary of the Society and two personal friends of his and mine that these were the terms he
had offered, and meant to see fulfilled. I supplied the works which, he declared, fully answered his expectations; and indeed he sent me earnest and repeated thanks for them. The Society fulfilled its engagements completely and punctually: but Lord Brougham did not fulfil his own, more or less. I never saw or heard any thing of the four times twenty-five pounds I was to receive to make up my four hundred pounds. I believe that he was reminded of his engagement, while I was in America, by those to whom he had avowed it: but I have never received any part of the money, to this day. I never made direct application to him for it; partly because I never esteemed or liked him, or relished being implicated in business with him, after the first flutter was over, and I could judge of him for myself; and partly because such an amount of unfulfilled promises lay at his door, at the time of his enforced retirement from power, that I felt that my application would be, like other people's applications, as fruitless as it would be disagreeable. I do not repent doing those tales, because I hope and believe they were useful at a special crisis: but they never succeeded to any thing like the extent of my own Series; and it certainly appeared that all connexion with the Diffusion Society, and Lord Brougham, and the Whig government, was so much mere detriment to my usefulness and my influence.
I had better relate here all that I have to say about that batch of
Tales. Lord Brougham sent me all the evidence as it was delivered in by the
Commissioners of Inquiry into the operation of the Poor-laws. There
can be no stronger proof of the strength of this evidence than the
uniformity of the suggestions to which it gave rise in all the minds which
were then intent on finding the remedy. I was requested to furnish my share
of conclusions and suggestions. I did so, in the form of a programme of
doctrine for my illustrations, some of which expose the evils of the old
system, while others pourtray the features of its proposed successor. My
document actually crossed in the street one sent me by a Member of the
government detailing the heads of the new Bill. I sat down to read it with
no little emotion, and some apprehension; and the moment when, arriving at
the end,
I found that the government scheme and my own were identical, point by point, was not one to be easily forgotten. I never wrote any thing with more glee than "The Hamlets,"--the number in which the proposed reform is exemplified: and the spirit of the work carried me through the great effort of writing that number and "Cinnamon and Pearls" in one month,--during a country visit in glorious summer weather.
Soon after my Poor-law Tales began to appear, I received a
message from Mr. Barnes, Editor-in-chief of the
"Times," intimating that the "Times" was prepared
to support my work, which would be a valuable auxiliary of the proposed
reform. I returned no answer, not seeing that any was required from an
author who had never had any thing to do with her reviewers, or made any
interest in reviews. I said this to the friend who delivered the message,
expressing at the same time my satisfaction that the government measure was
to have the all-powerful support of the "Times." The
Ministers were assured of the same support by the same potentate. How the
other newspapers would go there was no saying, because the proposed reform
was not a party measure; but, with the "Times" on our side we
felt pretty safe. It was on the seventeenth of April, 1834, that Lord
Althorp introduced the Bill. His speech, full of facts, earnest, and deeply
impressive, produced a strong effect on the House; and the Ministers went
home to bed with easy minds,--little imagining what awaited them at
the breakfast table. It was no small vexation to me, on opening the
"Times" at breakfast on the eighteenth, to find a vehement and
total condemnation of the New Poor-law. Every body in London was
asking how it happened. I do not know, except in as far as I was told by
some people who knew more of the management of the paper than the world in
general. Their account was that the intention had really been, up to the
preceding day, to support the measure; but that such reports arrived of the
hostility of the country-justices,--a most important class of
customers,--that a meeting of proprietors was held in the evening,
when the question of supporting or opposing the measure was put to the
vote. The policy of humouring the country-justices was carried by
one vote. So went the story.
Another anecdote, less openly spoken of, I believe to have been true. Lord Brougham wrote a note, I was told, to Lord Althorp, the same morning, urging him to timely attendance at the Cabinet Council, as it must be immediately decided whether Barnes, (who was not very favourably described,) and the "Times" should be propitiated or defied. A letter or message arriving from Lord Althorp which rendered the sending the note unnecessary, Lord Brougham tore it up, and threw it into the waste-basket under the table. The fragments were by somebody or other abstracted from the basket, pasted together, and sent to Mr. Barnes, whose personal susceptibility was extreme. From that day began the baiting of Lord Brougham in the "Times" which set every body inquiring what so fierce a persecution could mean; and the wonder ceased only when the undisciplined politician finally fell from his rank as a statesman, and forfeited the remains of his reputation within two years afterwards. A searching domestic inquiry was instituted; but, up to the time of my being told the story, no discovery had been made of the mischief-maker who had picked up the scraps of the note.
After talking over the debate and the comment on it with my mother and
aunt, that April morning, I went up to my study to work, and was presently
interrupted by a note which surprised me so much that I carried it to my
mother. It was from a lady with whom I had only a very slight
acquaintance,--the wife of a Member of Parliament of high
consideration. This lady invited me to take a drive with her that morning,
and mentioned that she was going to buy plants at a nursery. My mother
advised me to leave my work early, for once, and go, for the fresh air and
the pleasure. My correspondent called for me, and, before we were off the
stones, out came the reason of the invitation. Her husband was aghast at
the course of the "Times," and had been into the City to buy
the "Morning Chronicle,"--then a far superior paper to
what it has been since. He and a friend were now the proprietors of the
"Chronicle," and no time was to be lost in finding writers who
could and would support the New Poor-law. I was the first to be
invited, because I was known to have been acquainted with the principles
and pro-
visions of the measure from the beginning. The invitation to me was to write "leaders" on the New Poor-law, as long as such support should be wanted. I asked why the proprietor did not do it himself, and found that he was really so engaged in parliamentary committees as to be already over-worked. I declared myself over-worked too; but I was entreated to take a few hours for consideration. An answer was to be sent for at five o'clock. My mother and I talked the matter over. The inducements were very strong; for I could not but see that I was the person for the work: but my mother said it would kill me,--busy as I was at present. I believed that it would injure my own Series; and I therefore declined.--For many months afterwards, even for years, it was a distasteful task to read the "Times" on the New Poor-law,--so venomous, so unscrupulous, so pertinacious, so mischievous in intention, and so vicious in principle was its opposition to a reform which has saved the state. But, as the reform was strong enough to stand, this hostility has been eventually a very great benefit. Bad as was the spirit of the opposition, it assumed the name of humanity, and did some of the work of humanity. Every weak point of the measure was exposed, and every extravagance chastised. Its righteousness and principled humanity were ignored; and every accidental pressure or inconvenience was made the most of. The faults of the old law were represented (as by Mr. Dickens in "Oliver Twist") as those of the new, and every effort was made to protract the exercise of irresponsible power by the country justices: but the measure was working, all the while, for the extinction of the law-made vices and miseries of the old system; and the process was aided by the stimulating vigilance of the "Times," which evoked at once the watchfulness and activity of officials and the spirit of humanity in society,--both essential conditions of the true working of the new law.--My share in the punishment I could never understand. Neither my mother nor I mentioned to any person whatever the transaction of that morning: but in a few days appeared a venomous attack on the Member of Parliament who had bought the "Chronicle," in the course of which he was taunted with going to a young lady in
Fludyer Street for direction in his political conduct. After that, there were many such allusions:--my friends were appealed to to check my propensity to write about all things whatsoever,--the world having by this time quite books enough of mine: and the explanation given of the ill success and bad working of the Whig measures was that the Ministers came to me for them. This sort of treatment gave me no pain, because I was not acquainted with any body belonging to the "Times," and I was safe enough with the public by this time: but I thought it rather too much when Mr. Sterling, "the Thunderer of the Times," and at that period editor-in-chief, obtained an invitation to meet me, after the publication of my books on America, alleging that he himself had never written a disrespectful word of me. My reply was that he was responsible, as editor, and that I used the only method of self-defence possible to a woman under a course of insult like that, in declining his acquaintance. Not long afterwards, when I was at Tynemouth, hopelessly ill, poor and helpless, the "Times" abused and insulted me for privately refusing a pension. Again Mr. Sterling made a push for my acquaintance; and I repeated what I had said before: whereupon he declared that "it cut him to the heart" that I should impute to him the ribaldry and coarse insults of scoundrels and ruffians who treated me as I had been treated in the "Times." I dare say what he said of his own feelings was true enough; but it will never do for responsible editors, like Sterling and Lockhart, to shirk their natural retribution for the sins of their publications by laying the blame on some impalpable offender who, on his part, has very properly relied on their responsibility. It appears to me that social honesty and good faith can be preserved only by thus enforcing integrity in the matter of editorial responsibility.
A curious incident occurred, much to the delight of my Edinburgh
reviewer, in connexion with that story,--"The
Hamlets,"--which, as I have said, I enjoyed writing exceedingly.
While I was preparing its doctrine and main facts, I went early one summer
morning, with a sister, to the Exhibition at Somerset House, (as it was in
those days). I stopped before a picture by
Collins,--"Children at the Haunts of the Sea-fowl;" and, after a good study of it, I told my sister that I had before thought of laying the scene by the sea-side, and that this bewitching picture decided me. The girl in the corner, in the red petticoat, was irresistible; and she should be my heroine. There should be a heroine,--a girl and a boy, instead of two boys. I did this, and, incited by old associations, described myself and a brother (in regard to character) in these two personages. Soon after, at a music-party, my hostess begged to introduce to me Mr. Collins the artist, who wished to make his acknowledgments for some special obligation he was under to me. This seemed odd, when I was hailing the opportunity for precisely the same reason. Mr. Collins begged to shake hands with me because I had helped him to his great success at the Academy that year. He explained that Mrs. Marcet had paid him a visit when he had fully sketched, and actually begun his picture, and had said to him "Before you go on with this, you ought to read Miss Martineau's description in 'Ella of Garveloch' of destroying the eagle's nest." Mr. Collins did so, and in consequence altered his picture in almost every part; and now, in telling me the incident, he said that his chief discontent with his work was not having effaced the figure of the girl in the corner. He was reconciled to her, however, when I told him that the girl in the red petticoat was the heroine of the story I was then writing. This incident strikes me as a curious illustration of the way in which minds play into one another when their faculties of conception and suggestion are kindred, whatever may be their several modes of expression. One of my chief social pleasures was meeting Wilkie, and planning pictures with him, after his old manner, though alas! he was now painting in his new. He had returned from Spain, with his portfolios filled with sketches of Spanish ladies, peasants and children; and he enjoyed showing these treasures of his, I remember, to my mother and me one day when we went by invitation to Kensington, to see them. But his heart was, I am sure, in his old style. He used to watch his opportunity,--being very shy,--to get a bit of talk with me unheard, about what illustrations of my stories should be,
saying that nothing would make him so happy, if he were but able, as to spend the rest of his painting-life in making a gallery from my Series. He told me which group or action he should select from each number, as far as then published, and dwelt particularly, I remember, on the one in "Ireland," which was Dora letting down her petticoat from her shoulders as she entered the cabin. I write this in full recollection of Wilkie's countenance, voice and words, but in total forgetfulness of my own story, Dora, and the cabin. I have not the book at hand for reference, but I am sure I am reporting Wilkie truly. He told me that he thought the resemblance of our respective mind's-eyes was perfectly singular; and that, for aught he saw, each of us might, as well as not, have done the other's work, as for as the pictorial faculties were concerned.
I have one more little anecdote to tell about the heroine "The
Hamlets." I was closely questioned by Miss Berry, one day when dining
there, about the sources of my draughts of character,--especially of
children,--and above all, of Harriet and Ben in "The
Hamlets." I acknowledged that these last were more like myself and my
brother than any body else. Whereupon the lively old lady exclaimed, loud
enough to be heard by the whole party, "My God! did you go out
shrimping?" "No," I replied: "nor were we
workhouse children, What you asked me about was the characters."
While these Poor-law tales were appearing, I received a letter
from Mrs. Fry, requesting an interview for purposes of importance, at any
time and place I might appoint. I appointed a meeting in Newgate, at the
hour on a Tuesday morning when Mrs. Fry was usually at that post of sublime
duty. Wishing for a witness, as our interview was to be one of business, I
took with me a clerical friend of mine as an appropriate person. After the
usual services, Mrs. Fry led the way into the Matron's room, where we
three sat down for our conference. Mrs. Fry's objects were two. The
inferior one was to engage me to interest the government in her newly
planned District Societies. The higher one was connected with the
poor-law reform then in preparation. She told me that her brother,
J.J. Gurney, and other
members of her family had become convinced by reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my tales that they had been for a long course of years unsuspectingly doing mischief where they meant to do good; that they were now convinced that the true way of benefitting the poor was to reform the Poor-law system; and that they were fully sensible of the importance of the measure to be brought forward, some months hence, in parliament. Understanding that I was in the confidence of the government as to this measure, they desired to know whether I could honourably give them an insight into the principles on which it was to be founded. Their object in this request was good. They desired that their section of the House of Commons should have time and opportunity to consider the subject, which might not be attainable in the hurry of a busy session. On consideration, I had no scruple in communicating the principles, without, of course, any disclosure of the measures. Mrs. Fry noted them down, with cheerful thanks, and assurances that they would not be thrown away. They were not thrown away. That section of Members came well prepared for the hearing of the measure, and one and all unflinchingly supported it.
From the time of my settlement in London, there was no fear of any
dearth of information on any subject which I wished to treat. Every party,
and every body who desired to push any object, forwarded to me all the
information they held. It was, in fact, rather ridiculous to see the onset
on my acquaintances made by riders of hobbies. One acquaintance of mine
told me, as I was going to his house to dinner, that three gentlemen had
been at his office that morning;--one beseeching him to get me to
write a number on the navigable rivers of Ireland; a second on (I think)
the Hamiltonian (or other) system of Education; and a third, who was
confident that the welfare of the nation depended on it, on the
encouragement of flax-growing in the interior of Guiana. Among such
applicants, the Socialists were sure to be found; and Mr. Owen was
presently at my ear, laying down the law in the way which he calls
"proof," and really interesting me by the candour and
cheerfulness, the benevolence and charming manners which would make him the
most
popular man in England if he could but distinguish between assertion and argument, and abstain from wearying his friends with his monotonous doctrine. If I remember right, it was after my anti-socialist story, "For Each and for All," that I became acquainted with Mr. Owen himself; but the material was supplied by his disciples,--for the chance of what use I might make of it: so that I was perfectly free to come out as their opponent. Mr. Owen was not at all offended at my doing so. Having still strong hopes of Prince Metternich for a convert, he might well have hopes of me: and, believing Metternich to be, if the truth were known, a disciple of his, it is no wonder if I also was given out as being so. For many months, my pleasant visitor had that hope of me; and when he was obliged to give it up, it was with a kindly sigh. He was sure that I desired to perceive the truth; but I had got unfortunately bewildered. I was like the traveller who could not see the wood for the trees. I cannot recal that story, more or less; ("For Each and All;") but I know it must have contained the stereotyped doctrine of the Economists of that day. What I witnessed in America considerably modified my views on the subject of Property; and from that time forward I saw social modifications taking place which have already altered the tone of leading Economists, and opened a prospect of further changes which will probably work out in time a totally new social state. If that should ever happen, it ought to be remembered that Robert Owen was the sole apostle of the principle in England at the beginning of our century. Now that the Economy of Association is a fact acknowledged by some of our most important recent institutions,--as the London Clubs, our Model Lodging-houses, and dozens of new methods of Assurance, every one would willingly assign his due share of honour to Robert Owen, but for his unfortunate persistency in his other characteristic doctrine,--that Man is the creature of circumstances,--his notion of "circumstances" being literally surroundings, no allowance, or a wholly insufficient allowance, being made for constitutional structure and differences. His certainty that we might make life a heaven, and his hallucination that we are going to do so
immediately, under his guidance, have caused his wisdom to be overlooked in his absurdity, and his services to be too nearly forgotten in vexation and fatigue at his eccentricity. I own I became weary of him, while ashamed, every time I witnessed his fine temper and manners, of having felt so. One compact that we made, three parts in earnest, seems to me, at this distance of time, excessively ludicrous. I saw that he was often wide of the mark, in his structures on the religious world, through his ignorance of the Bible; and I told him so. He said he knew the Bible so well as to have been heartily sick of it in his early youth. He owned that he had never read it since. He promised to read the four Gospels carefully, if I would read "Hamlet," with a running commentary of Necessarian doctrine in my own mind. My share was the easier, inasmuch as I was as thoroughgoing a Necessarian as he could desire. I fulfilled my engagement, internally laughing all the while at what Shakspere would be thinking, if he could know what I was about. No doubt, Mr. Owen did his part too, like an honourable man; and no doubt with as much effect produced on him by this book as by every other, as a blind man in the presence of the sunrise, or a deaf one of an oratorio. Robert Owen is not the man to think differently of a book for having read it; and this from no want of candour, but simply from more than the usual human inability to see any thing but what he has made up his mind to see.
I cannot remember what put the scene and story of my twelfth number,
"French Wines and Politics," into my head: but I recall
some circumstances about that and the following number, "The Charmed
Sea," which amused me extremely at the time. Among the very first of
my visitors at my lodgings was Mrs. Marcet, whose
"Conversations" had revealed to me the curious fact that, in my
early tales about Wages and Machinery, I had been writing Political Economy
without knowing it. Nothing could be more kindly and generous than her
acknowledgment and enjoyment of what she called my "honours."
The best of it was, she could never see the generosity on which her old
friends complimented her, because, by her own account, there was no sort of
rivalship between us. She had a great opinion
of great people;--of people great by any distinction,--ability, office, birth and what not: and she innocently supposed her own taste to be universal. Her great pleasure in regard to me was to climb the two flights of stairs at my lodgings (asthma notwithstanding) to tell me of great people who were admiring, or at least reading, my Series. She brought me "hommages" and all that sort of thing, from French savans, foreign ambassadors, and others; and, above all the rest was her satisfaction in telling me that the then new and popular sovereign, Louis Philippe, had ordered a copy of my Series for each member of his family, and had desired M. Guizot to introduce a translation of it into the national schools. This was confirmed, in due time, by the translator, who wrote to me for some particulars of my personal history, and announced a very large order for the work from M. Guizot. Before I received this letter, my twelfth number was written, and I think in the press. About the same time, I heard from some other quarter, (I forget what) that the Emperor of Russia had ordered a copy of the Series for every member of his family; and my French translator wrote to me, some time afterwards, that a great number of copies had been bought, by the Czar's order, for his schools in Russia. While my twelfth number was printing, I was writing the thirteenth, "The Charmed Sea,"--that sea being the Baikal Lake, the scenery Siberian, and the personages exiled Poles. The Edinburgh Review charged me with relaxing my Political Economy for the sake of the fiction, in this case,--the reviewer having kept his article open for the appearance of the latest number obtainable before the publication of the review. There was some little mistake about this; the fact being that the bit of doctrine I had to deal with,--the origin of currency,--hardly admitted of any exemplification at all. Wherever the scene had been laid, the doctrine would have been equally impracticable in action, and must have been conveyed mainly by express explanation or colloquial commentary. If any action were practicable at all, it must be in some scene where the people were at the first remove from a state of barter: and the Poles in Siberia, among Mongolian neighbours, were perhaps as good for my purpose as any other
personages. Marco Polo's account of the stamped leather currency he met with in his travels determined me in regard to Asiatic scenery, in the first place; and the poet Campbell's appeals to me in behalf of the Poles, before I left Norwich, and the visits of the venerable Niemcewicz, and other Poles and their friends, when I went to London, made me write of the Charmed Sea of Siberia. My reviewer was right as to the want of the due subordination of other interests to that of the science; but he failed to perceive that that particular bit of science was abstract and uninteresting. I took the hint, however; and from that time I was on my guard against making my Series a vehicle for any of the "causes" of the time. I saw that if my Edinburgh reviewer could not perceive that some portions of doctrine were more susceptible of exemplification than others, such discrimination was not to be expected of the whole public; and I must afford no occasion for being supposed to be forsaking my main object for such temporary interests as came in my way.--Meantime, the incidents occurred which amused my friends and myself so much, in connexion with these two numbers. On the day of publication of the twelfth, Mrs. Marcet climbed my stair-case, and appeared, more breathless than ever, at a somewhat early hour,--as soon as my door was open to visitors. She was in a state of distress and vexation. "I thought I had told you," said she, in the midst of her panting,--"but I suppose you did not hear me:--I thought I had told you that the King of the French read all your stories, and made all his family read them: and now you have been writing about Egalité; and they will never read you again." I told her I had heard her very well; but it was not convenient to me to alter my story, for no better reason than that. It was from history, and not from private communication, that I drew my materials; and I had no doubt that Louis Philippe and his family thought of his father very much as I did. My good friend could not see how I could hope to be presented at the Tuileries after this: and I could only say that it had never entered my head to wish it. I tried to turn the conversation to account by impressing on my anxious friend the hopelessness of all attempts to induce me to alter my stories
from such considerations as she urged. I wrote with a view to the people, and especially the most suffering of them; and the crowned heads must, for once, take their chance for their feelings. A month after, I was subjected to similar reproaches about the Emperor of Russia. He was, in truth, highly offended. He ordered every copy of my Series to be delivered up, and then burnt or deported; and I was immediately forbidden the empire. His example was followed in Austria; and thus, I was personally excluded, before my Series was half done, from two of the three greatest countries in Europe, and in disfavour with the third--supposing I wished to go there. My friends, Mr. and Mrs. F--, invited me to go to the south of Europe with them on the conclusion of my work: and our plan was nearly settled when reasons appeared for my going to America instead. My friends went south when I went west. Being detained by inundation on the borders of Austrian Italy, they were weary of their dull hotel. All other amusement being exhausted, Mr. F-- sauntered round the open part of the house, reading whatever was hung against the walls. One document contained the names and description of persons who were not to be allowed to pass the frontier; and mine was among them. If I had been with my friends, our predicament would have been disagreeable. They could not have deserted me; and I must have deprived them of the best part of their journey.
In planning my next story, "Berkeley the Banker," I
submitted myself to my reviewer's warning, and spared no pains in
thoroughly incorporating the doctrine and the tale. I remember that, for
two days, I sat over my materials from seven in the morning till two the
next morning, with an interval of only twenty minutes for dinner. At the
end of my plotting, I found that, after all, I had contrived little but
relationships, and that I must trust to the uprising of new involutions in
the course of my narrative. I had believed before, and I went on during my
whole career of fiction-writing to be more and more thoroughly
convinced, that the creating a plot is a task above human faculties. It is
indeed evidently the same power as that of prophecy: that is, if all
human action is (as we know it to be) the
inevita-
ble result of antecedents, all the antecedents must be thoroughly comprehended in order to discover the inevitable catastrophe. A mind which can do this must be, in the nature of things, a prophetic mind, in the strictest sense; and no human mind is that. The only thing to be done, therefore, is to derive the plot from actual life, where the work is achieved for us: and, accordingly, it seems that every perfect plot in fiction is taken bodily from real life. The best we know are so derived. Shakspere's are so: Scott's one perfect plot ("the Bride of Lammermoor") is so; and if we could know where Boccaccio and other old narrators got theirs, we should certainly find that they took them from their predecessors, or from the life before their eyes. I say this from no mortification at my own utter inability to make a plot. I should say the same, (after equal study of the subject) if I had never tried to write a tale. I see the inequality of this kind of power in contemporary writers; an inequality wholly independent of their merits in other respects; and I see that the writers (often inferior ones) who have the power of making the best plots do it by their greater facility in forming analogous narratives with those of actual experience. They may be, and often are, so inferior as writers of fiction to others who cannot make plots that one is tempted to wish that they and their superiors could be rolled into one, so as to make a perfect novelist or dramatist. For instance, Dickens cannot make a plot,--nor Bulwer,--nor Douglas Jerrold, nor perhaps Thackeray; while Fanny Kemble's forgotten "Francis the First," written in her teens, contains mines of plot, sufficient to furnish a groundwork for a score of fine fictions. As for me, my incapacity in this direction is so absolute that I always worked under a sense of despair about it. In "the Hour and the Man," for instance, there are prominent personages who have no necessary connexion whatever with the story; and the personages fall out of sight, till at last, my hero is alone in his dungeon, and the story ends with his solitary death. I was not careless, nor unconscious of my inability. It was inability, "pure and simple." My only resource therefore was taking suggestion from facts, witnessed by myself, or gathered in any way I could. That tale of "Berke-
ley the Banker" owed its remarkable success, not to my hard work of those two days; but to my taking some facts from the crisis of 1825-6 for the basis of my story. The toil of those two days was not thrown away, because the amalgamation of doctrine and narrative was more complete than it would otherwise have been: but no protraction of the effort would have brought out a really good plot, any more than the most prodigious amount of labour in practicing would bring out good music from a performer unendowed with musical faculty.
That story was, in a great degree, as I have already said, our own
family history of four years before. The most amusing thing to me was that
the relative (not one of my nearest relations) who was presented as
Berkeley,--(by no means exactly, but in the main characteristics and
in some conspicuous speeches) was particularly delighted with that story.
He seized it eagerly, as being about banking, and expressed his admiration,
far and wide, of the character of the banker, as being so extremely
natural! His unconscious pleasure was a great relief to me: for,
while I could not resist the temptation his salient points offered me, I
dreaded the consequences of my free use of them.
About the next number, "Vanderput and Snoek," I have a
curious confession to make. It was necessary to advertise on the cover of
each tale the title of the next. There had never been any difficulty thus
far,--it being my practice, as I have said, to sit down to the study
of a new number within a day or two, or a few hours, of finishing its
predecessor. My banking story was, however, an arduous affair; and I had to
write the first of my Poor-law series. I was thus driven so close
that when urged by the printer for the title of my next number, I was
wholly unprepared. All I knew was that my subject was to be Bills of
Exchange. The choice of scene lay between Holland and South America, where
Bills of Exchange are, or then were, either more numerous or more important
than any where else. I thought Holland on the whole the more convenient of
the two; so I dipped into some book about that country (Sir William Temple,
I believe it was) picked out the two ugliest Dutch names I could find, made
them into a firm, and boldly
advertised them. Next, I had to consider how to work up to my title: and in this I met with most welcome assistance from my friends, Mr. and Mrs. F--, of Highbury. They were well acquainted with the late British Consul at Rotterdam, then residing in their neighbourhood. They had previously proposed to introduce me to this gentleman, for the sake of the information he could give me about Dutch affairs: and I now hastened to avail myself of the opportunity. The ex-consul was made fully aware of my object, and was delighted to be of use. We met at Mr. F.'s breakfast table; and in the course of the morning he gave me all imaginable information about the aspect and habits of the country and people. When I called on his lady, some time afterwards, I was struck by the pretty picture presented by his twin daughters, who were more exactly alike than any other twins I have ever seen. They sat beside a worktable, at precisely the same angle with it: each had a foot on a footstool, for the sake of her netting. They drew their silk through precisely at the same instant, and really conveyed a perplexing impression of a mirror where mirror there was none. The Dromios could not be more puzzling. The temptation to put these girls into a story was too strong to be resisted: but, as I knew the family were interested in my Series at the moment, I waited a while. After a decent interval, they appeared in "The Park and the Paddock;" and then only in regard to externals; for I knew nothing more of them whatever.
When I had to treat of Free Trade, I took advantage, of course, of the
picturesque scenery and incidents connected with smuggling. The only
question was what part of the coast I should choose for my seventeenth and
eighteenth numbers, "The Loom and the Lugger." I questioned all
my relations and friends who had frequented Eastbourne and that
neighbourhood about the particulars of the locality and scenery. It struck
me as curious that, of all the many whom I asked, no one could tell me
whether there was a lighthouse at Beachy Head. A cousin told me that she
was acquainted with a farmer's family living close by Beachy Head,
and in the very midst of the haunts of the smugglers. This farmer was under
some obligation to my
uncle, and would be delighted at the opportunity of rendering a service to any of the name. My publisher was willing to set down the trip to the account of the expenses of the Series; and I went down, with a letter of introduction in my hand, to see and learn all I could in the course of a couple of days. My time was limited, not only by the exigencies of my work, but by an engagement to meet my Edinburgh reviewer for the first time,--as I have mentioned above,--and to another very especial party for the same evening. On a fine May evening, therefore, I presented myself at the farm-house door, with my letter in my hand. I was received with surpassing grace by two young girls,--their father and elder sister being absent at market. Tea was ready presently; and then, one of the girls proposed a walk to "the Head" before dark. When we returned, every thing was arranged; and the guest chamber looked most tempting to an overworked Londoner. The farmer and one daughter devoted the whole of the next day to me. We set forth, carrying a new loaf and a bottle of beer, that we might not be hurried in our explorations. I then and there learned all that appears in "The Loom and the Lugger" about localities and the doings of smugglers. Early the following morning I went to see Pevensey Castle, and in the forenoon was in the coach on my way back to town. I was so cruelly pressed for time that, finding myself alone in the coach, I wrote on my knees all the way to London, in spite of the jolting. At my lodging, I was in consternation at seeing my large round table heaped with the letters and parcels which had arrived during those two days. I dispatched fourteen notes, dressed, and was at Lady S.'s by the time the clock struck six. The quiet, friendly dinner was a pure refreshment: but the evening party was a singular trial. I had been compelled to name the day for this party, as I had always been engaged when invited by my hostess. I thought it odd that my name was shouted by the servants, in preference to that of Lady C--, with whom I entered the room: and the way in which my hostess took possession of me, and began to parade me before her noble and learned guests showed me that I must at once take my part, if I
desired to escape the doom of "lionising." The lady, having two drawing-rooms open, had provided a "lion" for each. Rammohun Roy was stationed in the very middle of one, meek and perspiring; and I was intended for the same place in the other. I saw it just in time. I took my stand with two or three acquaintances behind the folding-doors, and maintained my retirement till the carriage was announced. If this was bad manners, it was the only alternative to worse. I owe to that incident a friendship which has lasted my life. That friend, till that evening known to me only by name, had been behind the scenes, and had witnessed all the preparations; and very curious she was to see what I should do. If I had permitted the lionising, she would not have been introduced to me. When I got behind the door, she joined our trio; and we have been intimate friends to this day. Long years after, she gave me her account of that memorable evening. What a day it was! When Lady S. set me down at midnight, and I began to undress, and feel how weary I was, it seemed incredible that it was that very morning that I had seen Pevensey Castle, and heard the dash of the sea, and listened to the larks on the down. The concluding thought, I believe, before I fell into the deep sleep I needed, was that I would never visit a second time at any house where I was "lionised."
The Anti-corn law tale, "Sowers not Reapers," cost me
great labour,--clear as was the doctrine, and familiar to me for many
a year past. I believe it is one of the most successful for the
incorporation of the doctrine with the narrative: and the story of
the Kays is true, except that, in real life, the personages were gentry. I
had been touched by that story when told it, some years before; and now it
seemed to fit in well with my other materials. Two years afterwards I met
with a bit of strong evidence of the monstrous vice and absurdity of our
corn-laws in the eyes of Americans. This story, "Sowers not
Reapers," was republished in America while I was there; and Judge
Story, who knew more about English laws, manners and customs, condition,
literature, and even topography than any other man in the United States,
told me that I need not expect his country-
men in general to understand the book, as even he, after all his preparedness, was obliged to read it twice,--first to familiarise himself with the conception, and then to study the doctrine. Thus incredible was it that so proud and eminent a nation as ours should persist in so insane and suicidal a policy as that of protection, in regard to the most indispensable article of food.
Among the multitude of letters of suggestion which had by this time been
sent me, was an anonymous one from Oxford, which gave me the novel
information that the East India Company constituted a great monopoly. While
thinking that, instead of being one, it was a nest of monopolies (in 1833)
I speculated on which of them I might best take for an illustration of my
anti-monopoly doctrine. I feared an opium story might prove immoral,
and I did not choose to be answerable for the fate of any
Opium-eaters. Salt was too thirsty a subject for a July number.
Cinnamon was fragrant, and pearls pretty and cool: and these, of
course, led me to Ceylon for my scenery. I gathered what I could from
books, but really feared being obliged to give up a singularly good
illustrative scene for want of the commonest facts concerning the social
life of the Cingalese. I found scarcely any thing even in Maria Graham and
Heber. At this precise time, a friend happened to bring to my lodging, for
a call, the person who could be most useful to me,--Sir Alexander
Johnstone, who had just returned from governing Ceylon, where he had
abolished Slavery, established Trial by Jury, and become more thoroughly
acquainted with the Cingalese than perhaps any other man then in England.
It was a remarkable chance; and we made the most of it; for Sir Alexander
Johnstone was as well pleased to have the cause of the Cingalese pleaded as
I was to become qualified to do it. Before we had known one another half an
hour, I confided to him my difficulty. He started off, promising to return
presently; and he was soon at the door again, with his carriage full of
books, prints and other illustrations, affording information not to be
found in any ordinarily accessible books. Among the volumes he left with me
was a Colombo almanack, which furnished me with names, notices of customs,
and other valuable matters. The friend who
had brought us together was highly delighted with the success of the introduction, and bestirred himself to see what else he could do. He invited me to dinner the next day (aware that there was no time to lose;) and at his table I met as many persons as he could pick up who had recently been in Ceylon. Besides Sir Alexander Johnstone, there was Holman, the blind traveller, and Captain Mangles, and two or three more; and a curiously oriental day we had of it, in regard to conversation and train of thought. I remember learning a lesson that day on other than Cingalese matters. Poor Holman boasted of his achievements in climbing mountains, and of his always reaching the top quicker than his comrades; and he threw out some sarcasms against the folly of climbing mountains at all, as waste of time, because there were no people to be found there, and there was generally rain and cold. It evidently never occurred to him that people with eyes climb mountains for another purpose than a race against time; and that his comrades were pausing to look about them when he outstripped them. It was a hint to me never to be critical in like manner about the pleasures of the ear.--After I had become a traveller, Sydney Smith amused himself about my acquaintance with Holman; and I believe it was reading what I said in the preface to my American book which put his harmless jokes into his head. In that preface I explained the extent to which my deafness was a disqualification for travel, and for reporting of it: and I did it because I knew that, if I did not, the slaveholders would make my deafness a pretext for setting aside any part of my testimony which they did not like. Soon after this preface appeared, and when he had heard from me of my previous meeting with Holman, Sydney Smith undertook to answer a question asked by somebody at a dinner party, what I was at that time about. "She is writing a book," said Sydney Smith, "to prove that the only travellers who are fit to write books must be both blind and deaf."
My number on the monopolies in cinnamon and pearls went off pleasantly
after my auspicious beginning. Sir A. Johnstone watched over its progress,
and seriously assured me afterwards,
in a call made for the purpose, that there was, to the best of his belief, not a single error in the tale. There was much wrath about it in Ceylon, however; and one man published a book to show that every statement of mine, on every point, from the highest scientific to the lowest descriptive, was absolutely the opposite of the truth. This personage was an Englishman, interested in the monopoly: and the violence of his opposition was of service to the right side.
Soon after I went to my London lodgings, my mother came up, and spent
two or three weeks with me. I saw at once that she would never settle
comfortably at Norwich again; and I had great difficulty in dissuading her
from at once taking a house which was very far beyond any means that I
considered it right to reckon on. For the moment, and on occasion of her
finding the particular house she had set her mind on quite out of the
question, I prevailed on her to wait. I could not wonder at her desire to
come up, and enjoy such society as she found me in the midst of; and I
thought it, on the whole, a fortunate arrangement when, under the sanction
of two of my brothers, she took the small house in Fludyer Street,
Westminster, where the rest of my London life was passed. That small house
had, for a wonder, three sitting-rooms; and we three ladies needed
this. The house had no nuisances, and was as airy as a house in Fludyer
Street could well be: and its being on the verge of St James's
Park was a prodigious advantage for us all,--the Park being to us, in
fact, like our own garden. We were in the midst of the offices, people and
books which it was most desirable for me to have at hand; and the house was
exactly the right size for us; and of the right cost,--now that I was
able to pay the same amount as my aunt towards the expenses of our
household. My mother's little income, with these additions, just
sufficed;--allowance being made for the generosity which she loved to
exercise. I may as well finish at once what I have to say about this
matter. For a time, as I anticipated, all went well. My mother's
delight in her new social sphere was extreme. But, as I had also
anticipated, troubles arose. For one of two great troubles, meddlers and
mischief-makers were mainly answerable.
The other could not be helped. It was, (to pass it over as lightly as possible) that my mother, who loved power and had always been in the habit of exercising it, was hurt at confidence being reposed in me, and distinctions shown, and visits paid to me; and I, with every desire to be passive, and being in fact wholly passive in the matter, was kept in a state of constant agitation at the influx of distinctions which I never sought, and which it was impossible to impart. What the meddlers and mischief-makers did was to render my old ladies, and especially my mother, discontented with the lowliness of our home. They were for ever suggesting that I ought to live in some sort of style,--to have a larger house in a better street, and lay out our mode of living for the society in which I was moving. Of course they were not my own earned friends who made such suggestions. Their officiousness proved their vulgarity: and my mother saw and said this. Yet, every word told upon her heart; and thence, every word helped to pull down my health and strength. No change could be made but by my providing the money; and I could not conscientiously engage to do it. It was my fixed resolution never to mortgage my brains. Scott's recent death impressed upon me an awful lesson about that. Such an effort as that of producing my Series was one which could never be repeated. Such a strain was quite enough for one lifetime. I did not receive any thing like what I ought for the Series, owing to the hard terms under which it was published. I had found much to do with my first gains from it; and I was bound in conscience to lay by for a time of sickness or adversity, and for means of recreation, when my task should be done. I therefore steadily refused to countenance any scheme of ambition, or to alter a plan of life which had been settled with deliberation, and with the sanction of the family. To all remonstrances about my own dignity my reply was that if my acquaintance cared for me, they would come and see me in a small house and a narrow street: and all who objected to the smallness of either might stay away. I could not expose myself to the temptation to write in a money-getting spirit; nor yet to the terrible anxieties of assuming a position which could be maintained only by ex-
cessive toil. It was necessary to preserve my independence of thought and speech, and my power of resting, if necessary;--to have, in short, the world under my feet instead of hanging round my neck: and therefore did I refuse all intreaty and remonstrance about our house and mode of living. I was supported, very cordially, by the good cousin who managed my affairs for me: but an appeal to my brothers became necessary, at last. They simply elicited by questions the facts that the circumstances were unchanged;--that the house was exactly what we had expected; that our expenses had been accurately calculated; and that my mother's income was the same as when she had considered the house a proper one for our purposes: in short, that there was no one good reason for a change. The controversy was thus closed; but not before the train was laid for its being closed in another manner. The anxieties of my home were too much for me, and I was by that time wearing down fast. The illness which laid me low for nearly six years at length ensued; and when it did, there could be no doubt in any mind of its being most fortunate that I had contracted no responsibilities which I could not fulfil. It was a great fault in me, (and I always knew that it was) that I could not take these things more lightly. I did strive to be superior to them: but I began life, as I have said, with a most beggarly set of nerves; I had gone through such an amount of suffering and vicissitude as had weakened my physique, if it had strengthened my morale; and now, I was under a pressure of toil which left me no resource wherewith to meet any constant troubling of the affections. I held my purpose, because it was clearly right: but I could not hold my health and nerve. They gave way; and all questions about London residence were settled a few years after by our leaving London altogether. Soon after my illness laid me low, my dear old aunt died; and my mother removed to Liverpool, to be taken care of by three of her children who were settled there.
I was entering upon the first stage of this career of anxiety when I was
writing my twenty-first number,--"A Tale of the
Tyne." The preparation of it was terribly laborious, for I had
to superintend at that time the removal into the Fludyer Street house. The weather was hot, and the unsettlement extreme. I had to hire and initiate the servants, to receive and unpack the furniture; and to sit down at night, when all this was done, to write my number. At that time, of all seasons, arose a very serious trouble, which not only added to my fatigue of correspondence in the day, but kept me awake at night by very painful feelings of indignation, grief and disappointment. It was thought desirable, by myself as well as by others, that my plan of Illustration of Political Economy should be rendered complete by some numbers on modes of Taxation. The friends with whom I discussed the plan reminded me that I must make fresh terms with Charles Fox, the publisher. They were of opinion that I had already done more than enough for him by continuing the original terms through the whole series thus far, the agreement being dissoluble at the end of every five numbers, and he having never fulfilled, more or less, the original condition of obtaining subscribers. He had never obtained one. I accordingly wrote to Mr. Charles Fox, to inquire whether he was willing to publish five additional number on the usual terms of booksellers' commission. The reply was from his brother; and it was long before I got over the astonishment and pain that it caused. He claimed, for Charles, half the profits of the series, to whatever length it might extend. He supported the claim by a statement of eight reasons, so manifestly unsound that I was equally ashamed for myself and for him that he should have ventured to try them upon me. In my reply, I said that there was no foundation in law or equity for such a claim. As Mr. Charles Fox wrote boastfully of the legal advice he should proceed upon, I gladly placed this affair in the hands of a sound lawyer,--under the advice of my counsellors in the business. I put all the documents,--the original agreement and the whole correspondence,--into my lawyer's hands; and his decision was that my publisher, in making this claim, had "not a leg to stand upon." I was very sure of this; but the pain was not lessened thereby. I could not but feel that I had thrown away my consideration and my money upon a man who made this
consideration the ground of an attempt to extort more. The whole invention and production of the work had been mine; and the entire sale was, by his own admission, owing to me. The publisher, holding himself free to back out of a losing bargain if I had not instantly succeeded, had complacently pocketed his commission of thirty per cent (on the whole) and half the profits, for simply selling the book to the public whom I sent to his shop: and now he was threatening to go to law with me for a prolongation of his unparalleled bargain. I sent him my lawyer's decision, and added that, as I disliked squabbles between acquaintances on money matters, I should obviate all pretence of a claim on his part by making the new numbers a supplement, with a new title,--calling them "Illustrations of Taxation." I did not take the work out of his hands, from considerations of convenience to all parties: but I made no secret of his having lost me for a client thenceforth. He owed to me such fortune as he had; and he had now precluded himself from all chance of further connexion. He published the Supplement, on the ordinary terms of commission: and there was an end. I remember nothing of that story,--"A Tale of the Tyne;" and I should be rather surprised if I did under the circumstances. The only incident that I read about it is that Mr. Malthus called on purpose to thank me for a passage, or a chapter, (which has left no trace in my memory) on the glory and beauty of love and the blessedness of domestic life; and that others, called stern Benthamites, sent round messages to me to the same effect. They said, as Mr. Malthus did, that they had met with a faithful expositor at last.
In "Briery Creek" I indulged my life-long sentiment
of admiration and love of Dr. Priestley, by making him, under a thin
disguise, the hero of my tale. I was staying at Lambton Castle when that
number appeared; and I was extremely surprised by being asked by Lady
Durham who Dr. Priestley was, and all that I could tell her about him. She
had seen in the newspapers that my hero was the Doctor; and I found that
she, the daughter of the Prime Minister, had never heard of the Birmingham
riots! I was struck by this evidence of what
fear-
ful things may take place in a country, unknown to the families of the chief men in it.
Of number twenty-three, "The Three Ages," I remember
scarcely any thing. The impression remaining is that I mightily enjoyed the
portraiture of Wolsey and More, and especially a soliloquy or speech of Sir
Thomas More's. What it is about I have no recollection
whatever: and I need not say that I have never looked at the story
from the day of publication till now: but I have a strong impression
that I should condemn it, if I were to read it now. I have become convinced
that it is a mistake of serious importance attempt to put one's mind
of the nineteenth century into the thought of the sixteenth; and wrong, as
a matter of taste, to fall into a sort of slang style, or mannerism, under
the notion of talking old English. The temptation is strong to young people
whose historical associations are vivid, while their intellectual sympathy
is least discriminating; and young writers of a quarter of a century ago
may claim special allowance from the fact that Scott's historical
novels were then at the height of their popularity; but I believe that, all
allowance being made, I should feel strong disgust at the affectations
which not only made me very complacent at the time, but brought to me not a
few urgent requests that I would write historical novels. Somewhere in that
number there is a passage which Lord John Russell declared to be treason,
saying that it would undoubtedly bear a prosecution. The publisher smirked
at this, and heartily wished somebody would prosecute. We could not make
out what passage his Lordship meant; but we supposed it was probably that
part which expresses pity for the Royal Family in regard to the mode in
which their subsistence is provided;--such of them, I mean, as have
not official duties. If it be that passage, I can only say that every man
and every woman who is conscious of the blessing of living either by
personal exertion or on hereditary property is thus declared guilty of
treason in thought, whenever the contrast of a pensioned or eleemosynary
condition and an independent one presents itself, in connexion with the
royal family, as it was in the last generation. It might be in some other
passage, however, that the lia-
bility lurked. I did not look very closely; for I cannot say that I should have at all relished the prosecution,--the idea of which was so exhilarating to my publisher.
Number twenty-four, "The Farrers of Budge Row," seems
on the whole to be considered the best story of the Series. I have been
repeatedly exhorted to reproduce the character of Jane in a novel. This
Jane was so far a personal acquaintance of mine that I had seen her, two or
three times, on her stool behind the books, at the shop where we bought our
cheese, in the neighbourhood of Fludyer Street. Her old father's
pride then was in his cheeses,--which deserved his devotion as much as
cheeses can: but my mother and I were aware that his pride had once a
very different object; and it was this knowledge which made me go to the
shop, to get a sight of the father and daughter. There had been a younger
brother of that quiet woman, who had been sent to college, and educated for
one of the learned professions; but his father changed his mind, and
insisted so cruelly and so long on the young man being his shopman, that
the poor fellow died broken-hearted. This anecdote, and an
observation that I heard on the closeness with which the daughter was
confined to the desk originated the whole story.
I wrote the chief part of the concluding number, "The Moral of
Many Fables," during the journey to the north which I took to see my
old grandmother before my departure for America, and to visit my eldest
sister at Newcastle, and Lord and Lady Durham at Lambton Castle. The
fatigue was excessive; and when at Lambton, I went down a coal-pit,
in order to see some things which I wanted to know. The heats and draughts
of the pit, combined with the fatigue of an unbroken journey by mail from
Newcastle to London, in December, caused me a severe attack of inflammation
of the liver, and compelled the omission of a month in the appearance of my
numbers. The toil and anxiety incurred to obtain the publication of the
work had, as I have related, disordered my liver, two years before. I
believe I had never been quite well, during those two years; and the toils
and domestic anxieties of the autumn of 1833 had prepared me for overthrow
by the first accident.--After struggling for ten
days to rise from my bed, I was compelled to send word to printer and publisher that I must stop for a month. Mr. Fox (the elder) sent a cheering and consolatory note which enabled me to give myself up to the pleasure of being ill, and lying still, (as still as the pain would let me) without doubt or remorse. There was something to be done first, however; for the printer's note was not quite such a holiday matter as Mr. Fox's. It civilly explained that sixteen guineas' worth of paper had been wetted, which would be utterly spoiled, if not worked off immediately. It was absolutely necessary to correct two proofs, which, as it happened, required more attention than any which had ever passed under my eye, from their containing arithmetical statements. Several literary friends had offered to correct my proofs; but these were not of a kind to be so disposed of. So, I set to work, with dizzy eyes and a quivering brain; propped up with pillows, and my mother and the maid alternately sitting by me with sal volatile, when I believed I could work a little. I was amused to hear, long afterwards, that it was reported to be my practice to work in this delightful style,--"when exhausted, to be supported in bed by her mother and her maid." These absurd representations about myself and my ways taught me some caution in receiving such as were offered me about other authors.
It was no small matter, by this time, to have a month's respite
from the fluctuations of mind which I underwent about every number of my
work. These fluctuations were as regular as the tides; but I did not
recognize this fact till my mother pointed it out in a laughing way which
did me a world of good. When I told her, as she declared I did once a
month, that the story I was writing would prove an utter failure, she was
uneasy for the first few months, but afterwards amused: and her
amusement was a great support to me. The process was indeed a pretty
regular one. I was fired with the first conception, and believed that I had
found a treasure. Then, while at work, I alternately admired and despised
what I wrote. When finished, I was in absolute despair; and then, when I
saw it in print, I was surprised to see how well it looked. After an
interval of above
twenty years, I have not courage to look at a single number,--convinced that I should be disgusted by bad taste and metaphysics in almost every page. Long before I had arrived at this closing number, my mother and aunt had got into the way of smiling at each other, and at me, whenever I bade them prepare for disgrace; and they asked me how often I had addressed the same exhortation to them before.--There was another misery of a few hours long which we had to bear once a month: and that was the sending the manuscript to the printing-office. This panic was the tax I have always paid for making no copy of any thing I write. I sent the parcel by a trusty messenger, who waited for a receipt. One day, the messenger did not return for several hours,--the official being absent whose duty it was to receive such packets. My mother said, "I tell you what, Harriet; I can't bear this ........." "Nor I either," I replied. "We must carry it ourselves next time." "So I would every time; but I doubt our being the safest messengers," I was replying, when the note of acknowledgment was brought in. Now, at this new year 1834, I had a whole month of respite from all such cares, and could lie in bed without grudging the hours as they passed. It was indeed a significant yielding when, in 1831, I gave way to solicitations to produce a number a month. I did give way, (though with a trembling heart) because I knew that when I had once plunged into an enterprise, I always got through it, at whatever cost. I could not have asked any body to go into such an undertaking; and the cost was severe: but I got through; and,--if my twenty-fourth number was really the best, as people said,--without disgrace.
I was not through it yet, however. The "Illustrations of
Taxation" had still to be written. I had designed six; and I forget
when and why I determined there should be only five: but I rather
think it was when I found the first series must have an additional number.
All I am sure of is that it was a prodigious relief, which sent my spirits
up sky high, when I resolved to spare myself a month's work. Rest and
leisure had now become far more important to me than fame and money.
Nothing struck me so much, or left so deep and abiding an impression after
the
close of this arduous work, as my new sense of the value of time. A month had never before appeared to me what it now became; and I remember the real joy of finding in February, 1832, that it was leap year, and that I had a day more at my command than I had calculated. The abiding effect has perhaps not been altogether good. No doubt I have done more than I should without such an experience: but I think it has narrowed my mind. When I consider how some who knew me well have represented me as "industrious in my pleasures;" and how some of my American friends had a scheme at Niagara to see whether I could pass a day without asking or telling what o'clock it was, I feel convinced that my respect for "time and the hour" has been too much of a superstition and a bigotry. say this now (1855) while finding that I can be idle; while, in fact, feeling myself free to do what I please,--that is, what illness admits of my doing, for above half of every day. I find, in the last stage of life, that I can play and be idle; and that I enjoy it. But I still think that the conflict between constitutional indolence and an overwrought sense of the value of time has done me some harm in the midst of some important good.
The Taxation numbers had, as I have said, still to be done; and, I
think, the last of the Poor-law tales. I was aware that, of all the
many weak points of the Grey administration, the weakest was Finance. Lord
Althorp, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, complained of the hardship of
being put into that office, when Nature had made him a grazier. It struck
me that some good might be done, and no harm, if my Illustrations proceeded
pari passu with the financial reforms
expected from the Whig government; and I spoke on the subject to Lieutenant
Drummond, who had just become private secretary to Lord Althorp. I was well
acquainted with Mr. Drummond; and it occurred very naturally that I told
him that if he knew of any meditated measure which would be aided by
illustration, would help, in all silence and discretion,--provided
always that I approved of the scheme. About this time, the London
shopkeepers were raising a selfish outcry against the House-tax, one
of the very best on the list of imposts. It was understood on all hands that the clamour was not raised by the house-owners, but by their tenants, whose rents had been fixed in consideration of their payment of the tax. If they could get rid of the tax, the tenants would pocket the amount during the remaining term of their leases. Large and noisy deputations besieged the Treasury; and many feared that the good-natured Lord Althorp would yield. Just at this time, Mr. Drummond called on me, with a private message from Lords Grey and Athorp, to ask whether it would suit my purpose to treat of Tithes at once, instead of later,--the reason for such inquiry being quite at my service. As the principles of Taxation involve no inexorable order, like those of Political Economy at large, I had no objection to take any topic first which might be most useful. When I had said so, Mr. Drummond explained that a tithe measure was prepared by the Cabinet which Ministers would like to have introduced to the people by my Number on that subject, before they themselves introduced it in parliament. Of course, this proceeded on the supposition that the measure would be approved by me. Mr. Drummond said he would bring the document, on my promising that no eye but my own should see it, and that I would not speak of the affair till it was settled;--and, especially, not to any member of any of the Royal Commissions, then so fashionable. It was a thing unheard of, Mr. Drummond said, to commit any cabinet measure to the knowledge of any body out of the Cabinet before it was offered to parliament. Finally, the Secretary intimated that Lord Althorp would be obliged by any suggestion in regard to principles and methods of Taxation.
Mr. Drummond had not been gone five minutes before the Chairman of the
Excise Commission called, to ask in the name of the Commissioners, whether
it would suit my purpose to write immediately on the Excise, offering, on
the part of Lord Congleton (then Sir Henry Parnell) and others, to supply
me with the most extraordinary materials, by my exhibition of which the
people might be enlightened and prepared on the subject before it should be
brought forward in parliament. The
Chairman, Mr. Henry Wickham, required a promise that no eye but my own should see the evidence; and that the secret should be kept with especial care from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his secretary, as it was a thing unheard of that any party unconcerned should be made acquainted with this evidence before it reached the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I could hardly help laughing in his face; and wondered what would have happened if he and Mr. Drummond had met on the steps, as they very nearly did. Of course, I was glad of the information offered; but I took leave to make my own choice among the materials lent. A few days afterwards I met Mr. Wickham before the Horse Guards, and thought he would not know me,--so deep was he in reverie. Before I was quite past, however, he started, and stopped me with eagerness, saying intensely, "O! Miss Martineau, Starch! Starch!" And he related the wonderful, the amazing evidence that had reached the Commissioners on the mischievousness of the duty on starch. I was obliged, however, to consider some other matters than the force of the evidence, and I declined expatiating on starch, finding the subject of green glass bottles, soap and sweets answer my purpose better. These two last, especially, yielded a very strong case.
At the end of a note to Mr. Drummond on Tithes that evening, I expressed
myself plainly about the house-tax and the shopkeepers, avowing my
dread that Lord Althorp might yield to the clamour. Mr. Drummond called
next day with the promised tithe document; and he told me that he had
handed my note to Lord Althorp, who had said "Tell her that I may be
altogether of her mind; but that if she was here, in my place, with
hundreds of shopkeepers yelling about the doors, she would yield, as I must
do." "Never," was my message back, "so long as the
House-tax is admitted to be the best on the list." And I
fairly told him that the Whig government was perilling the public safety by
yielding every thing to clamour, and nothing without it.
I liked the Tithe measure, and willingly propounded it in my tale
"The Tenth Haycock." It was discussed that session, but
deferred; and it passed, with some modifications, a session or two later.--Mr. Drummond next came to open to me, on the same confidential conditions, Lord Althorp's scheme for the Budget, then due in six weeks. His object was to learn what I thought of certain intended alterations of existing taxes. With some pomp and preface, he announced that a change was contemplated which Lord Althorp hoped would be agreeable to me as a dissenter,--a change which Lord Althorp anticipated would be received as a boon by the dissenters. He proposed to take off the tax upon saddle-horses, in the case of the clergy and dissenting ministers. "What shall I tell Lord Althorp that you think of this?" inquired the Secretary. "Tell him I think the dissenting Ministers would like it very much if they had any saddle-horses," I replied.--"What! do you mean that they will not take it as a boon?"--"If you offer it as a boon, they will be apt to take it as an insult. How should dissenting Ministers have saddle-horses, unless they happen to have private fortunes?" He questioned me closely about the dissenting Ministers I knew; and we found that I could actually point out only two among the Unitarians who kept saddle-hones: and they were men of property.
"What, then, would you substitute?" was the next question.
"I would begin upon the Excise; set free the smallest articles first,
which least repay the expense of collection, and go on to the
greatest."--"The Excise! Ah! Lord Althorp bade me tell you
that the Commission on Excise have collected the most extraordinary
evidence, which he will take care that you shall have, as soon as he gets
it himself." (It was at that moment in the closet, within two feet of
my visitor.) I replied that the evils of the excise system were well known
to be such as to afford employment to any Chancellor of the Exchequer for a
course of years; and I should venture to send Lord Althorp my statement of
them, hoping that he would glance at it before he brought out his Budget, I
worked away at the two Excise stories ("The Jerseymen Meeting"
and "The Jerseymen Parting,") making out a strong case, among
others, about Green Glass Bottles and Sweets, more as illustrative examples
than as individual cases.
I sent the first copy I could get to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a day and a half before he brought out his Budget. When I opened the "Times," the morning after, I was highly amused at seeing that he had made a curious alteration in his intentions about the saddle-horse duty, applying the remission to those clergymen and ministers only whose income was under two hundred pounds a year,--having evidently no idea of the cost of keeping a horse. Not less amusing was it to see that he had taken off the duty from green glass bottles and sweets. He was in fact open to suggestion and correction from any quarter,--being consciously, as I have mentioned that he said, one of Nature's graziers, and a merely man-made Chancellor of the Exchequer.
By this time, the summer of 1834 was far advanced, and I was much
exhausted with fatigue and hot weather, and the hurry of preparation for my
trip to America. I was drooping in idea over my last number, "The
Scholars of Arneside," when a cordial friend of mine said, "You
will go with great spirit through your last number,--the final task of
such an enterprise." This prophecy wrought its own accomplishment. I
did go through it with spirit; and I found myself, after making my calls,
with one day left for packing and preparation. Many interruptions occurred
during the last few days which deferred my conclusion till I felt and saw
that my mother was so anxious that I must myself keep down worry of nerves.
On the Friday before I was to leave home for above two years, my mother
said, with anxious kindness, "My dear, have you done?"
"No, mother." On Saturday night, she put her head in at my
study door, with "My dear, have you done?" "Indeed I have
not." Sunday came,--my place taken by mail for Tuesday, no
packing done, and my number unfinished! The case seemed desperate. My
mother staid at home, and took every precaution against my being
disturbed: but some one came on indispensable business, and did not
release me till our early Sunday dinner hour. My mother looked anxiously in
my face; and I could only shake my head. After dinner, she in a manner
mounted guard over my study door. At five o'clock I flew down stairs
with the last sheet, with the ink still wet, in my hand. My sister Ellen was with us, and at the moment writing to some Derbyshire friends. By a sudden impulse, I seized her paper, and with the wet pen with which I had just written "The End," I announced the conclusion of my work. My mother could say little but "After all we have gone through about this work, to think how it has ended!" I flew up stairs again to tie up parcels and manuscripts, and put away all my apparatus; and I had just finished this when I was called to tea. After tea I went into St. James's Park for the first thoroughly holiday walk I had taken for two years and a half. It felt very like flying. The grass under foot, the sky overhead, the trees round about, were wholly different from what they had ever appeared before. My business was not, however, entirely closed. There were the proof-sheets of the last Number to be looked over. They followed me to Birmingham, where Ellen and I travelled together, in childish spirits, on the Tuesday.
My mother had reason for her somewhat pathetic exultation on the
conclusion of my Series. Its success was unprecedented, I believe. I am
told that its circulation had reached ten thousand in England before my
return from America. Mr. Babbage, calling on me one day, when he was in
high spirits about the popularity of his own work, "Machinery and
Manufactures," said, "Now there is nobody here to call us vain,
we may tell each other that you and I are the only people in the market. I
find no books are selling but yours and mine." (It was a time of
political agitation.) I replied, "I find no books are selling but
yours and mine." "Well!" said he, "what I came to
say is that we may as well advertise each other. Will you advertise mine if
I advertise yours, &c. &c.?" And this was the work which had
struggled into existence with such extreme difficulty! Under the hard
circumstances of the case, it had not made me rich. I have at this time
received only a little more than two thousand pounds for the whole work.
But I got a hearing,--which was the thing I wanted. The barrier was
down, and the course clear; and the money was a small matter in comparison.
It was pleasant too, to feel the ease of having money, after
my straitened way of life for some years. My first indulgence was buying a good watch,--the same which is before my eyes as I write. I did not trouble myself with close economies while working to such advantage; and I now first learned the bliss of helping the needy effectually. I was able to justify my mother in removing to London, and to refresh myself by travel, at the end of my task. My American journey cost me four hundred pounds, in addition to one hundred which I made when there. I had left at home my usual payment to my mother; but she refused to take it, as she had a boarder in my place. Soon after my return, when my first American book was published, I found myself able to lay by one thousand pounds, in the purchase of a deferred annuity, of which I am now enjoying the benefit in the receipt of one hundred pounds a year. I may finish off the subject of money by saying that I lately calculated that I have earned altogether by my books somewhere about ten thousand pounds. I have had to live on it, of course, for five-and-twenty years; and I have found plenty to do with it: but I have enough, and I am satisfied. I believe I might easily have doubled the amount, if it had been my object to get money; or even, if an international copyright law had secured to me the proceeds of the sale of my works in foreign countries. But such a law was non-existent in my busy time, and still is in regard to America. There is nothing in money that could pay me for the pain of the slightest deflexion from my own convictions, or the most trifling restraint on my freedom of thought and speech. I have therefore obtained the ease and freedom, and let slip the money. I do not speak as one who has resisted temptation, for there has really been none. I have never been at a loss for means, or really suffering from poverty, since the publication of my Series. I explain the case simply that there may be no mystery about my not being rich after such singular success as I so soon met with.
One more explanation will bring this long section to a close. I make it
the more readily because it is possible that an absurd report which I
encountered in America may be still in existence. It was said that I
travelled, not on my own resources, but on
means supplied by Lord Brougham and his relative Lord Henley, to fulfil certain objects of theirs. Nobody acquainted with me would listen to such nonsense; but I may as well explain what Lord Henley had to do with my going to America. Lord Brougham had no concern with it whatever, beyond giving me two or three letters of introduction. The story is simply this. One evening, in a party, Lady Mary Shepherd told me that she was commissioned to bring about an interview between myself and her nephew, Lord Henley, who had something of importance to say to me: and she fixed me to meet Lord Henley at her house at luncheon a day or two after. She told me meantime the thing he chiefly wanted, which was to know how, if I had three hundred pounds a year to spend in charity, I should employ it. When we met, I was struck by his excessive agitation, which his subsequent derangement might account for. His chief interest was in philanthropic subjects; and he told me, with extreme emotion, (what so many others have told me) that he believed he had been doing mischief for many years where he most meant to do good, by his methods of alms-giving. Since reading "Cousin Marshall" and others of my Numbers, he had dropped his subscriptions to some hurtful charities, and had devoted his funds to Education, Benefit Societies and Emigration. Upon his afterwards asking whether I received visitors, and being surprised to find that I could afford the time, some remarks were made about the extent and pressure of my work; and then Lord Henley asked whether I did not mean to travel when my Series was done. Upon my replying that I did, he apologised for the liberty he took in asking where I thought of going. I said I had not thought much about it; but that I supposed it would be the usual route, to Switzerland and Italy. "O! do not go over that beaten track," he exclaimed. "Why should you? Will you not go to America?" I replied, "Give me a good reason, and perhaps I will." His answer was, "Whatever else may or may not be true about the Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and mercy in their treatment of the least happy classes of society which we should do well to understand. Will you not go, and tell us what they are?" This, after some
meditation, determined me to cross the Atlantic. Before my return, Lord Henley had disappeared from society; and he soon after died. I never saw him, I believe, but that once.
After short visits, with my sister Ellen, at Birmingham, in Derbyshire
and at Liverpool, I sailed (for there were no steamers on the Atlantic in
those days) early in August, 1834.
"This 'Lion' is indeed one of the meanest of his
tribe; but he is one of a tribe which has included, and does now include,
some who are worthy of a higher classification. Byron was an
'interesting creature,' and received blushing thanks for his
last 'divine poem.' Scott lost various little articles which
would answer for laying up in lavender; and Madame de Stael was exhibited
almost as ostensibly at the British Gallery as any of the pictures on the
walls, on the evening when the old Marquis of A-- obtained an
introduction to her, and accosted her with 'Come now, Madame de
Stael, you must talk English to me.' As she scornfully turned from
him, and continued her discourse in her own way, the discomfited Marquis
seemed to think himself extremely ill used in being deprived of the
entertainment he expected from the prima
donna of the company. In as far as such personages as these last
acquiesce in the modern practice of 'Lionism,' they may be
considered to be implicated in whatever reproach attaches to it; But the
truth seems to be that, however
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disgusting and injurious the system, and however guilty some few individuals may be in availing themselves of it for their small, selfish, immediate purposes, the practice, with its slang term, is the birth of events, and is a sign of the times,--like newspaper puffery, which is an evidence of over population, or like joint stock companies and club-houses, which indicate that society has obtained a glimpse of that great principle of the economy of association, by which it will probably, in some future age, reconstitute itself.
"The practice of 'Lionism' originates in some feelings
which are very good,--in veneration for intellectual superiority, and
gratitude for intellectual gifts; and its form and prevalence are
determined by the fact, that literature has reached a larger class, and
interested a different order of people from any who formerly shared its
advantages. A wise man might, at the time of the invention of printing,
have foreseen the age of literary 'Lionism,' and would probably
have smiled at it as a temporary extravagance. The whole course of
literally achievement has prophesied its transient reign. The voluntary,
self-complacent, literary 'Lion' might, in fact, be
better called the mouse issuing from the labouring mountain, which has yet
to give birth to the volcano.
"There was a time when literature was cultivated only in the
seclusion of monasteries. There sat the author of old, alone in his
cell,--alone through days, and months, and years. The echoes of the
world have died away; the voice of praise could not reach him there, and
his grave yawned within the very inclosure whence he should never depart.
He might look abroad from the hill-side, or the pinnacle of rock
where his monastery stood, on
'the rich leas,
The turfy mountains, where live
nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatch'd with stover them to
keep:
------ the broom groves,
Whose
shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lass-lorn:
the pole-clipt vineyard,
And the sea-marge, sterile and
rocky hard.'
On these he might look abroad, but never on the assemblages of men.
Literary achievement in such circumstances might be, to
a certain degree, encouraged by visions of future usefulness and extended fame, but the strongest stimulus must have been the pleasure of intellectual exercise. The toil of composition must there have been its own reward, and we may even now witness with the mind's eye the delight of it painted upon the face under the cowl. One may see the student hastening from the refectory to the cell, drawn thither by the strong desire of solving a problem, of elucidating a fact, of indulging the imagination with heavenly delights, and contemplating the wealth stored in his memory. One may see him coming down with radiant countenance from the heights of speculation, to cast into the worship of the chapel the devotion he had there gained. One may see the glow upon his cheek as he sits alone beside his lamp, noting his discoveries, or elaborating the expression of his ideas. There are many who think that no one ever wrote a line, even in the most private diary, without the belief, or the hope, that it would be read. It might be so with the monastic author; but in his case there could rarely be the appendage of praise to the fact of its being read; and the prospect of influence and applause was too remote to actuate a life of literary toil. It is probable that if an echo of fame came to him on any of the four winds, it was well, and he heartily enjoyed the music of the breeze; but that in some instances he would have passed his days in the same manner, cultivating literature for its own sake, if he had known that his parchments would be buried with him.
"The homage paid to such men when they did come forth into the
world was, on the part of the many, on the ground of their superiority
alone. A handful of students might feel thankfulness towards them for
definite services, but the crowd gazed at them in vague admiration, as
being holier or wiser than other people. As the blessings of literature
spread, strong personal gratitude mingled with the homage--gratitude
not only for increase of fame and honour to the country and nation to which
the author belonged, but for the good which each worshipper derived from
the quickening of his sympathies, the enlargement of his views, the
elevation of his intellectual being. To each of the crowd the author had
opened up a spring of fresh ideas,
furnished a solution of some doubt, a gratification of the fancy or the reason. When, on a certain memorable Easter day in the fourteenth century, Petrarch mounted the stairs of the Capitol, crowned with laurel, and preceded by twelve noble youths, reciting passages of his poetry, the praise was of the noblest kind that it has been the lot of authorship to receive. It was composed of reverence and gratitude, pure from cold selfishness and from sentimental passion, which is cold selfishness in a flame-colored disguise. When, more than four centuries later, Voltaire was overpowered with acclamations in the theatre at Paris, and conveyed home in triumph, crying feebly, 'You suffocate me with roses,' the homage, though inferior in character to that which greeted Petrach, was honourable, and of better origin than popular selfishness. The applauding crowd had been kept ignorant by the superstition which had in other ways so afflicted them, that they were unboundedly grateful to a man of power who promised to relieve them from the yoke. Voltaire had said, 'I am tired of hearing it repeated that twelve men were sufficient to found Christianity: I will show the world that one is sufficient to destroy it;' and he was believed. He was mistaken in his boast, and his adorers in confiding in it; but this proves only that they were ignorant of Christianity, and not that their homage of one whom they believed to have exploded error and disarmed superstition, and whom they knew to have honoured and served them by his literary labours, was otherwise than natural and creditable to their hearts.
"The worship of popular authors at the present time is an
expression of the same thoughts and feelings as were indicated by the
crowning of Petrarch and the greeting of Voltaire in the theatre, but with
alterations and additions.according to the change in the times. Literary
'lions' have become a class,--an inconceivable idea to the
unreflecting in the time of Petrach, and even of Voltaire. This testifies
to the vast spread of literature among our people. How great a number of
readers is required to support, by purchase and by praise, a standing class
of original writers! It testifies to the deterioration of literature as a
whole. If, at any one time, there is a class of persons to
whom the public are grateful for intellectual excitement, how médiocre must be the quality of the intellectual production! It by no means follows that works of merit, equal to any which have yet blessed mankind, are not still in reserve; but it is clear that the great body of literature has entirely changed its character--that books are no longer the scarce fruit of solemn and protracted thought, but rather, as they have been called, 'letters to all whom they may concern.' That literary 'lions' now constitute a class, testifies to the frequency of literary success,--to the extension of the number of minds from which a superficial and transient sympathy may be anticipated. But the newest feature of all is the class of 'lionizers,'--new, not because sordid selfishness is new--not because social vanity is new--not because an inhuman disregard of the feelings of the sensitive, the foibles of the vain, the privileges of the endowed, is new: but because it is somewhat new to see the place of cards, music, masks, my lord's fool, and my lady's monkey, supplied by authors in virtue of their authorship.
"It is, to be sure, quite to be expected that low-minded
persons should take advantage of any prevalent feeling, however
respectable, to answer their own purposes; but the effect, in this
instance, would be odd to a resuscitated gentleman of the fifteenth
century. If he happened to be present at one of the meetings of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, he would there see the popular
veneration for intellectual achievement under a pretty fair aspect. There
is no harm, and some good, in seeing a group waiting for Sir John Herschel
to come out into the street, or a rush in the rooms to catch a sight of
Faraday,--or ladies sketching Babbage, and Buckland, and
Back,--or a train of gazers following at the heels of Whewell or
Sedgwick, or any popular artist or author who might be present among the
men of science. In all this there is no reproach, and some honour, to both
parties, though of a slight and transient kind. The sordid characteristics
of the modern system appear when the eminent person becomes a guest in a
private house. If the resuscitated gentleman of the fifteenth century were
to walk into a country house in England in com-
pany with a lady of literary distinction, he might see at once what is in the mind of the host and hostess. All the books of the house are lying about--all the gentry in the neighbourhood are collected; the young men peep and stare from the corners of the room; the young ladies crowd together, even sitting five upon three chairs, to avoid the risk of being addressed by the stranger. The lady of the house devotes herself to 'drawing out' the guest, asks for her opinion of this, that, and the other book, and intercedes for her young friends, trembling on their three chairs, that each may be favoured with 'just one line for her album.' The children are kept in the nursery, as being unworthy the notice of a literary person, or brought up severally into the presence, 'that they may have it to say all their lives that they had been introduced,' &c. &c. Some youth in a corner is meantime sketching the guest, and another is noting what she says--probably something about black and green tea, or the state of the roads, or the age of the moon. Such a scene, very common now in English country houses, must present an unfavourable picture of our manners to strangers from another country or another age. The prominent features are the sufferings of one person, and the selfishness of all the rest. They are too much engrossed with the excitement of their own vanity and curiosity to heed the pain they are inflicting on one who, if she happens to have more feeling and less vanity than they, can hardly enjoy being told that children cannot be interesting to her, and that young people do not wish to speak to her.
"In a country town it is yet worse. There may be seen a coterie of
'superior people' of the place, gathered together to make the
most of a literary foreigner who may be passing through. Though he speaks
perfect English, the ladies persist in uttering themselves, after hems and
haws, in French that he can make nothing of,--French as it was taught
in our boarding schools during the war. The children giggle in a corner at
what the boys call 'the jabber;' and the maid who hands the tea
strives to keep the corners of her mouth in order. In vain the guest speaks
to the children, and any old person who may be present, in English almost
as good as their own; he is annoyed
to the last by the 'superior people,' who intend that it should get abroad through the town that they had enjoyed a vast deal of conversation in French with the illustrious stranger.
"Bad as all this is, the case is worse in London,--more
disgusting, if it is impossible to be more ridiculous. There, ladies of
rank made their profit of the woes of the Italian and Polish refugees, the
most eagerly in the days of the deepest unhappiness of the exiles, when the
novelty was strongest. These exiles were collected in the name of
hospitality, but for purposes of attraction, within the doors of
fashionable saloons; there they were stared out of countenance amidst the
sentimental sighs of the gazers; and if any one of them,--any
interesting Count or melancholy-looking Prince, happened
unfortunately to be the author of a 'sweet poem,' or a
'charming tragedy,' he was called out from among the rest to be
flattered by the ladies, and secured for fresh services. It was not
uncommon, during the days of the novelty of the Italian refugees, while
they were yet unprovided with employments by which they might live, (and
for aught we know, it may not be uncommon still,) for ladies to secure the
appearance of one or two of these first-rate 'lions'
with them the next evening at the theatre or opera, and to forget to pay.
Till these gentlemen had learned by experience to estimate the friendship
of the ladies to whom they were so interesting, they often paid away at
public places the money which was to furnish them with bread for the week.
We have witnessed the grief and indignation with which some of them have
announced their discovery that their woes and their accomplishments were
hired with champagne, coffee, and fine words, to amuse a party of languid
fine people.
"These gentlemen, however, are no worse treated than many natives.
A new poet, if he innocently accepts a promising invitation, is liable to
find out afterwards that his name has been inserted in the summonses to the
rest of the company, or sent round from mouth to mouth to secure the rooms
being full. If a woman who has written a successful play or novel attends
the soirée of a 'lionising' lady, she hears her name so
announced on the stairs as to make it certain that the servants have had
their
instructions; she finds herself seized upon at the door by the hostess, and carried about to lord, lady, philosopher, gossip, and dandy, each being assured that she cannot be spared to each for more than ten seconds. She sees a 'lion' placed in the centre of each of the two first rooms she passes through,--a navigator from the North Pole in the one, a dusky Egyptian bey or Hindoo rajah in another; and it flashes upon her that she is to be the centre of attraction in a third apartment. If she is vain enough to like the position, the blame of ministering to a pitiable and destructive weakness remains with the hostess, and she is answerable for some of the failure of power which will be manifest in the next play or novel of her victim. If the guest be meek and modest, there is nothing for it but getting behind a door, or surrounding herself with her friends in a corner. If she be strong enough to assert herself, she will return at once to her carriage, and take care how she enters that house again. A few instances of what may be seen in London during any one season, if brought together, yield but a sorry exhibition of the manners of persons who give parties to gratify their own vanity, instead of enjoying the society and the pleasure of their friends. In one crowded room are three 'lions,'--a new musical composer, an eminent divine who publishes, and a lady poet. These three stand in three corners of the room, faced by a gaping crowd. Weary at length of their position, they all happen to move towards the centre table at the same moment. They find it covered with the composer's music, the divine's sermons, and the lady's last new poem; they laugh in each other's faces, and go back to their corners. A gentleman from the top of Mont Blanc, or from the North Pole, is introduced to a lady who is dying to be able to say that she knows him, but who finds at the critical moment that she has nothing to say to him. In the midst of a triple circle of listeners, she asks him whether he is not surprised at his own preservation; whether it does not prove that Providence is everywhere, but more particularly in barren places? If a sigh or a syllable of remonstrance escapes from any victim, them is one phrase always at hand for use, a phrase which, if it ever contained any truth, or exerted any consolatory influence, has
been long worn out, and become mere words,--'This is a tax you must pay for your eminence.' There may, perhaps, be as much assumption with regard to the necessity of this tax as of some others. Every tax has been called absolutely necessary in its day; and the time may arrive when some shall dispute whether it be really needful that an accomplished actor should be pestered with the flattery of his art, that authors should be favoured with more general conversation only that any opinions they may drop may be gathered up to be reported; and that women, whom the hardest treatment awaits if their heads should be turned, should be compelled to hear what the prime minister, or the Russian ambassador, or the poet laureate, or the 'lion ' of the last season, has said of them. Those on whom the tax is levied would like to have the means of protest, if they should not see its necessity quite so clearly as others do. They would like to know why they are to be unresistingly pillaged of their time by importunity about albums, and despoiled of the privacy of correspondence with their friends by the rage for autographs, so that if they scribble a joke to an acquaintance in the next street, they may hear of its existence five years after in a far corner of Yorkshire, or in a book of curiosities at Hobart Town. They would like to know why they must be civil when a stranger, introduced by an acquaintance at a morning call, makes her curtsey, raises her glass, borrows paper and pencil of the victim, draws a likeness, puts it into her reticule, and departs. They would like to know why they are expected to be gratified when eight or nine third-rate painters beg them to sit for their portraits, to be hung out as signs to entice visitors to the artist's rooms."
* * * * * *
"Authors would like to know why they must receive flattery as if
it were welcome, and be made subject to fine speeches, which presuppose a
disgusting degree of vanity in the listener. They would like to know
whether it is absolutely necessary that they should be accused of pride and
ingratitude if they decline honours of such spurious origin as most of
these, and of absurd vanity if they do not repel them. They would like to
know
whether it is quite necessary, in generous and Christian England, that any class should submit to have is most besetting sin, its peculiar weakness, fostered and aggravated for the proposes of persons whose aim it is to have brilliant parties and a celebrated acquaintance. The being honoured through the broad land, while the soul is sinking under its sense of ignorance and weakness at home, is a tax which a popular author must pay; and so is the being censured for what may prove the best deeds of his life, and the highest thoughts of his mind. He may be obliged to submit to be gazed at in public, and to be annoyed with handfuls of anonymous letters in his study, where he would fain occupy himself with something far higher and better than himself and his doings. These things may be a tax which he must pay; but it may be questionable whether it is equally necessary for him to acquiesce in being the show and attraction of an assemblage to which he is invited as a guest, if not as a friend.
"This matter is not worth losing one's temper
about,--just because nothing is worth it. There is another reason,
too, why indignation would be absurd,--that no individuals or classes
are answerable for the system. It is the birth of the times, as we said
before, and those may laugh who can, and those who must suffer had better
suffer good-humouredly; but not the less is the system a great
mischief, and therefore to be exposed and resisted by those who have the
power. If its effects were merely to insure and hasten the ruin of youthful
poets, who are satisfied to bask in compliments and the lamp-light
of saloons, to complete the resemblance to pet animals of beings who never
were men, the world would lose little, and this species of coxcombry, like
every other, might be left to have its day. But this is far from being all
that is done. There is a grievous waste of time of a higher order of beings
than the rhyming dandy--waste of the precious time of those who have
only too few years in which to think and to live. There is an intrusion
into the independence of their observation of life. If their modesty is not
most painfully outraged, their idea of the literary life is depraved. The
one or the other must be the case, and we generally witness both in the
literary pets of saloons.
"Some plead that the evil is usually so temporary, that it cannot
do much mischief to any one who really has an intellect, and is therefore
of consequence to the world. But the mischief is not over with praise and
publicity. The reverse which ensues may be salutary. As Carlyle says,
'Truly, if Death did not intervene; or, still more happily, if Life
and the Public were not a blockhead, and sudden unreasonable oblivion were
not to follow that sudden unreasonable glory, and beneficently, though most
painfully, damp it down, one sees not where many a poor glorious man, still
more, many a poor glorious woman (for it falls harder on the distinguished
female), could terminate, far short of Bedlam.' Such reverse may be
the best thing to be hoped; but it does not leave things as they were
before the season of flattery set in. The safe feeling of equality is gone;
habits of industry are impaired; the delicacy of modesty is exhaled; and it
is a great wonder if the temper is not spoiled. The sense of elevation is
followed by a consciousness of depression: those who have been the
idols of society feel, when deposed, like its slaves; and the natural
consequence is contempt and repining. Hear Dryden at the end of a long
course of mutual flatteries between himself and his patrons, and of
authorship to please others, often to the severe mortification of his
better nature:--'It will continue to be the ingratitude of
mankind, that they who teach wisdom by the surest means shall generally
live poor and unregarded, as if they were born only for the public, and had
no interest in their own well-being, but were to be lighted up like
tapers, and waste themselves for the benefit of others.'"
* * * * * *
"The crowning evil which arises from the system of
'lionism' is, that it cuts off the retreat of literary persons
into the great body of human beings. They are marked out as a class, and
can no longer take refuge from their toils and their publicity in ordinary
life. This is a hardship shared by authors who are far above being directly
injured by the prevalent practice. There are men who continue to enter
society for the sake of the good it yields, enjoying intercourse, despising
homage, smiling at the vanities of those who must needs be vain, and
overlooking the
selfishness of such as are capable of no higher ambition than of being noted for their brilliant parties- there are men thus superior to being 'lions' who yet find themselves injured by 'lionism.' The more they venerate their own vocation, and the more humbly they estimate the influence of their own labours on human affairs, the more distinctly do they perceive the mischief of their separation from others who live and think; of their being isolated as a class. The cabinet-maker is of a different class from the hosier, because one makes furniture and the other stockings. The lawyer is of a different class from the physician, because the science of law is quite a different thing from the science of medicine. But the author has to do with those two things precisely which are common to the whole race--with living and thinking. He is devoted to no exclusive department of science; and the art which he practices--the writing what he thinks--is quite a subordinate part of his business. The very first necessity of his vocation is to live as others live, in order to see and feel, and to sympathize in human thought. In proportion as this sympathy is impaired, will his views be partial, his understanding, both of men and books, be imperfect, and his power be weakened accordingly. A man aware of all this will sigh, however goodnaturedly he may smile, at such lamentations as may often be overheard in 'brilliant parties.' 'How do you like Mrs. --, now you have got an introduction to her?' 'O, I am so disappointed! I don't find that she has anything in her.' 'Nothing in her! Nothing, with all her science!' 'O, I should never have found out who she was, if I had not been told; and she did not say a thing that one could carry away.' Hence--from people not finding out who she was without being told--came Mrs. --'s great wisdom; and of this advantage was all the world trying to deprive her."
* * * * * *
"Amidst the 'lower observances' of life, even the
pedantry of literary coteries, the frivolities of the drawing-room,
and the sentimentalities of 'lion' worship, there is for the
self-relying, 'tuition in the serene and beautiful laws'
of human existence. But the tuition is for the self-relying
alone--for those who, in
the deep interest of their vocation of thought, work from far other considerations than the desire of applause. None but a man who can do without praise can come out safe from the process of being 'lionised:' and no one who cannot do without praise is likely to achieve anything better than he has already done. The newspapers may tell of his 'expanding intellect,' and his publisher may prophecy of the rich fruits of his coming years: but he has done his best. Having gained much applause by a particular quality of his writing, he will be always trying to get more applause by a stronger exhibition of the quality, till it grows into pure extravagance. If he has energy, it will grow into bombast in the hot-house of drawing-room favour. If he is suggestive, and excels in implication, he will probably end in a Lord Burleigh's shake of the head. He deprives himself of the repose and independence of thought, amid which he might become aware of his own tendencies, and nourish his weaker powers into an equality with the stronger. Fashion, with all its lights, its music, its incense, is to him a sepulchre--the cold deep grave in which his powers and his ambition must rot into nothingness. We have often wondered, while witnessing the ministering of the poison to the unwary, the weak and the vain, whether their course began with the same kind of aspiration, felt as early, as that which the greatest of the world's thinkers have confessed. It seems as if any who have risen so far into success as to attract the admiration, (and therefore the sympathy) of numbers, must have had a long training in habits of thought, feeling, and expression; must have early felt admiration of intellectual achievement, and the consciousness of kindred with the masters of intellect; must have early known the stirring of literary ambition, the pleasure of thinking, the luxury of expressing thought, and the heroic longing to create or arouse somewhat in other minds. It is difficult to believe that any one who has succeeded has not gone through brave toils, virtuous struggles of modesty, and a noble glow of confidence: that he has not obtained glimpses of realities unseen by the outward eye, and been animated by a sense of the glory of his vocation: that, up to the precincts of the empire of fashion, he has been, in all essential
respects, on an equality with any of God's peerage. If so, what a sight of ruin is here: aspirations chained down by the fetter of complaisance! desires blown away by the breath of popularity, or the wind of ladies' fans! confidence pampered into conceit; modesty depraved into misgiving and dependence; and the music of the spheres exchanged for opera airs and the rhymes of an album! Instead of 'the scholar beloved of earth and heaven,' we have the mincing dandy courted by the foolish and the vain. Instead of the son of wisdom, standing serene before the world to justify the ways of his parent, we have the spoiled child of fortune, ready to complain, on the first neglect, that all the universe goes wrong because the darkness is settling down upon him after he has used up his little day. What a catastrophe of a mind which must have had promise in its dawn!
"Even where the case is not so mournful as this, the
drawing-room is still the grave of literary promise. There are some
who on the heath, or in the shadow of the wood, whispered to themselves,
with beating hearts, while communing with some mastermind, 'I also am
a poet.' In those days they could not hear the very name of Chaucer
or Shakspere without a glow of personal interest, arising out of a sense of
kindred. Now, lounging on sofas, and quaffing coffee and praise, they are
satisfied with mediocrity, gratified enough that one fair creature has shut
herself up with their works at noon-day, and that another has pored
over them at midnight. They now speak of Chaucer and Shakspere with the
same kind of admiration with which they themselves are addressed by others.
The consciousness, the heart-felt emotion, the feeling of
brotherhood--all that is noble is gone, and is succeeded by a low and
precarious self-complacency, a skeptical preference of mediocrity to
excellence. They underrate their vocation, and are lost."
* * * * * *
"When we think how few writers in a century live for centuries, it
is astonishing to perceive how many in every year dismiss all doubt of
their own greatness, and strut about in the belief that men's minds
are full of them, and will be full of them when a new age has arisen, and
they and their flatterers have
long been gone to learn elsewhere, perhaps, the littleness of all our knowledge. Any degree of delight, any excess of glee may be allowed for, and even respected, in one actually in the intense enjoyment of authorship, when all comparison with them is out of the question for the hour, and the charm of his own conceptions eclipses all other beauty, the fervor of his own persuasions excludes the influence of all other minds; but if a man not immediately subject to the inspiration of his art, deliberately believes that his thoughts are so far beyond his age, or his feelings so universal and so felicitously expressed as that he is even now addressing a remote posterity, no further proof of his ignorance and error is needed. The prophecy forbids its own accomplishment. There is probably no London season when some author is not told by some foolish person that he or she is equal to Shakspere; and it is but too probable that some have believed what they have been told, and in consequence stopped short of what, by patient and humble study and labour, they might have achieved; while it is almost certain, if such could but see it, that whenever Shakspere's equal shall arise, it will be in some unanticipated form, and in such a mode that the parity of glory shall be a secret to himself, and to the world, till he is gone from it.
"Another almost unavoidable effect of literary
'lionism' is to make an author overrate his vocation; which is,
perhaps, as fatal an error as underrating it. All people interested in
their work are liable to overrate their vocation. There may be makers of
dolls' eyes who wonder how society would go on without them. But
almost all men, but popular authors, leave behind them their business and
the ideas which belong to it when they go out to recreate themselves. The
literary 'lion,' however, hears of little but books, and the
kind of books he is interested in. He sees them lining the walls and
strewing the tables wherever he goes: all the ideas he hears are from
books; all the news is about books, till it is no wonder if he fancies that
books govern the affairs of the world. If this fancy once gets fixed in his
brain there is an end of his achievements. His sagacity about human
interests, and his sympathy with human feelings, are If he had not been
enchanted, held captive within
the magic circle of fashion, he might have stepped abroad to see how the
world really goes on. He might have found there philosophers who foresee
the imperishable nature of certain books; who would say to him 'Cast
forth thy word into the everliving, everworking universe; it is a seed
grain that cannot die; unnoticed to-day, it will be found
flourishing as a banyan-grove (perhaps, alas! as a hemlock forest)
after a thousand
years:'* all this,
however, supposing vital perfection in the seed, and a fitting soil for it
to sink into. He might have found some who will say with Fenelon, with all
earnestness, 'If the riches of both Indies, if the crowns of all the
kingdoms of Europe were laid at my feet, in exchange for my love of
reading, I would spurn them all.' But even among these, the reading
and thinking class, he would be wise to observe how much more important are
many things than books; how little literature can compete in influence with
the winds of heaven, with impulses from within, with the possession of land
and game, with professional occupations, with the news of the day, with the
ideas and affections belonging to home and family. All these rank, as they
ought to do, before books in their operation upon minds. If he could have
gone out of the circle of the highly cultivated, he would have found the
merchant on 'change, the shopkeeper at his ledger, mothers in their
nurseries, boys and girls serving their apprenticeships or earning their
bread, with little thought of books. It is true that in this class may be
found those who are, perhaps, the most wrought upon by books--those to
whom literature is a luxury: but to such, two or three books are the
mental food of a whole youth, while two or three more may sustain their
mature years. These are they to whom the vocation of the author, in the
abstract, is beyond comparison for nobleness, but to whom the vocation of
this particular author is of less importance than that of the monkey that
grimaces on Bruin's back, as he paces along Whitechapel or Cheapside.
If he could have gone further still, he would have heard little children
talking to their haggard mothers of some happy possibility of bacon to
their potatoes on some
___________________Sartor Resartus, p.
38.
Page 221
future day; he would have seen whole societies where no book is heard of but the 'Newgate Calendar.' How do books act upon the hundreds of thousands of domestic servants--upon the millions of artisans who cannot sever the sentences they speak into the words which compose them--upon the multitude who work on the soil, the bean-setters in spring, the mowers in summer, the reapers in autumn, who cover the broad land? How do books act upon the tribe who traverse the seas, obtaining guidance from the stars, and gathering knowledge from every strand? There is scarcely anything which does not act more powerfully upon them--not a word spoken in their homes, not an act of their handicraft, not a rumour of the town, not a glimpse of the green fields. The time will doubtless come when books will influence the life of such; but then this influence will be only one among many, and the books which will give it forth will hardly be of the class in which the literary 'lion' has an interest. Meantime, unless he goes abroad, in imagination at least, from the enchanted circle of which he is, for the time, the centre, he is in imminent peril, while relaxing in his intellectual toil, of overrating his vocation.
"This, however, is sometimes a preparation for being ashamed of
the vocation. Some of the anxiety which popular authors have shown, towards
the end of their career, to be considered as gentlemen rather than as
authors, is no doubt owing to the desire, in aristocratic England, to be on
a par with their admirers in the qualifications which most distinguish
them: and much also to the universal tendency to
depreciate what we possess in longing for something else--the tendency
which inclines so many men of rank to distinguish themselves as authors,
statesmen, or even sportsmen, while authors and legislators are struggling
for rank. But there can be no doubt that the subsidence of enthusiasm,
which must sooner or later follow the excitement caused by popular
authorship, the mortifications which succeed the transports of popularity,
have a large share in producing the desire of aristocratic station, the
shame of their vocation, by which some favourites of the
drawing-room cast a shadow over their own fame. Johnson says of
Congreve--'But he treated
the muses with ingratitude; for, having long conversed familiarly with the great, he wished to be considered rather as a man of fashion than of wit; and when he received a visit from Voltaire, disgusted him by the despicable foppery of desiring to be considered, not as an author, but a gentleman: to which the Frenchman replied, "that if he had been only a gentleman, he should not have come to visit him."'
"He must be a strong man who escapes all the pitfalls into this
tomb of ambition and of powers. He must have not only great force of
intellect to advance amidst such hindrances, but a fine moral vigour to
hold the purpose of his life amidst the voices which are crying to him all
the way up the mountain of his toil; syren voices, in which he must have an
accurate ear to discover that there is little of the sympathy he needs,
however much of the blandishment that he cannot but distrust.
"To any one strong enough to stand it, however, the experience of
literary 'lionism' yields much that is worth having. If
authorship be the accomplishment of early and steady aspiration; if the
author feels that it is the business of his life to think and say what he
thinks, while he is far from supposing it the business of other
people's lives to read what he says: if he holds to his aim,
regarding the patronage of fashion, and the flattery of the crowd only as a
piece of his life, like a journey abroad, or a fit of sickness, or a
legacy, or anything which makes him feel for the time, without having any
immediate connexion with the chief interest of his existence, he is likely
to profit rather than suffer by his drawing-room reputation. Some
essential conditions must be observed. It is essential that his mind should
not be spent and dissipated amidst a crowd of pleasures; that his social
engagements should not interfere with his labours of the study. He must
keep his morning hours (and they must be many) not only free but bright. He
must have ready for them a clear head and a light heart. His solitude must
be true solitude while it lasts, unprofaned by the intrusions of vanities,
(which are cares in masquerade) and undisturbed by the echoes of applause.
It is essential that he should be active in some common business of life,
not dividing the whole of his time
between the study and the drawing-room, and so confining himself to the narrow world of books and readers."
* * * * * *
"A man so seriously devoted to an object is not likely to find
himself the guest of the coarsest perpetrators of 'lionism.' He
is not likely to accept the hospitality on condition of being made a show;
but he need not part with his good humour. Those who give feasts, and hire
the talents of their neighbours to make those feasts agreeable, are
fulfilling their little part--are doing what they are fit for, and
what might be expected of them, as the dispensers of intellectual feasts
are doing their part in bringing together beauty and
attraction from the starry skies, and the green earth, and the acts and
thoughts of men. When once it is discerned that it is useless to look for
the grapes and figs of these last among the thorns and thistles of the
first, the whole matter is settled. Literary 'lionism' is a
sign of the times; and it is the function of certain small people to
exhibit it and there is an end. Neither it nor they are to be quarrelled
with for what cannot be helped.
"It will be hard upon the author faithful to his vocation, and it
will be strange, if some valuable friendships do not arise out of the
intercourses of the drawing-room where his probation goes forward.
This is one of the advantages which his popularity, however temporary, is
likely to leave behind. He is likely, moreover, to shake off a few
prejudices, educational, or engendered in the study. He can hardly fail to
learn something of the ways of thinking and feeling of new classes of
persons, or orders of minds before unknown. He is pretty sure, also, to
hear much that is said in his own dispraise that would never have reached
him in retirement; and this kind of information has great weight, if not
great virtue with every one; not only because there is almost invariably
some truth involved in every censure, but because most people agree with
Racine in his experience, that an adverse criticism gives more pain than
the extremist applause can afford pleasure. These things constitute
altogether a great sum of advantages, in addition to the enjoyments of
relaxation and kindly intercourse which are supposed
to be the attributes of all social assemblages. If many small wits and feeble thinkers have been extinguished by the system of literary 'lionism,' it may be hoped that some few have taken what is good and left what is bad in it, deriving from their exposure to it an improved self-reliance and fresh intellectual resources.
"Many are the thousands who have let the man die within them from
cowardly care about meat and drink, and a warm corner in the great asylum
of safety, whose gates have ever been thronged by the multitude who cannot
appreciate the free air and open heaven. And many are the hundreds who have
let the poet die within them that their complacency may be fed, their
vanity intoxicated, and themselves securely harboured in the praise of
their immediate neighbours. Few, very few are they who, 'noble in
reason,' and conscious of being 'infinite in faculties,'
have faith to look before and after--faith to go on to
'reverence the dreams of their youth'--faith to appeal to
the godlike human mind yet unborn--the mind which the series of coming
centuries is to reveal. Among the millions who are now thinking and feeling
on our own soil, is it likely that there is not one who might take up the
song of Homer--not one who might talk the night away with
Socrates,--not one who might be the Shakspere of an age when our
volcanoes shall have become regions of green pasture and still waters, and
new islands shall send forth human speech from the midst of the sea? What
are such men about? If one is pining in want, rusting in ignorance, or
turning from angel to devil under oppression, it is too probable that
another may be undergoing extinction in the
drawing-rooms--surrendering his divine faculties to wither in
lamplight, and be wafted away in perfume and praise. As surely as the human
thought has power to fly abroad over the expanse of a thousand years, it
has need to rest on that far shore, and meditate, 'Where now are the
flatteries, and vanities, and competitions, which seemed so important in
their day? Where are the ephemeral reputations, the glow-worm ideas,
the gossamer sentiments, which the impertinent voice of Fashion pronounced
immortal and divine? The deluge of oblivion has swept over
them all, while the minds which were really immortal and divine are still there, "for ever singing as they shine" in the firmament of thought, and mirrored in the deep of ages out of which they rose.'"*
Among the traits from the life is that paragraph of the foregoing
extracts about the pedantry of the "superior people" of a
provincial town. Norwich, which has now no claims to social superiority at
all, was in my childhood a rival of Lichfield itself, in the time of the
Sewards, for literary pretension and the vulgarity of pedantry. William
Taylor was then at his best; when there was something like fulfillment of
his early promise, when his exemplary filial duty was a fine spectacle to
the whole city, and before the vice which destroyed him had coarsened his
morale, and drowned his intellect. During the
war, it was a great distinction to know any thing of German literature; and
in Mr. Taylor's case it proved a ruinous distinction. He was
completely spoiled by the flatteries of shallow men, pedantic women, and
conceited lads. We girls had the advantage. We could listen and amuse
ourselves, without being called upon to take any part; and heartily amused
we often were, after the example of our mother. When she went to Norwich, a
bonny young bride, with plenty of sense and observation, and a satirical
turn, and more knowledge, even of hooks