CHAPTER IV.

GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS.

The loss of pecuniary position did something more for Harriet

Martineau besides opening the way to work in literature. The knowledge

that she was now poor gave her lover courage to declare himself, and

to seek her for his wife. Poverty, therefore, brought her that

experience which is so much in a woman's mental history, however

little it, perhaps, goes for in a man's. A love in youth, fervent,

powerful, and pure; a love, happy and successful in the essential

point that it is reciprocated by its object, however fate may deny it

outward fruition; such a love once filling a woman's soul, sweetens it

and preserves it for her whole life through. Pity the shriveled and

decayed old hearts which were not thus embalmed in youth! Harriet

Martineau did have this precious experience; and her womanliness of

nature remained fresh and true and sweet to the end of her days

because of it.

There may be many married women old maids in heart--to be so is the

punishment of those who marry without love; and there are many, like

Harriet Martineau, who are single in life, but whose hearts have been

mated, and so made alive. I do not know that she would have gained by

marriage, in any way, except in the chance of motherhood, a yet

greater fact than love itself to a woman. On the other hand, her work

must have been hindered by the duties of married life, even if her

marriage had been thoroughly happy, and her lot free from exceptional

material cares. Matronage is a profession in itself. The duties of a

wife and mother, as domestic life is at present arranged, absorb much

time and strength, and so diminish the possibilities of intellectual

labor. Moreover, the laws regulating marriage are still, and fifty

years ago were far more, in a very bad state; and, leaving a woman

wholly dependent for fair treatment, whether as a wife or mother, upon

the mercy and goodness of the man she marries, justify Harriet

Martineau's observation: "The older I have grown, the more serious

have seemed to me the evils and disadvantages of married life, as it

exists among us at this time." The wife who is beloved and treated as

an equal partner in life, the mother whose natural rights in the

guardianship of her family are respected, the mistress of a home in

which she is the sunshine of husband and children, must ever be the

happiest of women. But far better is it to be as Harriet Martineau

was--a widow of the heart by death--than to have the affections torn

through long years by neglect and cruelty, springing less from natural

badness than from the evil teaching of vile laws and customs. Fifty

years ago marriage was a dangerous step for a woman; and Harriet

Martineau had reason for saying at last: "Thus, I am not only entirely

satisfied with my lot, but think it the very best for me."

For a while, however, the happy prospect of a beloved wifehood cheered

her struggling and anxious life. But it was not for long. Her actual

and acknowledged engagement lasted, I believe, only a few months. Mr.

Worthington had, at this time, but lately completed his course as a

Divinity student; and he had been appointed to the joint charge of a

very large Unitarian Church at Manchester. Conscientiousness was one

of the most marked features of his character, according to his college

friend; and Harriet herself declares that she "venerated his moral

nature." He had thrown himself into the very heavy pastoral work

committed to him with all the devotion of this high characteristic.

Moreover, the long doubt and suspense of his love for her before their

engagement, had, doubtless, worked unfavorably upon his nervous

system. The end of it was, that he was suddenly seized with a brain

fever, in which he became delirious. He was removed to his father's

home in Leicestershire, to be nursed; and in process of time, the

fever was subdued. But the mind did not regain its balance. He was

still, as she says, "insane"; but from one of her dear and early

friends, I hear that "his family did not call it insanity,"--only a

feeble and unhinged state, from which recovery might have been

expected hopefully.

In this state of things it was thought desirable that the woman he

loved should be brought to see him. The beloved presence, his

physician believed, might revive old impressions and happy

anticipations, and might be the one thing needful to induce a

favorable change in his condition. His mother wrote to beg Harriet

Martineau to come to him; Harriet eagerly sought her mother's

permission to hasten to his side; and Mrs. Martineau forbade her

daughter to go. The old habit of obedience to her mother, and the

early implanted ideas of filial duty, were too strong for Harriet at

once to break through them; she did not defy her mother and go; and in

a few more weeks--terrible weeks of doubt and mental storm they must

have been, between her love and her obedience dragging her different

ways--Worthington died, and left her to her life of heart-widowhood,

darkened by this shadow of arbitrary separation to the last. "The

calamity was aggravated to me," she says, "by the unaccountable

insults I received from his family, whom I had never seen. Years

after, the mystery was explained. They had been given to understand,

by cautious insinuation, that I was actually engaged to another while

receiving my friend's addresses." They had not appreciated how

submissive she was as a daughter; and their belief that her love was

insincere was not an unnatural one in the circumstances.

Had those relatives of the dead lover lived to read Harriet Martineau's

Autobiography, they would not have been made to think differently of

her feelings towards him; for there she goes calmly on, after the

passage above quoted, to say only: "Considering what I was in those

days, it was happiest for us both that our union was prevented." As we

have had to look outside the Autobiography for a record of what love

was to her, and what it did for her, so we must seek elsewhere for the

cry of agony which tells how she felt her loss. But the record exists;

it is found in an essay entitled _In a Death Chamber_, one of that

autobiographical series published in _The Monthly Repository_, from

which I have previously quoted.

This beautiful piece of writing--far more of a poem in essence than

anything which she ever published in verse--is spoiled as a

composition by mutilation in quoting. But its length leaves me no

option but to select from it only a few of the more confessional

passages, to aid us in our psychological study:

This weary watch! In watching by the couch of another there is no

weariness; but this lonely tending of one's own sick heart is more

than the worn-out spirit can bear. What an age of woe since the

midnight clock gave warning that my first day of loneliness was

beginning--to others a Sabbath, to me a day of expiation.

All is dull, cold and dreary before me, until I also can escape to

the region where there is no bereavement, no blasting root and

branch, no rending of the heart-strings. What is aught to me, in

the midst of this all-pervading, thrilling torture, when all I

want is to be dead? The future is loathsome, and I will not look

upon it; the past, too, which it breaks my heart to think

about--what has it been? It might have been happy, if there is

such a thing as happiness; but I myself embittered it at the time,

and for ever. What a folly has mine been! Multitudes of sins now

rise up in the shape of besetting griefs. Looks of rebuke from

those now in the grave; thoughts which they would have rebuked if

they had known them; moments of anger, of coldness; sympathy

withheld when looked for; repression of its signs through selfish

pride; and worse, far worse even than this ... all comes over me

now. O! if there be pity, if there be pardon, let it come in the

form of insensibility; for these long echoes of condemnation will

make me desperate.

But was there ever human love unwithered by crime--by crime of

which no human law takes cognizance, but the unwritten everlasting

laws of the affections? Many will call me thus innocent. The

departed breathed out thanks and blessing, and I felt them not

then as reproaches. If, indeed, I am only as others, shame, shame

on the impurity of human affections; or, rather, alas! for the

infirmity of the human heart! For I know not that I could love

more than I have loved.

Since the love itself is wrecked, let me gather up its relics, and

guard them more tenderly, more steadily, more gratefully. This

seems to open up glimpses of peace. O grant me power to retain

them--the light and music of emotion, the flow of domestic wisdom

and chastened mirth, the life-long watchfulness of benevolence,

the thousand thoughts--are these gone in their reality? Must I

forget them as others forget?

If I were to see _my_ departed one--that insensible, wasted

form--standing before me as it was wont to stand, with whom would

I exchange my joy?... But it is not possible to lose all. The

shadows of the past may have as great power as their substance

ever had, and the spirit of human love may ever be nigh, invested

with a majesty worthy to succeed the lustre of its mortal days.

This is the poem of Harriet Martineau's love. This is what remains to

show that the girl whose intellect was so powerful, and who had

habitually and of choice exercised her mind upon the most abstruse

studies and the most difficult thoughts which can engage the

attention, could nevertheless feel at least as fervently, and deliver

herself up to her emotions at least as fully, as any feeble, ignorant,

or narrow-minded creature that ever lived. Surely, with the truth

emphasized by such an example, the common but stupid delusion that the

development of the intellect diminishes the capacity for passion and

tenderness, must fade away! This girl's mental power and her mental

culture were both unusually large; but here is the core of her heart,

and is it not verily womanly?

This experience did more than give her hours of happiness; it did more

than bring to her that enlargement of the spirit which she so well

described; for it taught her to appreciate, and to properly value, the

influence of the emotions in life. Never in one of her works, never in

a single phrase, is she found guilty of that blasphemy against the

individual affections, into which some who have yet sought to pose as

high priests of the religion of humanity have fallen and lost

themselves. In all her writings one finds the continual recognition of

the great truth which was in the mind of him who said: "If a man love

not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath

not seen?"--a truth of the very first consequence to those who aim at

expressing their religion by service to the progress of mankind.

The year 1826, to Harriet crowded so full of trouble, came to an end

soon after Mr. Worthington's death. In the following year, though she

was in very bad health, she wrote a vast quantity of manuscript. Some

of it was published at once. Other portions waited in her desk for a

couple of years, when her contributions to _The Monthly Repository_

recommenced, after a change in its editorship.

She wrote in the year 1827 various short stories, which were published

by Houlston, of Shrewsbury, without her name on their title-pages.

Their character may be guessed by the fact that they were circulated

as Mrs. Sherwood's writings! In tone, they resemble the ordinary

Sunday-school story-book; but there is a fire, an earnestness, and an

originality often discoverable in them which are enough to mark them

out from common hack-writing. Two of them, _The Rioters_ and _The Turn

Out_, deal with topics of political economy; but the questions were

thought out (very accurately) in her own mind, for at that time she

had never read a book upon the subject.

These little stories were so successful that the publisher invited her

to write a longer one, which should have her name attached to it. She

went to work, accordingly, and produced a good little tale, of one

hundred and fifty pages of print, which she called _Principle and

Practice_. It recounts the struggles of an orphan family in their

efforts after independence. As in all her writings of this kind, her

own experience is interfused into the fiction. No part of this story

is so interesting as that where a young man who has met with an

accident has to reconcile his mind to the anticipation of life-long

lameness--as she to deafness. The sisters of this orphan family, too,

make money by a kind of fancy-work by which she herself was earning a

few guineas from the wealthier members of her family, namely, by

cutting bags and baskets out of pasteboard, fitting them together with

silk and gold braid, and painting plaques upon their sides. _Principle

and Practice_ was so warmly received in the circle to which it was

suited that the publisher called for a sequel, which was accordingly

written early in the following year.

There was a vast quantity of writing in all these publications; and,

besides this, she was continually at work with her needle. Such

unremitting sedentary occupation, together with her sorrow, caused a

serious illness, from which she suffered during 1828. It was an

affection of the liver and stomach, for which she went to be treated

by her brother-in-law, Mr. Greenhow, a surgeon at Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Her remarkable powers of steady application, and her untiring industry,

were always[6] amongst her most noteworthy characteristics--as,

indeed, is proved by the vast quantity of work she achieved. In each

of her various illnesses, friends who had watched with wonder and

alarm how much she wrote, and how unceasingly she worked, either with

pen, or book, or needle in hand, told her that her suffering was

caused by her merciless industry. Her "staying power" was great; she

rarely felt utterly exhausted, and therefore she was impatient of

being told that she had, in fact, over-exerted her strength.

Sometimes, indeed, she admitted that she worked too much, and pleaded

only that she could not help it--that the work needed doing, or that

the thoughts pressed for utterance, and she could not refuse the call

of duty. But more often she said, as in a letter to Mr. Atkinson,

which lies before me, "My best aid and support in the miseries of my

life has been in _work_--in the intellectual labor which I believe has

done me nothing but good." So her immense industry in 1827 may have

seemed to her a relief from her heart-sorrows at the moment; but none

the less it probably was the chief cause of her partial breakdown in

the next year. A blister relieves internal inflammation; but a

succession of such stimuli too long continued will exhaust the

strength, and render the condition more critical than it would have

been without such treatment.

[6] "I should think there never was such an industrious

lady," said the maid who was with her for the last eleven

years of her life; "when I caught sight of her, just once,

leaning back in her chair, with her arms hanging down, and

looking as though she wasn't even thinking about anything,

it gave me quite a turn. I felt she _must_ be ill to sit

like that!"

At Newcastle there was a brief cessation from work, under the doctor's

orders. But in the middle of 1828 Harriet began to write again for the

_Repository_, in response to an appeal put forth by the editor for

gratuitous literary aid. That editor was the well-known Unitarian

preacher, William Johnston Fox, of South Place Chapel. Mr. Fox became

Harriet Martineau's first literary friend. He had no money with which

to reward her work for his magazine; but he paid her amply in a course

of frank, full, and generous private criticism and encouragement. "His

correspondence with me," she says, "was unquestionably the occasion,

and, in great measure, the cause, of the greatest intellectual

progress I ever made before the age of thirty." Mr. Fox was so acute a

critic that he ere long predicted that "she would be one of the first

authors of the age if she continued to write;" while, at the same

time, he offered suggestions for improvement, and made corrections in

her work upon occasion. Her advance in literary capacity was now very

rapid. Her style went on improving, as it should do, till her latest

years; but it now first became an _individual_ one, easy, flowing,

forcible, and often most moving and eloquent.

During the latter half of 1828 and the early part of the succeeding

year, she contributed, more or less, to nearly every monthly number of

the _Repository_, without receiving any payment. She wrote essays,

poems, and so-called reviews, which last, however, were really

thoughtful and original papers, suggested by the subject of a new

book. Some of these contributions were signed "V"; but others,

including all the reviews, were anonymous.

Most of these articles are on philosophical subjects, and are written

with the calmness of style suitable to logical and argumentative

essays. In the _Repository_ for February, 1829, and the succeeding

month, for instance, there appeared two papers, headed, "On the Agency

of Feelings in the Formation of Habits," which are simply an accurate,

clear, and forcibly-reasoned statement of the philosophical doctrine

of Association, with which that of Necessity is inseparably connected.

These were, it has been already observed, the theories by which she

was learning both to guide her own action and to see that society is

moulded, however unconsciously, as regards most of the individuals

composing it. A clearer statement of the doctrines, or a more forcible

indication of how they can be made to serve as a moral impulse, cannot

be imagined. Here is very different work from _Devotional Exercises_,

or _Principle and Practice_. But it brought its author neither fame

nor money.

Another piece of work done in 1828, or early in the following year,

was a _Life of Howard_, which was written on a positive commission

from a member of the Committee of Lord Brougham's "Society for the

Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," who promised her thirty pounds for it.

The MS. was at first said to be lost at the office; eventually she

found that its contents were liberally cribbed by the writer of the

_Life_ which was published; but she never received a penny of the

promised payment. These were her times of stress, and struggle, and

suffering, and disappointment, in literature as in ordinary life. Her

great success, when at last it did come, was so sudden that her

previous work was obscured and pushed out of sight in the blaze of

triumph. But these years of labor, unrecognized and almost unrewarded,

must not be left out of our view, if we would judge fairly of her

character. Courage, resolution, self-reliance, determination to

conquer in a field once entered upon, are displayed by her quiet

industrious perseverance through those laborious years. Harriet

Martineau did not make a sudden and easy rush far up the ladder of

fame all at once; her climb, like that of most great men and women,

was arduous and slow, and her final success proved not only that she

had literary ability, but also the strength of character which could

work on while waiting for recognition.

Fresh trouble was yet impending. After Mr. Martineau's death, his son

Henry remained a partner in the weaving business which the father had

carried on so long; and the incomes (small, but sufficient for a

maintenance) of the widow and unmarried daughters had to be paid out

of the profits of the factory. Just three years after Mr. Martineau's

death, however, in June, 1829, the old house became bankrupt, with but

small assets. Mrs. Martineau and her daughters were thus deprived

suddenly of all means of support.

The whole family met this final blow to their fortunes with calm

courage. It was soon settled that the two girls who possessed all

their senses should go out to teach; but Harriet could not be set to

work in the same way--for pupils could not easily be found who would

say their lessons into an ear-trumpet. The husband of the lady brought

up by Mrs. Martineau with her youngest daughter tells me that upon

this occasion Harriet's mother said to her adopted child, "I have no

fear for any of my daughters, except poor Harriet; the others can

work, but, with her deafness, I do not know how _she_ can ever earn

her own bread!"

The first resource for Harriet was fancy work of different kinds. "I

could make shirts and puddings," she declares, "and iron, and mend,

and get my bread by my needle, if necessary--as it was necessary, for

a few months, before I won a better place and occupation with my pen."

During the winter which followed the failure of the old Norwich house,

she spent the entire daylight hours poring over fancy-work, by which

alone she could with certainty earn money. But she did not lay aside

the sterner implement of labor for that bright little bread-winner,

the needle. After dark she began a long day's literary labor in her

own room.

Every night, I believe, I was writing till two, or even three, in

the morning, obeying always the rule of the house of being present

at the breakfast-table as the clock struck eight. Many a time I

was in such a state of nervous exhaustion and distress that I was

obliged to walk to and fro in the room before I could put on paper

the last line of a page, or the last half-sentence of an essay or

review. Yet was I very happy. The deep-felt sense of progress and

expansion was delightful; and so was the exertion of all my

faculties; and not least, that of Will to overcome my

obstructions, and force my way to that power of public speech of

which I believed myself more or less worthy.

She offered the results of this nightly literary toil to a great

number of magazine editors and publishers, but without the slightest

success. Totally unknown in London society, having no literary friends

or connections beyond the editor of the obscure magazine of her sect,

her manuscripts were scarcely looked at. Everything that she wrote was

returned upon her hands, until she offered it in despair to the

_Monthly Repository_, where she was as invariably successful. Her

work, when published there, however, brought her not an atom of fame,

and only the most trifling pecuniary return. She wrote to Mr. Fox,

when she found herself penniless, to tell him that it would be

impossible for her to continue to render as much gratuitous service as

she had been doing to the _Repository_; but he could only reply that

the means at his disposal were very limited, and that the utmost he

could offer her was L15 a year, for which she was to write "as much as

she thought proper." With this letter he forwarded her a parcel of

nine books to review, as a commencement. A considerable portion of the

space in his magazine was filled by Miss Martineau for the next two

years on these terms.

The essay previously referred to, on the "Agency of Feelings in the

Formation of Habits," which appeared in the _Repository_ for February

and March, 1829, was Harriet Martineau's first marked work. It was

followed up by a series, commencing in the August of the same year, of

"Essays on the Art of Thinking," which were continued in the magazine

until December, when two chapters were given in the one number, in

order, as the editor remarked, that his readers "might possess entire

in one volume this valuable manual of the Art of Thought."

"V," the writer of these articles, was supposed to be of the superior

sex. In those days, Mr. Fox would have shown rare courage if he had

informed his readers that they were "receiving valuable instruction"

in how to exercise their ratiocinative faculties from the pen of a

woman. In the Index, I find the references run--"V.'s" "Ode to

Religious Liberty"; _his_ "Last Tree of the Forest"; _his_ "Essays

on the Art of Thinking," etc., etc.

The "Essays on the Art of Thinking" are nothing less than an outline

of Logic. In substance, they present no great originality; but they

display full internal evidence that the thoughts presented were the

writer's own, and not merely copied from authority. It is really no

light test of clearness and depth of thought to write on an abstruse

science in lucid, perspicuous fashion, giving a brief but complete

view of all its parts in their true relations. Only an accurate

thinker, with a mind both capacious and orderly, can perform such a

task. The highest function of the human mind is, doubtless, that of

the discoverer. The original thinker, he who observes his facts from

nature at first hand, who compares them, and reasons about them, and

combines them, and generalizes a principle from them, is the one whom

posterity to all time must honor and reverence for his additions to

the store of human knowledge. But not far inferior in power, and equal

in immediate usefulness, is the disciple who can judge the

originator's work, and, finding it perfectly in accordance with facts

as known to him, can receive it into his mind, arrange it in order,

deck it with illustration, illuminate it with power of language, and

represent it in a form suitable for general comprehension. There is

originality of mind needed for such work; that which is done, the

adaptation of the truths to be received to the receptive powers of the

multitude, is an original work performed upon the truths, hardly

inferior in difficulty and utility to that of him who first discerns

them. This was the class of work which Harriet Martineau was beginning

to do, and to do well. But there was more than this in her purposes.

As these articles, though vastly inferior in execution to what she

afterwards did, nevertheless show the essential characteristics of her

work, this seems to be the most favorable opportunity to pause to

inquire what was the special feature of her writings. For, various

though her subjects appear to be, ranging from the humblest topics,

such as the duties of maids-of-all-work, up to the highest themes of

mental and political philosophy, yet I find one informing idea, one

and the same moving impulse to the pen of the writer, throughout the

whole series. Let us see what it was that she really, though half

unconsciously perhaps, kept before her as her aim.

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

A little closer consideration shows that what they seek to teach is

always _what is right conduct_. Abstract truth merely as such does not

content her. She seeks its practical concrete application to daily

life. Further, not merely has she the aim of teaching morals, but she

invariably makes _facts_ and _reasonings from facts the basis_ of her

moral teachings. In other words, she approaches morals from the

scientific instead of the intuitional side; and to thus influence

conduct is the invariable final object of her writings.

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

But the term "moral science" has already been appropriated to a class

of writing than which nothing could, very often, less deserve the name

of science. The work which Harriet Martineau spent her whole life in

doing, was, however, true work in moral science. What she was ever

seeking to do was to find out how men should live from what men and

their surroundings are. She must be recognized as one of the first

thinkers to uniformly consider practical morals as derived from

reasoned science.

Many of the articles contributed to the _Repository_ were naturally,

from the character of the publication, upon theology. Much that is

noticeable might be culled from amongst them; as, indeed, could be

inferred from the fact that an able leader of her religious body

allowed her to fill so very large a portion of the pages by which,

under his guidance, the Unitarian public were instructed. In all the

essays, a distinguishing feature is the earnestness of the effort put

forth to judge the questions at issue by reason, and not by prejudice.

It is true that the effort often fails. There comes the moment at

which faith in dogma intervenes, and submerges the pure argument; but

none the less do the spirit of justice and fairness, and the love of

truth, irradiate the whole of these compositions.

Mr. Fox soon asked her if she thought that any of her ideas could be

expressed through the medium of fiction. It so happened that the

suggestion precisely fell in with a thought that had already occurred

to her that "of all delightful tasks, the most delightful would be to

describe, with all possible fidelity, the aspect of the life and land

of the Hebrews, at the critical period of the full expectation of

the Messiah." She wrote a story which she called _The Hope of the

Hebrews_, in which a company of young people, relatives and friends,

were shown as undergoing the alternations of doubt and hope about

whether this teacher was indeed Messiah, on the first appearance

of Jesus in Palestine. The day after this story appeared in the

_Repository_ Mr. Fox was at an anniversary dinner of the sect, where

so many persons spoke to him about the tale, that he wrote and

generously advised Harriet not to publish any more such stories in his

magazine, but to make a book of them. She adopted the suggestion; the

little volume was issued with her name, and proved her first decisive

success. Not only was it well circulated and highly appreciated in

England, but it was translated into French, under high ecclesiastical

sanction, and was also immediately reproduced in the United States.

While this book was in the press, she went to stay for a short time in

London. Mr. Fox, hearing from her how anxious she was to earn her

livelihood by literature, succeeded in obtaining from a printer friend

of his an offer for her to do "proof correcting and other drudgery,"

if she liked to remain in London for the work. This would have given

her a small but certain income, and there could be little doubt that,

if she stayed in London, she would gradually get into some

journalistic employment which would enable her to support herself

tolerably well. There were no great hopes in the matter. Mr. Fox told

her that "one hundred or one hundred and fifty pounds a year is as

much as our most successful writers usually make"--success here

meaning, of course, full employment in hackwork. It had not yet

occurred, even to Mr. Fox, that she was to be really a successful

author. But to do even this drudgery, and to take the poor chance now

offered to her, implied that she must make her home in London; and she

wrote to inform her mother of this fact.

The same post which carried Harriet's letter to this effect, bore to

Mrs. Martineau a second missive, from the relative with whom her

daughter was staying, which strongly advised that Harriet should be

recalled home, there to pursue the needle-work by which she had proved

she could earn money. The good lady had been wont to ask Harriet day

by day "how much she would get" for the literary labor upon which she

had expended some hours; and the poor young author's reply not being

satisfactory or precise, her hostess looked upon the time spent at the

desk as so much wasted. She gave Harriet some pieces of silk, "lilac,

blue, and pink," and advised her to keep to making little bags and

baskets, which the kind friend generously promised to assist in

disposing of for good coin of the realm.

The mother who had stood between her full-grown daughter and the bed

of a dying betrothed, now thought herself justified in interposing

between the woman of twenty-seven and the work which she desired to

undertake for her independence. Mrs. Martineau sent Harriet a stern

letter, peremptorily ordering her to return home forthwith. Bitterly

disappointed at seeing this chance of independence in the vocation she

loved thus snatched away, Harriet's sense of filial duty led her to

obey her mother's commands. She went home with a heavy heart; and with

equal sadness, her little sister of eighteen turned out of home, at

the same despotic bidding, to go a-governessing. "My mother received

me very tenderly. She had no other idea at the moment than that she

had been doing her best for my good."

Harriet did not return to Norwich entirely discouraged. Resolution

such as hers was not easily broken down. The British and Foreign

Unitarian Association had advertised three prizes for the best essays

designed to convert Roman Catholics, Jews and Mohammedans respectively

to Unitarianism. The sum offered for each was but small: ten guineas

for the Catholic, fifteen for the Jewish, and twenty for the

Mohammedan essays. But it was less the money than interest in the

cause, and desire to see if she could succeed in competition with

others, that led Harriet to form the intention of trying for _all

three_ prizes.

She went to work immediately upon the Catholic essay, which was to be

adjudicated upon six months earlier than the other two. When it was

finished, she paid a schoolboy, who wrote a good hand, a sovereign

that she could ill spare, for copying the essay, which was about

two-thirds the length of this volume. The essays were to be

superscribed, as usual in such competitions, with a motto, and the

writer's name and address had to be forwarded in a sealed envelope,

with the same motto outside. In September, 1830, she received the

gratifying news that the committee of adjudication had unanimously

awarded this prize to her.

The other two essays were commenced with the spirit induced by this

success. One of them was copied out by a poor woman, the other by a

schoolmaster. Harriet was careful even to have the two essays written

upon different sorts of paper, to do them up in differently shaped

packages, and to use separate kinds of wax and seals.

The sequel may be told, with all the freshness of the moment, in a

quotation from the _Monthly Repository_ for May, 1831: "We were about

to review it [_i.e._ the Catholic essay] when the somewhat startling

fact transpired of her having carried off the other premiums offered

by the Association's committee for tracts addressed to the Mohammedans

and the Jews. We shall not now stop to inquire how it has happened

that our ministers would not or could not prevent the honor of

championing the cause of pure Christianity against the whole

theological world from developing upon a young lady. However that

may be, she has won the honor and well deserves to wear it."

The essays were published by the Unitarian Association. There can be

little doubt that, however many ministers may have competed, the

Committee did select the best papers offered to their choice. The

learning in all is remarkable; the freedom from sectarian bitterness,

from bigotry, and from the insolent assumption of moral and religious

superiority, is even more striking, in such proselytising

compositions.

While waiting the result of the prize competition, Harriet wrote a

long story for young people, which she called _Five Years of Youth_.

It is one of the prettiest and most attractive of all her writings of

this class. It has a moral object, of course--a somewhat similar one

to that of Jane Austen's _Sense and Sensibility_; but the warning

against allowing sensitiveness to pass into sentimentality is here

directed to girls just budding into womanhood; and the punishment for

the error is not a love disappointment, but the diminution of the

power of domestic and social helpfulness.

Harriet's work of this year, 1830, comprised the doing of much

fancy-work for sale, making and mending everything that she herself

wore, knitting stockings even while reading, studying a course of

German literature, and writing for the press the following quantity of

literary matter:--_Traditions of Palestine_, a duodecimo volume of 170

printed pages; _Five Years of Youth_, 264 small octavo pages; three

theological essays, making a closely printed crown octavo volume of

300 pages; and fifty-two articles of various lengths in the twelve

numbers of the _Monthly Repository_.

And now she had touched the highest point of sectarian fame. The

chosen expositor to the outer world of her form of religion, and the

writer of its favorite Sunday School story-book of the hour, she must

already have felt that her industrious, resolute labor through many

years had at last borne some fruit.

But the moment for wider fame and a greater usefulness was now at

hand. In the autumn of 1827 she had read Mrs. Marcet's _Conversations

on Political Economy_, and had become aware that the subject which she

had thought out for herself, and treated in her little stories of _The

Rioters_, and _The Turn-Out_, was a recognized science. She followed

this up by a study of Adam Smith, and other economists, and the idea

then occurred to her that it might be possible to illustrate the whole

system of political economy by tales similar in style to those she had

already written. The thought had lain working in her mind for long,

and, in this autumn of 1831, the idea began to press upon her as a

duty.

There were many reasons why it was especially necessary just then that

the people should be brought to think about Social Science. The times

were bitter with the evils arising from unwise laws. None knew better

than she did how largely the well-being of mankind depends upon causes

which cannot be affected by laws. It is individual conduct which must

make or mar the prosperity of the nation. But, on the other hand, laws

are potent, both as direct causes of evil conditions (and in a less

degree of good conditions), and from their educational influence upon

the people. Harriet Martineau felt that she had come to see more

clearly than the masses of her fellow-countrymen exactly how far the

miseries under which English society groaned were caused directly or

indirectly by mischievous legislative acts. Moreover, the

circumstances of the moment made the imparting of such knowledge not

only possible, but specially opportune. The Bishops had just thrown

out the Reform Bill; but no person who watched the temper of the time

could doubt that their feeble opposition would be speedily swept

aside, and that self-government was about to be extended to a new

class of the people. Most suitable was the occasion, then, for

offering information to these upon the science and art of society.

Harriet was right in her judgment when she started her project of a

series of tales illustrative of Political Economy, under a "thorough,

well-considered, steady conviction that the work was wanted, was even

craved for by the popular mind."

She began to write the first of her stories. The next business was to

find a publisher to share her belief that the undertaking would be

acceptable to the public. She wrote to one after another of the great

London publishers, receiving instant refusal to undertake the series

from all but two; and even these two, after giving her a little of

that delusive hope which ends by plunging the mind into deeper

despair, joined with their brethren in declining to have anything to

do with the scheme.

Finally, she went to London to try if personal interviews would bring

her any better success. She stayed in a house attached to a brewery

(Whitbread's), belonging to a cousin of hers, and situated near the

City Road. Thence, she tramped about through the mud and sleet of

December to the publishers' offices day after day for nearly three

weeks. The result was always failure. But though she returned to the

house worn-out and dispirited, her determination that the work should

be done never wavered, and night after night she sat up till long

after the brewery clock struck twelve, the pen pushing on in her

trembling hand, preparing the first two numbers of the series, to be

ready for publication when the means should be found.

It was the kind friend who had helped her before who came to the

rescue at last at this crisis. Mr. W. J. Fox induced his brother

Charles to make her proposals for publishing her series.

Mr. Charles Fox took care to offer only such arrangement as should

indemnify him from all risk in the undertaking. He required, first,

that five hundred subscribers should be obtained for the work; and

second, that he, the publisher, should receive about seventy-five per

cent of the possible profits. Hopeless of anything better, she

accepted these hard terms, and it was arranged that the first number

should appear with February, 1832.

The original stipulation as to the time that this agreement should run

was that the engagement should be terminable by either party at the

end of every five numbers. But a few days afterwards, when Harriet

called upon Mr. W. J. Fox to show him her circular inviting

subscribers for the series, she found that Mr. Charles Fox had decided

to say that he would not publish more than two numbers, unless a

thousand copies of No. I were sold in the first fortnight! This

decision had been arrived at chiefly in consequence of a conversation

which W. J. Fox had held with James Mill, in which the distinguished

political economist had pronounced against the essential point of the

scheme--the narrative form--and had advised that, if the young lady

must try her hand at Political Economy, she should write it in the

orthodox didactic style.

Mr. Fox lived at Dalston. When Harriet left his house, after receiving

this unreasonable and discouraging ultimatum, she "set out to walk the

four miles and a half to the Brewery. I could not afford to ride more

or less; but, weary already, I now felt almost too ill to walk at all.

On the road, not far from Shoreditch, I became too giddy to stand

without some support; and I leaned over some dirty palings, pretending

to look at a cabbage-bed, but saying to myself as I stood with closed

eyes, 'My book will do yet.'"

That very night she wrote the long, thoughtful, and collected preface

to her work. After she had finished it she sat over the fire in her

bedroom, in the deepest depression; she cried, with her feet on the

fender, till four o'clock, and then she went to bed, and cried there

till six, when she fell asleep. But if any persons suppose that

because the feminine temperament finds a relief in tears, the fact

argues weakness, they will be instructed by hearing that she was up by

half-past eight, continuing her work as firmly resolved as ever that

it should be published.