CHAPTER VIII.

THE HOME LIFE.

At forty-two years old, Harriet Martineau found herself free for the

first time to form and take possession of a _home of her own_. Now,

for the first time, she could have the luxury which many girls obtain

by marriage so young that they spoil it to themselves and others, and

which it is as natural for each grown woman to desire, irrespective of

marriage, as it is for a fledged bird to leave the old nest--a house

and a domestic circle in which she could be the organizing spirit,

where the home arrangements should be of her own ordering, and where

she could have the privacy and self-management which can no otherwise

be enjoyed, in combination with the exercise of that housewifely skill

to which all women more or less incline.

The beauty of the scenery led her to fix upon the English lakes for

the locality in which to make her home, and, finding no suitable house

vacant, she resolved to build one for herself. She purchased two acres

of land, within half-a-mile of the village of Ambleside; borrowed some

money on mortgage from a well-to-do cousin; had the plans drawn out

under her own instructions, and watched the house being built so that

it should suit her own tastes.

It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray stone, and stands

upon a small rocky eminence--whence its name "the Knoll." There is

enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the formation of a terrace

about twenty feet wide in front of the windows; then there comes the

descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of the rock is the

garden. Narrow flights of steps at either end of the terrace lead down

to the greensward and the flower-beds; in the centre of these is a

gray granite sun-dial, with the characteristic motto around it--"Come

Light! Visit me!" To the left is the gardener's cottage, with the

cow-house, pig-stye and root-shed. The front of the house looks across

the garden, and over the valley to Loughrigg. Its back is turned to

the road, and concealed from passers-by, partly by the growth of

greenery, and partly by the Methodist Chapel. A winding path leads up

from the road to the house, and a small path forking off from this

goes round past the cottage to the field where the cows used to graze,

and to the piece of land that was appropriated to growing the roots

for the cows and the household fruit and vegetables.

Within, "The Knoll" is just a nice little residence for a maiden lady,

with her small household, and room for an occasional guest. You enter

by a covered porch, and find the drawing-room on the right hand of the

hall. It is a fairly large room, and remarkably well-lighted; there

was a window-tax when she built, but she showed her faith in the

growth of political common-sense abrogating so mischievous an impost,

by building in anticipation of freedom of light and air from taxation.

The drawing-room has two large windows, one of which descends quite to

the floor, and is provided with two or three stone steps outside, so

that the inmates may readily step forth on to the terrace. This

window, by the way, exposed her to another tax than the Government

one. Hunters of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not

merely to walk round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to

mount these steps and flatten the tips of their noses against her

window. Objectionable as the liability to this friendly attention

would be felt by most of us, it was doubly so to Miss Martineau

because of her deafness, which precluded her from receiving warning of

her admirers' approaches from the crunching of their footsteps on the

gravel--so that the first intimation that she would receive of their

presence would be to turn her head by chance and find the flattened

nose and the peering eyes against the window-pane. There is a special

record of one occasion, when her bell rang in an agitated fashion, and

the maid, on going, found her mistress much disturbed. "There is a

_big_ woman, with a _big_ pattern on her dress, beckoning to me to

come to the window--go, and tell her to go away." But similar

incidents were manifold, and her servants had to be trained to guard

their mistress as if she were the golden apples of the Hesperides.

Indeed, for several years (till she became too ill to travel) she used

to leave her lake-side home altogether during the tourist season.

In her latest years she commonly wrote in the drawing-room, as the

sunniest and most cheerful apartment, and where, too, she could sit by

the fire, and yet get plenty of daylight. Her proper study, however,

was the room on the opposite side of the hall. This is a long room

with a bay window at the other end of the fire-place, and the door in

the centre. Book-cases lined the whole of these walls; but her library

was an extensive one, and there were books all over the house. This

room served as dining-room and study, both; the writing table was near

the window, the dining-table further towards the fire.

The only other room on the ground floor is the kitchen, which runs

parallel with the drawing-room. Her principles and her practice went

hand-in-hand in her domestic arrangements as in her life generally;

and her kitchen was as airy, light and comfortable for her maids as

her drawing-room was for herself. The kitchen, too, was provided with

a book-case for a servants' library. A scullery, dairy, etc., are

annexed to the kitchen, and the entrance to the cellars below is also

found through the green baize door which shuts off the cooking region

from the front of the house.

Up-stairs, that which was her own room is large and cheerful, and

provided with two windows, a big hanging cupboard, and a good sized

dressing-room--the latter indeed, fully large enough for a maid to

sleep in. The next was the spare-room; and there lingers no small

interest about the guest-chamber, where Harriet Martineau received

such guests as Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas

Jerrold. A small servants' room is next to this, and a larger one is

over the kitchen, so that it comes just at the head of the stairs.

Such is the size and arrangement of Harriet Martineau's home.

Climbing plants soon covered "The Knoll" on every side. The ivy kept

it green through all the year; the porch was embowered in honeysuckle,

clematis, passion-flower, and Virginia creeper. Wordsworth, Macready,

and other friends of note, planted trees for Harriet below the

terrace. The making of all these arrangements was a source of

satisfaction and delight to her such as can only be imagined by those

who have felt what it is to come abroad after a long and painful

confinement from illness, and to find life and usefulness freely open

again under agreeable conditions and prospects.

While her house was being built, she lodged in Ambleside; and in that

time, during the autumn and winter of 1845-6, she wrote her _Forest

and Game Law Tales_, with the object of showing how mischievous the

game laws were in their operation upon society at large, and more

particularly upon the fortunes of individual farmers, and upon the

laborers who were led into poaching. These tales occupy three volumes

of the ordinary novel size. They had a sale which would have been very

good for a novel; two thousand copies were disposed of, and doubtless

did some service for the cause for which she had worked. So far as her

own pecuniary interests were concerned, however, these tales made her

first failure. It was the only work which never returned her any

remuneration. The publisher had reckoned on a very large circulation,

and so had put out too much capital in stock, stereotypes, and the

like, to leave any profit on the sale that actually took place; and

the publication unfortunately coincided with the agitation of the

political world about the repeal of the corn laws. But one pleasing

incident arose out of them for her personally. She had been in

difficulties as to how to obtain turf to lay down upon the land under

her terrace. One fine morning, soon after her entrance on her home,

her maid found a great heap of sods under the window, when she opened

the shutters in the morning. A dirty note, closed with a wafer, was

stuck upon the pile, and this was found to state that the sods were "a

token of gratitude for the _Game Law Tales_, from a Poacher." Harriet

never discovered from whom this tribute came.

She took possession of her home on April 7th, 1846. During the summer

she wrote another story for young people--one of her most interesting

tales, and instructive in its moral bearing--_The Billow and the

Rock_. It must here be noted, in passing, that this is the last of

her works in which the theism that she had, up to this time, held for

religious truth, makes itself visible. A new experience was about to

lead her to think afresh upon the theological subjects, and to revise

her opinions about the genesis of faiths, and their influence upon

morals.

In the autumn of 1846, she accepted an invitation from her friends,

Mr. and Mrs. R. V. Yates, of Liverpool, to join them in a journey to

the East, they bearing the expense. The party left England in October,

and were met at Malta by Mr. J. C. Ewart, afterwards M.P. for

Liverpool. Together, these four travellers sailed up the Nile to the

second cataract, studied Thebes and Philae, went up and into the Great

Pyramid, visited bazaars, mosques and (the ladies) harems, in Cairo.

Then they travelled in the track of Moses in the desert, passing Sinai

and reaching Petra. Next, they completely traversed Palestine; and

finally, passed through Syria to Beyrout, where they took ship again

for home. This journey occupied eight months.

In October, 1847, Harriet reached "The Knoll" again, and settled

herself in her permanent course of home life. As the same habits were

continued, with only the interruptions of occasional visits to other

parts of the country, day by day, for many years, I may as well

mention what was the course of that daily home life.

She rose very early: not infrequently, in the winter, before daylight;

and immediately set out for a good, long walk. Sometimes, I am told,

she would appear at a farm-house, four miles off, before the cows were

milked. The old post-mistress recollects how, when she was making up

her early letter-bags, in the gray of the morning mists, Miss

Martineau would come down with her large bundle of correspondence, and

never failed to have a pleasant nod and smile, or a few kindly

inquiries, for her humble friend. "I always go out before it is quite

light," writes Miss Martineau to Mr. Atkinson, in November, 1847; "and

in the fine mornings I go up the hill behind the church--the Kirkstone

road--where I reach a great height, and see from half way along

Windermere to Rydal. When the little shred of moon that is left and

the morning star hang over Wansfell, among the amber clouds of the

approaching sunrise, it is delicious. On the positively rainy

mornings, my walk is to Pelter Bridge and back. Sometimes it is round

the south end of the valley. These early walks (I sit down to my

breakfast at half-past seven) are good, among other things, in

preparing me in mind for my work."

Returning home, she breakfasted at half-past seven; filled her lamp

ready for the evening, and arranged all household matters; and by

half-past eight was at her desk, where she worked undisturbed till

two, the early dinner-time. These business hours were sacred, whether

there were visitors in the house or not. After dinner, however, she

devoted herself to guests, if there were any; if not, she took another

walk, or in bad weather, did wool-work--"many a square yard of which,"

she says, she "all invisibly embossed with thoughts and feelings

worked in." Tea and the newspaper came together, after which she

either read, wrote letters, or conversed for the rest of the evening,

ending her day always, whatever the weather, by a few moments of

silent meditation in the porch or on the terrace without.

She was not one of those mistresses who cannot talk to their servants,

any more than she was one to indulge them in idle and familiar gossip.

If there were any special news of the day, she would invite the maids

into her sitting-room for half an hour in the evening, to tell them

about it. During the Crimean War, and again during the American

struggle, in particular, the servants had the frequent privilege of

tracing with her on the map the position of the battles, and learning

with her aid to understand the great questions that were at stake.

The servants thus trained and considered[14] were not, certainly,

common domestics. She kept two girls in the house, besides the

laboring man and his wife at the cottage; and, as the place was small,

and her way of living simple, the work did not require that she should

choose rough women for servants merely because of their strength. On

the contrary, she made special efforts to secure young girls of a

somewhat superior order, whom she might train and attach to herself.

She got servants whom she had to dismiss now and again, of course; but

the time that most of her maids stopped with her and the warm feelings

that they showed towards her, are a high testimony to the domestic

character of their "strong minded" mistress. At the time of which we

are now speaking, her maids were "Jane," who had been cured from

chronic illness by Miss Martineau's mesmerizing, and who was in her

service for seven years, when the girl emigrated; and "Martha," who

had been trained for teaching, and had to resign it from ill-health,

but who later on married the master of Miss Carpenter's Bristol Ragged

Schools, and returned to teaching, after serving Miss Martineau for

some eight years.

[14] Henry Crabbe Robinson writes to Miss Fenwick on January

15, 1849:--

"Miss Martineau makes herself an object of envy by the

success of her domestic arrangements.... Mrs. Wordsworth

declares she is a model in her household economy, making

her servants happy, and setting an example of activity to

her neighbors."

Of the servants who came after this, "Caroline" was there twenty

years, till she was removed by death; and "Mary Anne" served Miss

Martineau eleven years, till the mistress's death closed the long term

of attendance and almost filial love.

Indications of how different the relationship was in this home from

what it only too often is, are found in many of Miss Martineau's

letters. When "Martha" married, she had the rare honor of having

Harriet Martineau and Mary Carpenter for her bridesmaids. The mistress

gave the wedding breakfast, and partook of it, too, in company with

the bride and bridegroom and their friends; and when she had seen them

all off, she sat down to write to her family about her loss "with a

bursting heart." References to her feelings for her "dear friend,

Caroline," will be seen presently in her letters to Mr. Atkinson; and

her care and affection for this valued servant are expressed yet more

frequently in letters which I may not quote, to more domestic friends.

As to "Mary Anne," she has travelled a long way while in delicate

health, to see me, to tell me all she could of her mistress, and to

express how glad she was "to know of anything being done to make Miss

Martineau's goodness better understood." "Mary Anne" is now a married

woman. She was engaged for three or four years before Miss Martineau's

death, but would not leave her mistress in her old age and her

ill-health. That mistress, on her part, when told of the engagement,

not only admitted the lover to an interview with herself, but even

generously urged that the wedding should not be delayed for her sake,

although at this time she had an almost morbid shrinking from

strangers, and the loss of the personal attendant who knew her ways,

would have been one of the greatest calamities of the commoner order

that could have befallen her. But "Mary Anne" did not leave her; and

when, at last, it became quite certain that death was at hand, the

generous lady said to a relative that it made her "so glad to think

that, when it was over, there could be nothing to stand in the way of

Mary Anne's marriage." I have thus anticipated in order to show that

the domestic peace which existed under her household rule was no

special thing dependent upon the character of a single servant, but

was maintained through all the years of her home life, and therefore

unquestionably was the result of the mistress's qualities of heart and

mind.

What may be called her external home-life--that is to say, what she

was to her poorer neighbors--during that ten years of activity, may

also be best noticed before the mental progress and literary work of

the period come under further review.

Every winter, for several years, she gave a course of lectures to the

working-people and tradesfolk of the place, in the Methodist

school-room at the back of her house. Many of the gentry desired to

attend, but she would have none of them, on the double ground that

there was no room for them, and that the lectures were designed for

people who had little access to books or other educational resources.

The subjects that she treated were as various as those of her books,

but all chosen with what I have previously observed seems to me to

have been the object of all her works--to influence conduct through

knowledge and reasoning. There was a course on sanitary matters,

others on her travels (and we know from her books on the same topics

from what point of view these were treated), some on the history of

England, another on the history and constitution of the United States;

and, finally, the last course for which she had health and strength

was given in November and December, 1854, and was on the Crimean War

and the character of the government of Russia.

I have seen some of the older inhabitants of Ambleside who attended

these lectures, and who now speak of them in the warmest terms of

admiration. "They were so clear; and she never stopped for a word; and

so interesting!--one could have listened to them over and over again."

But there is no one who could tell, with the aid of a cultivated

taste, what she was as a public speaker. So eloquent is some of her

writing that one holds one's breath as one reads it; and the evident

rapidity of the penmanship of her MS.[15] shows that such passages were

produced with all the improvisatory impulse and flow of the orator.

If, besides this, her delivery was fervent and impressive, one cannot

but think how great a statesman and parliamentary leader she might

have been, with these essential qualifications for modern public life

added to all that knowledge, judgment, strength of principle, and

political capacity which made men willing (as we shall see soon) to

accept her as their political teacher in the daily and quarterly

press. That she had the orator's stirring gifts, the personal

magnetism which compels the minds of a mass to move with the words of

a speaker, and the reciprocal power of receiving stimulus from an

audience, when

The hearts of many fires the lips of one,

there is one shadowy incident left to show, besides the testimony of

her local hearers who survive. It is this: in 1849 Charlotte Bronte,

then in the first flush of her fame, sought Harriet Martineau's

acquaintance, saying that she desired "to see one whose works have so

often made her the subject of my thoughts." In the following year

Charlotte visited Harriet at "The Knoll," and heard one of the English

History lectures. Her bright eyes were fixed on the lecturer all

through; and as Harriet stood on her low platform, while the audience

dispersed, she heard Charlotte say, in the very voice of the lecturer,

what Edward said in the wind-mill at Cressy: "Is my son dead?" They

walked silently to the house together--about three hundred paces--and

when Harriet turned up her lamp in the drawing-room, the first thing

she saw was Charlotte looking at her with wide, shining eyes, and

repeating, in the same tone, "Is my son dead?" To those who know the

dramatic quality of Charlotte Bronte's imagination, there is a beam of

light reflected from this trifling anecdote upon the force and the

manner of the speaker who had so impressed her.

[15] In speaking of her eloquent writings I refer specially

to the _History of the Peace_; and I have seen the

manuscript of this, bearing evidence that the hand could not

keep pace with the flow of words and thoughts.

The opinion which this keenly observant and candid woman formed of

Harriet Martineau is of peculiar interest, and, as it specially refers

to the period and the relations of which we are now treating, I quote

it from Mrs. Gaskell's _Life of Charlotte Bronte_. It is given in

some private letters, written from "The Knoll" (not, as Mrs. Chapman

absurdly says, to Emily Bronte, who was dead, but) to Charlotte's

life-long and most confidential friend, Miss Ellen Nussey:--

"I am at Miss Martineau's for a week. Her house is very pleasant

both within and without; arranged at all points with admirable

neatness and comfort. Her visitors enjoy the most perfect liberty;

what she claims for herself she allows them.... She is a great and

good woman.... The manner in which she combines the highest mental

culture with the nicest discharge of feminine duties filled me

with admiration; while her affectionate kindness earned my

gratitude. I think her good and noble qualities far outweigh her

defects. It is my habit to consider the individual apart from his

(or her) reputation, practice independent of theory, natural

disposition isolated from acquired opinion. Harriet Martineau's

person, practice, and character inspire me with the truest

affection and respect.

"I find a worth and greatness in herself, and a consistency and

benevolence and perseverance in her practice, such as win the

sincerest esteem and affection. She is not a person to be judged

by her writings alone, but rather by her own deeds and life, than

which nothing can be more exemplary or nobler. She seems to me the

benefactress of Ambleside, yet takes no sort of credit to herself

for her active and indefatigable philanthropy. The government of

her household is admirably administered; all she does is well

done, from the writing of a history down to the quietest feminine

occupation. No sort of carelessness or neglect is allowed under

her rule, and yet she is not over-strict, or too rigidly exacting;

her servants and her poor neighbors love as well as respect her.

"I must not, however, fall into the error of talking too much

about her, merely because my mind is just now deeply impressed

with what I have seen of her intellectual power and moral worth."

Some of her lectures were given with the express object of inducing

the people to form a building society. Rents were excessively high for

the working classes from the scarcity of cottages; and therefore they

lived and slept crowded together, while the open country extended all

around them. The moral screw was turned upon them, too, about politics

and religion, by the threat of the landlord that, if they offended

him, he would turn them out of the only cottages they could get. With

that true philanthropy which her studies in political economy had

taught, Miss Martineau went to work to aid the people to improve their

own condition. She obtained a loan of L500 from her old friend, Mrs.

Reid, of London (to whom the foundation of Bedford college is mainly

due), with which she purchased a field just above the village at

Ellercross, and parcelled it out, drained it, and made the road. Then,

by her lectures, she showed the people how they could "buy a house

with its rent"; and she undertook all the infinite trouble that

devolved upon her when the society was formed, as the only member of

it with legal and general knowledge, and, therefore, the only one able

to guide its affairs. Before me there lies a package of the notes that

she sent at different times on this business to Mr. Bell, the

Ambleside chemist, who was the nominal chairman--though she was the

real one--of the society. "Jealousy and ridicule went to work against

the scheme"; but her philanthropic energy and wisdom were fully

successful. The cottages are healthily planned and well built, and

remain there as a monument to the efforts which she made for the good

of her poor neighbors.

Besides these more general undertakings for their benefit, there yet

live many amongst them who are grateful to her for personal kindness

and assistance. While her strength lasted, she was ever ready to try

to relieve others from illness by the means which she believed to have

cured herself; and seven mesmerized patients were sometimes asleep at

one time in her drawing-room. She was a powerful mesmerist. Most of

her patients were at least relieved--some cured. A present resident of

Ambleside, who owes his success in business life to her kindness, told

me how she mesmerized him for nearly an hour every day for a year; and

to show that she did not do this without very decided results to

herself, he remembers that her fingers used to swell during the

process, so as to almost hide her rings, if she forgot to take them

off before beginning.

Again, her library was placed freely at the service of deserving young

men in the village, and only book-lovers will be able to appreciate

the generosity of this neighborly kindness. Old Miss Nicholson tells

me of Miss Martineau's kindness to her invalid sister; sharing with

her the luxuries which were not to be bought in Ambleside, but which

the famous writer frequently received from some of her many friends.

Nor was the mere personal human sympathy wanting in her; those who

needed no gifts or material aid from her knew her as a kind friend,

ready to think for them and advise with them in their troubles or

perplexities.

In mentioning her activities other than literary, during those ten

busy and healthy years of home life, I must not omit her

"farming"--her farm of two acres. She had no intention, at first, of

embarking in such an enterprise. She let on hire that portion of her

land which she did not wish to have in her garden, and her maids and

herself, with the occasional help of a man, kept the garden in order.

But this plan did not answer well. The tenant allowed the grass to get

untidy, and his sheep broke into the garden to eat the cabbages.

Neither the vegetable nor the flower garden could be kept so nicely as

might be wished. Milk, butter, eggs, and hams, all had to be bought at

high prices; and so small was the supply at times that these articles

of country produce were actually unattainable by purchase.

The energetic lady of the small domain was profoundly dissatisfied

with this state of affairs. So to work she went to study the science

of agriculture and practical farming; and soon a Norfolk laborer was

established on her land, and this small farm was under her own

management. She set up a cross-pole fence around her estate, the first

one ever seen in the Lake District; and, like a true woman, she

planted roses all along the fence, to wreathe and decorate it in

summer. Then she initiated her fellow-farmers into the mysteries of

high farming, and stall feeding. "A cow to three acres" was the Lake

rule; but she hired another half-acre of land, to add to her own, and

showed that upon this total of two acres she could _almost_ keep two

cows. Fowls and pigs were, of course, kept also; and all the household

comforts which cows, hens, and pigs supply were obtained from her land

at, practically, no cost at all. The subsistence of the laborer and

his wife was created out of the soil; and the house had a constant

supply of vegetables, milk, eggs, and hams, at a less expense than

buying had previously been, and with a much nicer and always certain

supply.

The experiment became famous in a small way. "People came to see how

we arranged our ground, so as to get such crops out of it,"[16] and one

of the Poor-Law Commissioners, having asked her for a private account

of how she had managed her little farm, printed her letter in the

_Times_, without asking her consent. This brought such a flood of

correspondence on her that she was compelled to write on the subject

for publication, and so the farm superintendence resulted in a piece

of literary work for the mistress.

[16] _Health, Husbandry and Handicraft_, p. 269, "Our

Farm of Two Acres."

Now we will see what her pen was doing while all these activities were

helping to fill her days.