MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Carlyle’s first impression of her.]
Two or three days ago ... there came to call on us a Miss Martineau, whom you have, perhaps, often heard of in the _Examiner_. A hideous portrait was given of her in _Fraser_ one month.[2] She is a notable literary woman of her day; has been travelling in America these two years, and is now come home to write a book about it. She pleased us far beyond expectation. She is very intelligent-looking, really of pleasant countenance; was full of talk, though, unhappily, deaf almost as a post, so that you have to speak to her through an ear-trumpet. She must be some five-and-thirty. As she professes very “favorable sentiments” towards this side of the street, I mean to cultivate her a little.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to his mother_. ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London,’ by James Anthony Froude, M. A. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884.
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[Sidenote: Personal appearance.]
How well I remember the first sight of her, so long ago! We first saw her at church--Dr. Channing’s. It was a presence one did not speedily tire of looking on--most attractive and impressive; yet the features were plain, and only saved from seeming heavily moulded by her thinness. She was rather taller and more strongly made than most American ladies. Her complexion was neither fair nor sallow, nor yet of the pale, intellectual tone that is thought to belong to authorship. It was the hue of one severely tasked, but not with literary work. She had rich, brown, abundant hair, folded away in shining waves from the middle of a forehead totally unlike the flat one described by those who knew her as a child. It was now low over the eyes, like the Greek brows, and embossed rather than graven by the workings of thought. The eyes themselves were light and full, of a grayish greenish blue, varying in color with the time of day, or with the eye of the beholder--_les yeux pers_ of the old French romance writers. They were steadily and quietly alert, as if constantly seeing something where another would have found nothing to notice. Her habitual expression was one of serene and self-sufficing dignity--the look of perfect and benevolent repose that comes to them whose long, unselfish struggle to wring its best from life has been crowned with complete victory. You might walk the livelong day, in any city streets, and not meet such a face of simple, cheerful strength, with so much light and sweetness in its play of feature.
MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN: ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Her best portrait described.]
It was while she was in the United States that the first portrait of her which I have seen was painted. She herself did not like it, calling the attitude melodramatic; but her sister Rachel, I am told, always declared that it was the only true portrait of Harriet that was ever taken. At this point, then, some idea of her person may be given. She was somewhat above the middle height, and at this time had a slender figure. The face in the portrait is oval; the forehead rather broad, as well as high, but not either to a remarkable degree. The most noticeable peculiarity of the face is found in a slight projection of the lower lip. The nose is straight, not at all turned up at the end, but yet with a definite tip to it. The eyes are a clear gray, with a calm, steadfast, yet sweet gaze; indeed, there is an appealing look in them. The hair is of so dark a brown as to appear nearly black. A tress of it (cut off twenty years later than this American visit, when it had turned snow-white), has been given to me; and I find the treasured relic to be of exceptionally fine texture--a sure sign of a delicate and sensitive nervous organization. Her hands and feet were small. She was certainly not beautiful; besides the slight projection of the lower lip, the face has the defect of the cheeks sloping in too much towards the chin. But she was not strikingly plain, either. The countenance in this picture has a look both of appealing sweetness and of strength in reserve; and one feels that with such beauty of expression, it could not fail to be attractive to those who looked upon it with sympathy.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: “A strange phenomenon.”]
Miss Martineau’s Book on America is out.... I have read it for the good authoress’s sake, whom I love much. She is one of the strangest phenomena to me. A genuine little poetess, buckramed, swathed like a mummy into Socinian and Political Economy formulas; and yet verily alive in the inside of that! “God has given a Prophet to every People in its own speech,” say the Arabs. Even the English Unitarians were one day to have their poet, and the best that could be said for them, too, was to be said. I admire this good lady’s integrity, sincerity; her quick, sharp discernment to the depth it goes: her love also is great; nay, in fact it is too great: the host of illustrious obscure mortals whom she produces on you, of Preachers, Pamphleteers, Antislavers, Able Editors, and other Atlases bearing (unknown to us), the world on their shoulder, is absolutely more than enough.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter to Emerson_, June, 1837. ‘Correspondence of T. Carlyle and R. W. Emerson.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1883.
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[Sidenote: Her admiration of Carlyle.]
You cannot fancy what way he (Carlyle), is making with the fair intellects here! There is Harriet Martineau presents him with her ear-trumpet, with a pretty, blushing air of coquetry, which would almost convince me out of belief in her identity!
JANE W. CARLYLE: _Letter to John Sterling_. ‘Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh,’ edited by James Anthony Froude. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883.
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[Sidenote: Her conversation.]
She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible, too; and all the while she talks she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, like the antennæ of some insects. If you have any little remark to make, you drop it in; and she helps you to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you; and if you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong enough to embarrass you.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: ‘Passages from the English Note-Books.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873.
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He [Southey] was speaking of Miss Martineau patiently, but without respect, describing her as “talking more glibly than any woman he had ever seen, and with such a notion of her own infallibility.”
HENRY F. CHORLEY: ‘Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters.’ London: 1873.
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[Sidenote: Pertinent anecdote of Sydney Smith.]
When he was so ill that all his friends were full of anxiety about him, M---- having called to see him, and affectionately asking what sort of night he had passed, Sydney Smith replied, “Oh, horrid, horrid, my dear fellow! I dreamt I was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Harriet Martineau and Macaulay.”
FRANCES ANN KEMBLE: ‘Records of Later Life.’ New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1882.
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[Sidenote: Mr. Payn’s account of her conversation and character.]
The author of the ‘Vestiges of Creation’ said to me once, in his dry, humorous way, “Your friend, Miss Martineau, has been giving me the address in town where she gets _all her ear-trumpets_. Why, good heavens! what does she want of them? Does she mean to say that she ever wore one ear-trumpet out in all her life in listening to what anybody had to say?”
She was, no doubt, masterful in argument (which is probably all that he meant to imply), but I always found her very ready to listen, and especially to any tale of woe or hardship which it lay in her power to remedy. Her conversation, indeed, was by no means monologue, and rarely have I known a social companion more bright and cheery; but her talk, when not engaged in argument, was, which is unusual in a woman, very anecdotal. She had known more interesting and eminent persons than most men, and certainly than any woman, of her time; the immense range of her writings--political, religious, and social--had caused her to make acquaintances with people of the most different opinions, and of all ranks, while among the large circle of her personal acquaintance her motherly qualities, her gentleness, and (on delicate domestic questions), her good judgment, made her the confidante of many persons, especially young people; which enlarged her knowledge of human life to an extraordinary degree. I never knew a woman whose nature was more essentially womanly than that of Harriet Martineau, or one who was more misunderstood in that respect by the world at large.