JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
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[Sidenote: Recollections of her long illness at Tynemouth.]
On the sofa where I stretched myself, after my drive to Tynemouth, on the sixteenth of March, 1840, I lay for nearly five years, till obedience to a newly-discovered law of nature raised me up and sent me forth into the world again, for another ten years of strenuous work, and almost undisturbed peace and enjoyment of mind and heart.... During the whole of my illness, comforts and pleasures were lavishly supplied to me. Sydney Smith said that everybody who sent me game, fruit, and flowers, was sure of heaven, provided always that they punctually paid the dues of the Church of England. If so, many of my friends are safe. Among other memorials of that time, which are still preserved and prized, are drawings sent me by the Miss Nightingales, and an envelope-case (in daily use), from the hands of the immortal Florence. I was one of the sick to whom she first ministered, and it happened through my friendship with some of her family.... I did not think I could have wished so much for anything as I wished to see foliage. I had not seen a tree for above five years, except a scrubby little affair that stood above the haven at Tynemouth. An old friend sent me charming colored sketches of old trees in Sherwood Forest, and an artist who was an entire stranger to me, Mr. McIan, stayed away from a day’s excursion, at a friend’s house in the country, to paint me a breezy tree. For months the breezy tree was pinned up on the wall before me, sending many a breeze through my mind.... During many a summer evening, while I lay on my window-couch, and my guest of the day sat beside me, overlooking the purple sea, or watching for the moon to rise up from it, like a planet growing into a sun, things were said, high and deep, which are fixed into my memory now, like stars in a dark firmament. Now a philosopher, now a poet, now a moralist, opened to me speculation, vision or conviction.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Autobiography.’
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[Sidenote: Correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett.]
I have had a great pleasure, lately, in some correspondence with Miss Martineau, the noblest female intelligence between the seas,--“as sweet as spring, as ocean deep.” She is in a hopeless anguish of body, and serene triumph of spirit, with at once no hope and all hope.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: _Letter to R. H. Horne._ ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to Richard Hengist Horne.’ New York: James Miller, 1877.
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[Sidenote: Prompt relief by mesmerism.]
Within one minute, the twilight and phosphoric lights appeared; and, in two or three more, a delicious sensation of ease spread through me--a cool comfort, before which all pain and distress gave way, oozing out, as it were, at the soles of my feet. During that hour, and almost the whole evening, I could no more help exclaiming with pleasure than a person in torture crying out with pain. I became hungry, and ate with relish for the first time for five years. There was no heat, oppression or sickness during the seance, nor any disorder afterwards. During the whole evening, instead of the lazy, hot ease of opiates, under which pain is felt to lie in wait, I experienced something of the indescribable sensations of health, which I had quite lost and forgotten.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Letters on Mesmerism_, quoted by Mrs. Fenwick Miller in her ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Subsequent good health.]
Saw a brown-faced looking woman watching for the coach--thought I knew the face--looked out of window--it was Miss Martineau.... Walked with her to her newly built, or building house, a most commodious, beautifully-situated and desirable residence in all respects. I could not but look with wonder at the brown hue of health upon her face, and see her firm and almost manly stride as she walked along with me to Fox How, Dr. Arnold’s place.
W. C. MACREADY: _Diary_, 1846. ‘Macready’s Reminiscences and Selections from his Diaries and Letters,’ edited by Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1875.
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[Sidenote: Carlyle’s later impression.]
Miss Martineau was here and is gone--to Norwich, after which to Egypt--broken into utter weariness, a mind reduced to these three elements: imbecility, dogmatism, and unlimited hope. I never in my life was more heartily bored by any creature.
THOMAS CARLYLE: _Letter_ in ‘Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London.’
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[Sidenote: Change of opinions harshly stated.]
On Wednesday, Mr. Henry Bright came over to dine. He visited Miss Martineau, at Ambleside, and found her very entertaining, and in a very singular state of doctrine--for she now professes to believe and declare that there is no God and no future life! He says it is wholly impossible to argue with her, because she is so opinionative and dogmatical, and has such a peculiar advantage in putting down her ear-trumpet when she does not choose to hear any reply to her assertions. She has been making some beautiful designs for the windows of her brother’s church, in Liverpool, which are accepted and to be painted thereupon; but she is at enmity with her brother, and has no intercourse with him.
MRS. HAWTHORNE: _Letter to her Father._
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Among the drawbacks of this wretched weather is that I have not yet been able to get to Ambleside to see Miss Martineau. When she has dined with us, or been at all to Liverpool, I have always missed her by being at Cambridge; and I own myself a little curious to hear from her, _viva voce_, some of her experiences. Her latest “craze” (to use a word of DeQuincey’s), is the establishment of a shop in London for the sale of--in plain English--infidel literature. She complained most bitterly, the other day, to my brother-in-law, that whenever her book on ‘Man’s Nature and Development’ is inquired for, the shopman pulls it stealthily out from under the counter, as if ashamed of selling it, and fearful lest some bystander be scandalized. So that there’s to be a shop in a central situation, full of Miss Martineau and August Comte, and Froude, who wrote the ‘Nemesis of Faith’; and Frank Newman, who wrote ‘Phases of Faith,’ and (as Clough said), the world is to receive the unbiassed truth: “That there’s no God, and Harriet is his Prophet.”
HENRY BRIGHT: _Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne_. ‘Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife: a Biography,’ by Julian Hawthorne. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1885.
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[Sidenote: Stated by herself.]
I have no objection to words, when, as you do, people understand things; but I am not an atheist, according to the settled meaning of the term. An atheist is “one who rests in second causes,” who supposes things that he knows to be made or occasioned by other things that he knows. This seems to me complete nonsense; and this Bacon condemns as the stupidity of atheism. I cannot conceive the absence of a First Cause; but then, I contend, that it is not a person; _i. e._, that it is to the last degree improbable, and that there is no evidence of its being so. Now, though the superficial, ignorant and prejudiced will not see this distinction, you will; and it will be clear to you what scope is left for awe and reverence under my faith.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Letter to Charlotte Brontë_, in ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau,’ by Maria Weston Chapman.
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[Sidenote: Florence Nightingale’s testimony to Martineau’s religious feeling.]
I think, contradictory as it may seem, she had the truest and deepest religious feeling I have ever known.... To the last, her religious feeling--in the sense of good working out of evil, of a Supreme Wisdom penetrating and moulding the whole universe; the natural subordination of intellect to purposes of good, even were these merely the small purposes of social or domestic life;--all this, which supposes something without ourselves, higher, and deeper, and better than ourselves, and more permanent, that is, eternal, was so strong in her--so strong that one could scarcely explain her (apparently only) losing sight of that Supreme Wisdom and Goodness in her later years.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: _Letter to Maria Weston Chapman_, published in the latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: “The Lady Oracle.”]
Her form and features were repellent; she was the Lady Oracle in all things, and from her throne, the sofa, pronounced verdicts from which there was no appeal. Hers was a hard nature: it had neither geniality, indulgence nor mercy. Always a physical sufferer, so deaf that a trumpet was constantly at her ear; plain of person--a drawback of which she could not have been unconscious--and awkward of form; she was entirely without the gifts that attract man to woman: even her friendships seem to have been cut out of stone; she may have excited admiration, indeed, but from the affections that render woman only a little lower than the angels she was entirely estranged.