MARIAN EVANS [LEWES]: _Letter to Mrs. Bray_, 1877. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.
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[Sidenote: Personal appearance.]
In the porch stood Miss Martineau herself. A lady of middle height, “inclined,” as the novelists say, “to embonpoint,” with a smile on her kindly face, and her trumpet at her ear. She was at that time, I suppose, about fifty years of age; her brown hair had a little gray in it, and was arranged with peculiar flatness over a low, but broad forehead. I don’t think she could ever have been pretty, but her features were not uncomely, and their expression was gentle and motherly.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
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[Sidenote: One of her letters described.]
Aunt Charles read us a clever letter from Harriet Martineau, combining the smoker, the moralist, the political economist, the gossip, and the woman.
CAROLINE FOX: _Journal_ (1849). ‘Memories of Old Friends.’ Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882.
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[Sidenote: Smoking.]
The degree of deafness, as I have said, varied; and she tried all sorts of remedies. No one who knew her would suspect her of anything “fast” or unfeminine, but under the advice of some scientific person, or another, she tried smoking.
[Sidenote: Cigars.]
I had the privilege of providing her privately with some very mild cigars, and many and many a summer night have we sat together for half an hour or so in her porch at “The Knoll,” smoking. If some of the good people, her neighbors, had known of _that_, it would, we agreed, have really given them something to talk about. She only tried this remedy, if I remember right, for a few months, but she fancied it had a beneficial effect upon her hearing. For my part, I enjoyed nothing so much as these evenings.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
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[Sidenote: A chiboque.]
Sleepless nights were a source of great suffering to her in these latest years. Under medical advice, she tried smoking as a means of procuring better rest, with some success. She smoked usually through the chiboque, which she had brought home with her from the East, and which she had there learned to use, as she relates with her customary simplicity and directness in the appendix to ‘Eastern Life’: “I found it good for my health,” she says there, “and I saw no more reason why I should not take it than why English ladies should not take their glass of sherry at home--an indulgence which I do not need. I continued the use of my chiboque for some weeks after my return, and then only left it off because of the inconvenience.” When health and comfort were to be promoted by it, she resumed it.
MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Charlotte Brontë’s account of a visit to Ambleside.]
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. I rise at my own hour, breakfast alone. I pass the morning in the drawing-room, she in her study. At two o’clock we meet, talk and walk till five--her dinner hour--spend the evening together, when she converses fluently and abundantly, and with the most complete frankness. I go to my own room soon after ten, and she sits up writing letters. She appears exhaustless in strength and spirits, and indefatigable in the faculty of labor. She is a great and good woman; of course not without peculiarities, but I have seen none as yet that annoy me. She is both hard and warm-hearted, abrupt and affectionate. I believe she is not at all conscious of her own absolutism. When I tell her of it, she denies the charge, warmly; then I laugh at her.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Letter_ in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’ London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857.
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[Sidenote: Her ear-trumpet.]
[Sidenote: Sense of humor.]
Owing to her keen intelligence, I found it difficult to realize her extreme deafness, and used often to address her when she was not prepared for it. She never lost her sense of the absurdity of this practice, and I can see the laughter in her kind eyes now, as she snatched up her trumpet. She loved a good-natured pleasantry, even at her own expense.... A ludicrous incident happened. I had got so well accustomed to her ear-trumpet that I began to look upon it as a part of herself. It was lying on the table, a good distance away from her, and having some remark to make to her, I inadvertently addressed it to the instrument, instead of her ear. Heavens, how we laughed! She had a very keen sense of fun, of which, however, she was quite unconscious.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
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[Sidenote: “Not to be judged by writings alone.”]
Of my kind hostess, I cannot speak in terms too high. Without being able to share all her opinions--philosophical, political, or religious--I yet 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 noble. 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.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Letter_ in Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’
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[Sidenote: “Proud, not vain.”]
Proud, I think she was, but not in the least vain; and the pride was rather the consciousness of power, and the _un_conscious sense, so to speak, of absolute rectitude and truthfulness.... The clear, quick apprehension of the nature and merits of a question was her strong point, and she never talked or wrote of what she did not understand, and saw at once how to make a difficult matter intelligible to others.
HENRY G. ATKINSON: _Letter to Maria Weston Chapman_, published in the latter’s ‘Memorials of Harriet Martineau.’
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[Sidenote: Her egotism.]
[Sidenote: Her conception of heaven.]
Are not nearly all recent autobiographers egotists? A number of such works have appeared during the last ten years, and the position of the autobiographer has been in nearly every case the same,--namely, that God did a good thing when he made him; but that he should have made anybody else, and should have taken an interest in the other individual equal to that which he manifested in the autobiographer, is a proposition which he cannot bring himself for a moment to consider. Two books in which this view is conspicuous are the autobiographies of John Quincy Adams and Miss Harriet Martineau. Carlyle is a mild egotist beside these writers. Adams does not speak of himself as an individual, but as a cause which he has espoused. Of the two, Miss Martineau is the more naïve. She is for arranging the world entirely from her own point of view. For instance, she attacked the late Lord Lytton, because he did not carry an ear-trumpet. Lord Lytton was deaf, and preferred not to carry an ear-trumpet. Miss Martineau was deaf also, and did carry one. She did not believe in the immortality of the soul, and was very hard upon any one who was of a contrary opinion. Her heaven, had her belief permitted her to have one, would have been a place where they all sat round with ear-trumpets and derided the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
---- ----: ‘Zweibak: or, Notes of a Professional Exile,’ in _The Century_, February, 1886.
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[Sidenote: Her lofty stand in money matters.]
It is well known that a pension was offered to her by three Prime-ministers in succession--Earl Grey, Lord John Russell, and Mr. Gladstone--which, like Cæsar, she “did thrice refuse,” it being against her principles to burden the State with any such obligation. And yet she was entirely dependent upon that reed, the pen, for subsistence.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’
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[Sidenote: Her needlework.]
She had a liking for the occupation [needlework] and continued to do much of it all through her life. Many of her friends can show handsome pieces of fancy work done by her hands. Again and again she contributed to public objects by sending a piece of her own beautiful needlework to be sold for the benefit of a society’s funds. Not even in the busiest time of her literary life did she ever entirely cease to exercise her skill in this feminine occupation. In fact, she made wool-work her artistic recreation.