Page images
PDF
EPUB

MISS MARTINEAU AND THE CARLYLES

BY FRANCIS BROWN

IN 1838 my father, a young man of twenty-five, who had grown up among men of letters in New England, went abroad and stayed for two years. Persons attracted him quite as much as places, and he had many pleasant opportunities of meeting literary people. Through his own correspondence, and the kindness of friends who knew his tastes, there came into his possession, then and afterward, a number of notable autographs which remained among his papers at his death. The following letter from Miss Martineau to Mrs. Carlyle is the one of most general interest among them. I do not know, with certainty, how it reached him, but it was very probably given to him by Mrs. Carlyle herself. He carried an introduction to Mr. Carlyle from Mr. Emerson, and was repeatedly at the house in Cheyne Row during the winter of 1839-40. His collection includes several notes addressed to Carlyle, one from Thackeray, and more than one from Monckton Milnes, — and it is reasonable to suppose that they all came to him from the Carlyles direct. I regret that I did not secure exact information on these matters when it was still within reach.

[blocks in formation]

A letter from Harriet Martineau is not an everyday affair. She wrote many, but it was not her will that they should be preserved, and she probably had her way, for the most part. Few of them have seen the light, fewer still, or none, without censorship. There is something of the literary treasure, therefore, about a letter from her, written in the intimacy of friendship, with the freedom and brightness and ease of her earlier years; written to the Carlyles, and about them; chatting also of James Martineau and John Sterling and Emerson, to say nothing of the side glimpse at Darwin. The letter itself follows:

DEAR FRIEND:

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

NEWCASTLE, Novbr 13th

In gratitude for your exceedingly welcome letter, I take a whole sheet, though without any idea of being able to fill it. If you love me, don't stand upon reciprocity, but write to me again soon & lengthily. I shd not ask it if you had not told me that you are well enough for all practical purposes,' & if I were not quite the contrary. Indeed, your letter made me very thankful & merry, but also very greedy after another. It made me downright angry, too, not with you, but with your 'unbelieving Thos' - that you left L-pool without knowing James. I don't know what he will say, considering what he has said to me about the 'French Revolution.' But I say that you have not only defrauded him of a great pleasure, & perhaps of a friend

ship, but yourselves of the knowledge of a true, hard-working man, sincere as the day-light, gladsome as the lark,

pious in his vocation, as you found, & of unsurpassed holiness in his daily life. His learning is considerable, but we almost forget that in more important things. He is not a bit a believer in the universal unhappiness theory, however; he is so very happy himself that I don't know how such a belief cd make a lodgment in him. He has a strong-minded, helpful, adoring wife, (to whom he was engaged for 7 years) & 6 children, of fine promise in every way; &, in spite of his boldness in opinion & speech, never was man more beloved by his neighbours. So the loss is mutual. It does vex me. When I think how nearly you were setting foot in that paradise of a home of his, it seems almost worse than if you had never seen him.

Don't flatter yourselves that I am a bit nearer being converted to your gen1 unhappiness notions for being ill & idle. I find it no burden at present, tho' I dare say I shall when I get worse, wh I must do before I am better. Perhaps I may then send you a wail wh may be very consolatory to your opinions; but I have nothing of the sort ready at present. We are rejoicing over the departure of the measles, wh have been the round of the children, & I have been writing today to decline spending next week at Lambton Castle, to meet the Duke of Sussex, (wh wd have been very amusing if I had been able) & now we are settling down into a state of quiet from tomorrow till Xmas.

1

You may not think so, but I am made for quiet and passivity, & enjoy idleness and the sofa to excess. I went out on Monday, just to my grandmother's, who is in affliction; but it agreed so ill with me, that I put by

1 The seat of her friend Lord Durham.

my bonnet for another two months, if I am allowed to have my own way.

I am delighted to hear of Citoyenne. Make Darwin get a new horse, before he gets his name up or his limbs broken in Pimlico. Is not John Sterling's health much better, married as he is, & reviewing Carlyle? I admire much in that article, especy the intrepidity, & whole temper of his dissent, & much of the ground thereof. I need not say how I relish the parts that are the furthest from dissent. But why can't such people say their say without affectation? If they are so delighted with Göthe's translucent style, so simple as to be almost an imperceptible medium of thought, why do they write as nobody wd ever think of speaking, & in a way wh nobody wd ever think of listening to without some very strong inducement? I was very nearly throwing down that review during the first 3 pp; & then what a loss I shd have had (through his fault, I vow) of all the power & all the love that went on conquering the affectation to the end! Talking of this fashion of style, I have heard of Emerson today. He is writing a book & also preparing to lecture this winter, on Plain Speaking,—a new topic in Boston, one may think.

I had better not begin sending love, or I shall burden you with messages. I shall write to Mrs Wedgwood soon. My kindest regards to Mr. Carlyle. His promise of writing seems, as you bemoaners might say, 'too good to be true.' But, mind, I never use that phrase, wh, I suppose, passes your lips every day. Nor do I even think it too good to be true that I may be sitting in your chimney-corner, some day. If not so, you will not, I know, forget the days when that was my place; nor shall I, I think, wherever I may be. But I really expect to be there again, in course of time. You will not visit me in my study again. We have notice to quit

(at Michaelmas) as the old street is coming down. Of course we don't know, & cannot guess where we shall be next, till we see how I am in the Spring. I shall be sorry for the unroofing of that little study, where I & others have thought & enjoyed many things.

I must leave off; so good-bye. I cd tell you some nice things of the people I am with, but for your walking straight away from James. You wd do the same with my ownies here, I suppose, & more especially because you will never hear them preach. Good-night! God bless you both!

Yours ever,

H. MARTINEAU.

The year is missing, but internal evidence points decisively to 1839. Miss Martineau writes from Newcastle, and we know that she left Newcastle March 16, 1840, after spending six months there in her sister's home. She is fresh from Sterling's review of Carlyle, which can be nothing else than his article on The French Revolution. The book had appeared in 1837. Sterling's article was written at Clifton in the spring of 1839, and published in the Westminster Review that same year. James Martineau, then in Liverpool, had six children at the time of the letter, and his sixth child was born September 13, 1839. 'Citoyenne' was a mare given to the author of The French Revolution by Mr. Marshall, of Leeds, in the summer of 1839. Carlyle himself probably had this letter in mind. when he wrote to his mother (November 25, 1839), 'Miss Martineau is in Newcastle, ill, for the winter.'

Literary criticism needs no further proof. The only discrepancy with known facts relates to Emerson's lectures. The actual subject of his lecture-course in the winter of 1839-40 was 'The Present Age.' But the course

did not begin till December 4, while Emerson's letter to Miss Martineau must have been written in October, and he may have changed the title in the interval.

In view of Miss Martineau's stern purpose-formed long after this of suppressing all early expressions of her feeling and character, one would feel guilty in publishing this letter, but for its revelation of a side of her which has been too little known; but for its geniality and tenderness, its sympathy and appreciation, its warmth and its cheerful fortitude. The common notion of Harriet Martineau has little appealing charm. She is thought of - by most of those who think of her at all—as strong, severe, angular, imperious, erratic in thought, and dogmatic in the expression of thought; as a woman of gifts, whose varied intellectual and spiritual life insisted on thrusting its least lovely phases into public view. Nothing that she wrote will live. She has not won her way, and she has failed to win it, not only, and perhaps not mainly, because of the ephemeral philosophies to which, under unfortunate conditions, she almost perversely lent herself, but also because of a certain repellent hardness, a failure in constructive imagination and sympathetic truth, which seem to argue her, after all, something less than a woman. This has always been combated by the friends she kept, but their testimony has not been able to overcome the prejudice. Yet they must have been right, after all. She has been thought unwomanly, and the very charm of this letter is in its womanliness. It is intellectual, eager

ly so. Its interests are those of thought and literature. But they are also those of the heart, of the family, even the nursery. There is a glow of affectionateness, turn the page which way you will. The kindly humor reaches gay

ety, but there is no sharpness at all. She speaks of illness, but she writes in visible health of mind and soul. With what fearless good-nature she pokes fun at the pessimism of Carlyle's view of the world! With what affectionate insistence she upbraids him for his failure to take the opportunity of knowing her brother! How she clings to those she loves! Here we have the real great-hearted woman, and the later perversions are shown to be perversions of what was in its true substance both strong and beautiful.

The friendship with the Carlyles displayed in the letter is borne out by all we know of this period in their lives. In her Autobiography Miss Martineau says, 'No kind of evening was more delightful to me than those which were spent with the Carlyles.' And again: 'I like the house [in Cheyne Row] for no other reason than that I spent many very pleasant evenings in it; but it has now become completely associated with the marvellous talk of both husband and wife.'

In her diary, of 'Wednesday 13' (the month is not given; the year must have been 1837), she says, 'Walked to Chelsea to dine with the Carlyles. Found her looking pretty in a black velvet high dress and blond collar. She and I had a nice feminine gossip for two hours before dinner, about divers domestic doings of literary people, which really seem almost to justify the scandal with which literary life is assailed. The Carlyles are true sensible people, who know what domestic life ought to be.'

There was cordiality, also, on the side of the Carlyles. The acquaintance began in November, 1836. November 20, Carlyle writes to his mother, 'Two or three days ago there came here to call on us a Miss Martineau. . . . She pleased us far beyond expectation; she is very intelligent-looking, really of pleasant countenance; was full of talk,

tho' unhappily deaf almost as a post, so that you have to speak to her through an ear-trumpet. I think she must be some five-and-thirty. As she professes very "favourable sentiments" towards this side of the street, I mean to cultivate the acquaintance, and see whether it will lead to aught.'

For two or three years there is repeated mention of her. March 6, 1837, Mrs. Carlyle wrote to Mrs. Aitken: 'She is distinctly good-looking, warmhearted even to a pitch of romance, witty as well as wise, very entertaining and entertainable, in spite of the deadening and killing appendage of an ear-trumpet, and finally, as “our Mother" used to finish off a good character, "very fond of me."

In some of Mr. Carlyle's earlier references to her there is a touch of amusement, not unfriendly, only now and then amounting to gentle ridicule. His warmest long paragraph about her that has appeared occurs in a letter to Emerson of June 1, 1837:

'Miss Martineau's Book on America is out, here and with you. I have read it for the good Authoress' 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 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, Anti-slavers, Able Editors, and other Atlases bearing (unknown to us) the world on their shoul

ders, is absolutely more than enough. What they say to her Book here I do not well know. I fancy the general reception will be good, and even brilliant.'

This is friendly and yet keen and just. But the following have a slightly malicious flavor:

'25 Sept. 1838: I read your paragraph to Miss Martineau; she received it, as she was bound, with a good grace. But I doubt, I doubt, O Ralph Waldo Emerson, thou hast not been sufficiently ecstatic about her, - thou graceless exception, confirmatory of rule! In truth there are bores, of the first and of all lower magnitudes. Patience, and shuffle the cards.'

'15 Nov. 1838: Harriet Martineau is coming hither this evening; with beautiful enthusiasm for the Blacks and others. She is writing a Novel. The first American book proved generally rather wearisome, the second not so; we since have been taught (not I) "How to observe." Suppose you and I promulgate a treatise next, "How to see"? The old plan was to have a pair of eyes first of all, and then to open them, and endeavour with your whole strength to look. The good Harriet!'

Intercourse might continue on friendly terms, even while little half-treacheries of this sort were going on, but perhaps intimacy could not maintain itself indefinitely on any terms between natures so outspoken, so self-insistent, and so exacting; on the one side such seriousness in all enthusiasms, and yet such deficiency in perspective; on the other a temper so critical, so impulsive, so unsusceptible to preachments, so merciless toward platitudes.

Miss Martineau's fiction pleased neither husband nor wife. Thomas Carlyle wrote to his brother, April 16, 1839, 'She has published a Novel (Deerbrook), very ligneous, very trivial didactic, in fact very absurd for most

VOL. 106-NO, 3

part; and is well content with it.' And Mrs. Carlyle wrote (April 7, 1839) to her mother, 'Mrs. Macready asked me how I liked Harriet's Book. I answered, "How do you like it?" She made wide eyes at me, and drew her little mouth together into a button. We both burst out laughing, and that is the way to get fast friends.'

The Carlyles visited her at Tynemouth in 1840, but in subsequent years they seem to have drifted apart. Miss Martineau became absorbed in animal magnetism and the Positive Philosophy, and was inclined to identify herself with her opinions. The Carlyles had no sympathy with her opinions, and doubtless no superfluity of patience with her who held them. December 13, 1847, Mrs. Carlyle wrote to her uncle, 'I have just been reading for the first time Harriet Martineau's outpourings in the Athenæum [on animal magnetism], and "that minds me," as my Helen says, that you wished to know if I too had gone into this devilish thing. Catch me!'

There was no absolute breach, but the references to her afterward are few.

The greatest treasure of all in the letter is what she has to say about her brother. Here we have love, admiration, and faith. She was not a flighty girl, we must remember, raving about a fraternal hero. She was the older by several years. She had herself reached the age of thirty-seven when she wrote. She rationally approves and sincerely admires, but beneath all that there is an intimacy of affection toward her brother, a recognition of his fineness and nobility, a joy in his saintliness, which are most appealing. No one who feels the tragic needlessness of the later separation - due partly to her insistence, unreasonable, dogged, on the destruction of her correspondence, and partly to the gray and chilly sea of metaphysics upon which she presently

« PreviousContinue »