1564. Harriet Martineau to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 247–251.
Tynemouth
March 6th [1844] [1]
Dear Miss Barrett
You will think that the “never”, rather than the “not never” principle of our correspondce is what I prefer: but it is not so. The “not never” suits me exactly:—perfect freedom to write when we can & when we like, & to be silent as long as circumstances compel. The inconvenience of this, however, is the not hearing of one another’s health often enough. Here is the winter gone, & the spring sun shining in hot, & the crocuses &c, out; & how you have fared in the cold season I don’t know. This has been altogether my best winter of the five since I became ill,—chiefly because I have had my wish, & spent it entirely alone. My trumpet has lain by on the table, untouched, day after day, & almost week after week; [2] & this repose is more delightful to me than my friends can, I see, at all conceive. About 6 weeks since I had a visit from the Commisn sent north to ascertain the operation of Lord Ashley’s Act; [3] & there ended my feeling of repose. The Miners are in a horrible state of (not distress, for they are well off) but temper; & I am wanted to help to bring them into a more just & happy mind, & to show them how to mend those evils wh are in their own power. The invitation—the call—to work in their service led me on to propose to myself & others more than I ought; & I have been sadly oppressed with the prospect of labour for wh I am really unfit. We are now looking about for somebody to execute my largest idea, while I hold myself in readiness to do the easier & shorter work proposed to me. I have read a good deal (for me) & made a score or two of my sort of Knitting baskets, to support our barrack-library, whereby the soldiers are kept from the ale house, as their children grow fond of reading; & I am mourning over the approaching completion of a very long piece of wool-work wh is to bring in a good lot of dollars for my abolitionist friends in Amera, at their next fair. Lastly, I have got out a handbill, & had all Shields & Newcastle placarded therewith,—about a tribute to our great benefactor, Rowland Hill. A friend of mine began the stir at Bristol, & sent me word; & their & our handbill has been doing the office of stirring up others, till I trust the movement is becoming general, & that wonderful man, & irreproachable public benefactor will receive the reward he deserves. [4] The London Committee looks very promising. How can people be so content to profit by a vast & toilsome discovery like this without any gratitude to the authors? My poor neighbours, indeed,—sailors’ wives & sisters—come with tears to give their sixpences, (& won’t give less) but one lady complains that she heard R Hill was a radical,—another that he was a tory,—while another is quite sure he has been dead many years. (I heard from him two days since.)– Well I gave you my winter. My first Spring event is a visit from such of the Counsel as I know who come [on] the circuit,—& the judges, when they are of my acquaintance. Some Counsel came on Sunday, & put my mind into a London mood with their news & discourse. The next event will be the visit of a school boy or two in the Easter holidays,—a week wh gives my nephews a run by the sea, & me the pleasure & instruction of a week’s insight into their delicious young minds. Then again, all is quiet till June, when begins the summer procession of friends, who succeed each other till November. All the year round, I have occasional visits from my own family, from Newcastle, & from my young friend Ly M. Lambton & her family. [5] —One more item of my life I will not omit in writing to you,—for it will have the sympathy of your whole soul. So I will tell you that in the course of this winter,—indeed suddenly,—at the beginning of it,—I found the whole aspect of my present life & lot changed,—all raised & brightened, by the discovery that the disability wh seemed to spoil my whole life has actually proved the very means of my helping others,—my very best instrument of aid to my kind. I might have suspected this before,—for my life has been full of disappointments & calamities wh have all issued in good to others (unconsciously rendered by me,) & I might have trusted that this would: but we are so slow to learn in our school of life,—(though ’cute enough in the playground.) So I go cheerily on my way now, to what I did. —As to health, there is nothing new. I am always best when quieted, & therefore easiest in midwinter. My dear doctor (my brother-in-law) [6] a curiosity, as being a perfect specimen of the sanguine man,—beating the man in the Rambler all to nothing, [7] —& who said at first that I shd be well in a month,—then next autumn,—then next spring,—then “soon,”—then “in time,”—told me this winter that he now gives up all idea of making any impression on the disease, but hopes that time may do much, & that in ten years or so he may see me out of doors again. This is as near giving up as he will ever go; & I am glad he has got so far. It is nothing more than I knew before, & it secures my quiet, & saves all talk. I must add that he is most able in his profession,—really, quite out of the common way. It is only about the future that he is so deceived. There is always such a sunshine of hope in his eyes that he cannot see far before him for the dazzle. The spectacle of him & his,—my sister’s thoroughly happy family—is as healthy as the other that is always before me,—the sea & sky. —There now! I have given you my news, since I wrote last & you will judge by it how welcome will be as much as you may like to tell me of yourself, any day.
I am greatly obliged by Miss Mitford’s kind message & good wishes. We are not without a little spice of her peculiar pleasure here;—we have, in our humble way,—flowers. Some folk fancy us built up in our houses by snow-banks, with ice-roofs,—our dress blankets,—our food train-oil &c. But it is not precisely so. Our “north” is not quite so northerly but that we have very flourishing plants. I have no sense of smell, & so cannot conceive of that part of the pleasure; but it is curious to me to see now, as visitors enter, the invariable pleased sniff, & glance at my flower-stand, as they advance to my sofa. My kind friend, Mr Ker, [8] enables me yearly to have a pretty show of hyacinths, narcissus &c.
How entirely I agree with you about severe pain!—about its lowering & perverting influences! Nobody who ever was familiar with very severe pain cd say the good of it that one sees said in books. How it does baffle one’s will! I never yet succeeded in lying still in severe pain. I can be dumb: but, with the strongest possible inducement to lie still,—with one sitting by me with an agonized countenance, for whose sake my whole soul was bent on keeping quiet for a few minutes, I cd not do it. I want to know whether any body does. I have heard more than most people about Hospitals, & the things done there, & the wonderful fortitude shown; & if the accounts mean that the patient is not only silent but still, it is a marvel that I cd not match, I fear, under any inducement. As I told you,—I now suffer very little pain;—rarely more than mere moderate aching with, however—a good deal of “distress”; & the rare fits of pain, though sharp, are brief. My opiates do not act like yours. I have no fairy visions, or anything beyond relief,—restoration to a comfortable condition of nerve, with, in the night, a particular set of horrors,—wh I am not going to tell you, & wh are rare now. —Your picture of yourself looks cheerful & pretty; but I am not one to be deceived by your religious cheerfulness into a[n] oversight of the suffering wh lies beneath,—wh is indeed a necessy presupposition when we talk of the comforts of relief. I like to hear of your dog. I have no animal for a companion. I often think of it, but find it, on the whole, best not to begin attaching myself in that way. I cd not provide for a dog being duly exercised, & shd be put out if it threw down my casts, or did any other mischief. A bird wd be too much for the poor half of ear that I have left,—& besides, there are too many cats about for its safety. I do not much fancy a pet cat,—dreading fleas & bad company with the neighbours. So I keep that set of affections at least in abeyance, & satisfy my appetite for luxury with plants, pictures (almost all prints) & casts,—& my ever-fresh landscape. —A visitor here, by stopping my gossip, shows me how I have run on. Oh not a word of what I wanted to say & ask about my friend Milner’s writings, [9] [(]& two or three late books). I must stop for this time, in the hope that my egoistical tone may be catching, & that so I may hear of you much that I want to know but have no title to ask. God bless you!
Ever yours very truly
H. Martineau.
Address: Miss Barrett / 50. Wimpole St / London.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College and Yale University.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Miss Martineau, while still a child, suffered an illness that left her hearing seriously impaired, necessitating the use of an ear-trumpet.
3. Antony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley (1801–85), M.P. for Dorset, later (1851) 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, championed the rights of workers. Children, some as young as four or five, had worked in mines for as much as 18 hours a day until Ashley sponsored an Act, passed into law in 1842, to abolish the system of apprenticeship in mines, and forbidding the use underground of women, and children under 13 (DNB).
4. Sir Rowland Hill (1795–1879), the motivating force behind the introduction of the penny postage in 1840, was dismissed from his post in the Treasury by Peel in 1842. In 1844, a public subscription was launched to recognize his services to the country; this raised over £13,000 (see The Life of Sir Rowland Hill, 1880, II, 29–32).
5. EBB had earlier sent Miss Martineau a copy of The Seraphim by the hand of Lady Mary Lambton, daughter of the Earl of Durham (see letter 1358).
6. Thomas Michael Greenhow (1791–1881) had married Elizabeth Martineau in 1820.
7. The Rambler, a twice-weekly periodical issued from 1750 to 1752, contained essays on a variety of subjects, mainly written by Dr. Johnson.
8. Thought to be Charles Henry Bellenden Ker (1785?–1871), a lawyer, who was “one of the first private growers of orchids,” and contributed articles to The Gardeners’ Chronicle under the pseudonym “Dodman” (DNB).
9. The British Library catalogue lists several writers of this name; it is not possible to be certain which one Miss Martineau refers to.
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