Harriet Martineau: Encyclopedia II - Harriet Martineau - London and the United States

Harriet Martineau - London and the United States

In 1832 she moved to London, where she numbered among her acquaintances Henry Hallam, Henry Hart Milman, Thomas Malthus, Monckton Milnes, Sydney Smith, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and later Thomas Carlyle. Until 1834 she continued to be occupied with her political economy series and with a supplemental series of Illustrations of Taxation. Four stories supporting the Whig Poor Law reforms came out about the same time. These tales, direct, lucid, written without any appearance of effort, and yet practically effective, display the characteristics of their author's style. Tory paternalists reacted by calling her a Malthusian "who deprecates charity and provision for the poor!!!", while Radicals were equally opposed to her. She was fêted by Whig high society. In May 1834 Charles Darwin got a letter from his sisters telling him that Martineau was "a great Lion in London" and recommending Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated in pamphlet sized parts. They added that "Erasmus knows her & is a very great admirer & every body reads her little books & if you have a dull hour you can, and then throw them overboard, that they may not take up your precious room."

In 1834, when the series was complete, Miss Martineau paid a long visit to the United States. Here her open adhesion to the Abolitionist party, then small and very unpopular, gave great offence, which was deepened by the publication, soon after her return, of Theory and Practice of Society in America (1837) and a Retrospect of Western Travel (1838). An article in the Westminster Review, "The Martyr Age of the United States," introduced English readers to the struggles of the Abolitionists.

After the Voyage of the Beagle Charles went in October 1836 to stay with his brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin in London, and found Eras spending his days "driving out Miss Martineau". The Darwins shared her Unitarian background and Whig politics, but their father Robert was concerned that as a potential daughter-in-law, her politics were too extreme. He was upset by a piece he read in the Westminster Review calling for the radicals to break with the Whigs and give working men the vote "before he knew it was not hers, and wasted a good deal of indignation, and even now can hardly believe it is not hers."

Charles called on Miss Martineau and remarked that "She was very agreeable, and managed to talk on a most wonderful number of subjects, considering the limited time", which included the social and natural worlds she was then writing about in her book Society in America, including the "grandeur and beauty" of the "process of world making" she had seen at Niagara Falls. Charles added that "I was astonished to find how ugly she is" and "she is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and abilities", though "Erasmus palliated all this, by maintaining one ought not to look at her as a woman." For her part, Martineau described Charles as "simple, childlike, painstaking, effective". After a later meeting when he was struggling with his own writing and she was starting Deerbrook he expressed astonishment at the ease with which she wrote such fluent prose, and "never has occasion to correct a single word she writes", though she was "not a complete Amazonian, & knows the feeling of exhaustion from thinking too much."

The American books were followed by a three volume novel, Deerbrook (1839)–a story of middle class country life with a surgeon hero. To the same period belong a few little handbooks, forming parts of a Guide to Service. The veracity of her Maid of All Work led to a widespread belief, which she regarded with some complacency, that she had once been a maid of all work herself.

In 1839, during a visit to Continental Europe, Miss Martineau's health broke down. Fearing she had a tumour, she retired to solitary lodgings in Tynemouth near her sister and brother-in-law, the celebrated Newcastle surgeon Thomas Michael Greenhow. Besides a novel, The Hour and the Man (1840), Life in the Sickroom (1844), and the Playfellow (1841), she published a series of tales for children containing some of her most popular work: Settlers at Home, The Peasant and the Prince, Feats on the Fiord, etc. During this illness she for a second time declined a pension on the civil list, fearing to compromise her political independence. Her letter on the subject was published, and some of her friends raised a small annuity for her soon after.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "London and the United States", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki