especially over the celebrated concluding passage, that I thought I would translate it, and correct it by Dr. Aikin's, which I could procure from our public library. 1 did it, and found my own translation unquestionably the best of the two. I had spent an infinity of pains over it,?word by word; and I am confident I was not wrong in my judgment. I stood pained and mortified before my desk, I remember, thinking how strange and small a matter was human achievement, if Dr. Aikin's fame was to be taken as a testimony of literary desert. I had beaten him whom I had taken for my master. I need not point out that, in the first place, Dr. Aikin's fame did not hang on this particular work; nor that, in the second place, I had exaggerated his fame by our sectarian estimate of him.9 1 give the incident as a curious little piece of personal experience, and one which helped to make me like literary labour more for its own sake, and less for its rewards, than I might otherwise have done.?Well: to return to my translating propensities. Our cousin J. M. L., then studying for his profession in Norwich, used to read Italian with Rachel1 and me,?also before breakfast. We made some considerable progress, through the usual course of prose authors and poets; and out of this grew a fit which Rachel and I at one time took, in concert with our companions and neighbours, the C.'s, to translate Petrarch.2 Nothing could be better as an exercise in composition than translating Petrarch's sonnets into English of the same limits. It was putting ourselves under compulsion to do with the Italian what I had set myself voluntarily to do with the Latin author. I believe we really succeeded pretty well; and I am sure that all these exercises were a singularly apt preparation for my after work. At the same time, I went on studying Blair's Rhetoric3 (for want of a better guide) and inclining mightily to every kind of book or process which could improve my literary skill,?really as if I had foreseen how I was to spend my life.
* * *
At this time,?(I think it must have been in 1821,) was my first appearance in print. * * * My brother James, then my idolized companion, discovered how wretched I was when he left me for his college, after the vacation; and he told me that I must not permit myself to be so miserable. He advised me to take refuge, on each occasion, in a new pursuit; and on that particular occasion, in an attempt at authorship. I said, as usual, that I would if he would: to which he answered that it would never do for him, a young student, to rush into print before the eyes of his tutors; but he desired me to write something that was in my head, and try my chance with it in the 'Monthly Repository,'?the poor little Unitarian periodical in which I have mentioned that Talfourd4 tried his young powers. What James desired, I always did, as of course; and after he had left me to my widowhood soon after six o'clock, one bright September morning, I was at my desk before seven, beginning a letter to the Editor of the 'Monthly Repository,'?that editor being the formidable prime minister of his sect,?Rev. Robert Aspland.5 I suppose I must tell what that first paper was,
8. A biography of Julius Agricola (40-93 c.E.), 3. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1784), Tacitus's father-in-law and a Roman senator and by Hugh Blair (1718-1800), a Scottish divine and general. Aikin's translation, which went into sev-professor of rhetoric, which expressed 18theral editions, was first published in 1774. century ideals of prose stvle. 9. Aikin, like Martineau, was a Unitarian. 4. Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), 1. Martineau's younger sister. English lawyer and author. 2. Italian poet (Francesco Petrarca, 1304?1374). 5. A Unitarian divine (1782-1845).
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MABTINEAU: AUTOBIOGRAPHY / 159 1
though I had much rather not; for I am so heartily ashamed of the whole business as never to have looked at the article since the first flutter of it went off. It was on Female Writers on Practical Divinity. I wrote away, in my abominable scrawl of those days, on foolscap paper,6 feeling mightily like a fool all the time. I told no one, and carried my expensive packet to the post-office myself, to pay the postage. I took the letter V for my signature,?I cannot at all remember why. The time was very near the end of the month: I had no definite expectation that I should ever hear any thing of my paper; and certainly did not suppose it could be in the forthcoming number. That number was sent in before service-time on a Sunday morning. My heart may have been beating when I laid hands on it; but it thumped prodigiously when I saw my article there, and, in the Notices to Correspondents, a request to hear more from V. of Norwich. There is certainly something entirely peculiar in the sensation of seeing oneself in print for the first time:?the lines burn themselves in upon the brain in a way of which black ink is incapable, in any other mode. So I felt that day, when I went about with my secret.?I have said what my eldest brother was to us,?in what reverence we held him. He was just married, and he and his bride asked me to return from chapel with them to tea. After tea he said, 'Come now, we have had plenty of talk; I will read you something; ' and he held out his hand for the new 'Repository.' After glancing at it, he exclaimed, 'They have got a new hand here. Listen.' After a paragraph, he repeated, 'Ah! this is a new hand; they have had nothing so good as this for a long while.' (It would be impossible to convey to any who do not know the 'Monthly Repository' of that day, how very small a compliment this was.) I was silent, of course. At the end of the first column, he exclaimed about the style, looking at me in some wonder at my being as still as a mouse. Next (and well I remember his tone, and thrill to it still) his words were?'What a fine sentence that is! Why, do you not think so?' I mumbled out, sillily enough, that it did not seem any thing particular. 'Then,' said he, 'you were not listening. I will read it again. There now!' As he still got nothing out of me, he turned round upon me, as we sat side by side on the sofa, with 'Harriet, what is the matter with you? I never knew you so slow to praise any thing before.' I replied, in utter confusion,?'I never could baffle any body. The truth is, that paper is mine.' He made no reply; read on in silence, and spoke no more till I was on my feet to come away. He then laid his hand on my shoulder, and said gravely (calling me 'dear' for the first time) 'Now, dear, leave it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings; and do you devote yourself to this.' I went home in a sort of dream, so that the squares of the pavement seemed to float before my eyes. That evening made me an authoress.
ft ? >;?
While I was at Newcastle [1829], a change, which turned out a very happy one, was made in our domestic arrangements. 4 * 4 I call it a misfortune, because in common parlance it would be so treated; but I believe that my mother and all her other daughters would have joined heartily, if asked, in my conviction that it was one of the best things that ever happened to us. My mother and her daughters lost, at a stroke, nearly all they had in the world by the failure of the house,?the old manufactory,?in which their money was placed. We never recovered more than the merest pittance; and at the time, I, for one, was left destitute;?that is to say, with precisely one shilling in my
6. A thirteen-by-sixteen-inch sheet of paper.
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1 582 / THE 'WOMAN QUESTION'
purse. The effect upon me of this new 'calamity,' as people called it, was like that of a blister upon a dull, weary pain, or series of pains. I rather enjoyed it, even at the time; for there was scope for action; whereas, in the long, dreary series of preceding trials, there was nothing possible but endurance. In a very short time, my two sisters at home and I began to feel the blessing of a wholly new freedom. I, who had been obliged to write before breakfast, or in some private way, had henceforth liberty to do my own work in my own way; for we had lost our gentility. Many and many a time since have we said that, but for that loss of money, we might have lived on in the ordinary provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing, and economizing, and growing narrower every year; whereas, by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won friends, reputation and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead of vegetated.
