Harriet Martineaus Autobiography | Page 3

ought to be done by myself is the statement of my
reasons for so serious a step as forbidding the publication of my private
correspondence; and I therefore stop at the Third Period of my Memoir,
to write this Introduction, to the following passages of which I request
the reader's earnest attention.
I admit, at the outset, that it is rather a piece of self-denial in me to
interdict the publication of my letters. I have no solicitude about fame,
and no fear of my reputation of any sort being injured by the
publication of any thing I have ever put upon paper. My opinions and
feelings have been remarkably open to the world; and my position has
been such as to impose no reserves on a disposition naturally open and
communicative; so that if any body might acquiesce in the publication
of correspondence, it should be myself. Moreover, I am disposed to
think that what my friends tell me is true; that it would be rather an
advantage to me than the contrary to be known by my private letters
All these considerations point out to me that I am therefore precisely
the person to bear emphatic practical testimony on behalf of the
principle of the privacy of epistolary intercourse; and therefore it is that
I do hereby bear that testimony.
Epistolary correspondence is written speech; and the onus rests with
those who publish it to show why the laws of honor which are
uncontested in regard to conversation may be violated when the
conversation is written instead of spoken. The plea is of the utility of
such material for biographical purposes; but who would admit that plea
in regard to fireside conversation? The most valuable conversation, and
that which best illustrates character, is that which passes between two

friends, with their feet on the fender, on winter nights, or in a summer
ramble: but what would be thought of the traitor who should supply
such material for biographical or other purposes? How could human
beings ever open their hearts and minds to each other, if there were no
privacy guaranteed by principles and feelings of honor? Yet has this
security lapsed from that half of human conversation which is written
instead of spoken. Whether there is still time to restore it, I know not:
but I have done my part towards an attempted restoration by a stringent
provision in my Will against any public use whatever being made of
my letters, unless I should myself authorize the publication of some,
which will, in that case, be of some public interest, and not confidential
letters. Most of my friends have burnt my letters,--partly because they
knew my desire thus to enforce my assertion of the principle, and partly
because it was less painful to destroy them while I was still among
them than to escape the importunities of hunters of material after my
death. Several eminent persons of this century have taken stringent
precautions against the same mischief; and very many more, I fear,
have taken the more painful precaution of writing no letters which any
body would care to have. Seventy years ago, Dr. Johnson said in
conversation "It is now become so much the fashion to publish letters,
that, in order to avoid it, I put as little into mine as I can." Nobody will
question the hardship and mischief of a practice which acts upon
epistolary correspondence as the spy system under a despotism acts
upon speech: and when we find that a half a dozen of the greatest
minds of our time have deprived themselves and their friends of their
freedom of epistolary speech for the same reason, it does seem to be
time that those qualified to bear testimony against such an infringement
on personal liberty should speak out.
"But," say unscrupulous book-makers and readers, "there are many
eminent persons who are so far from feeling as you do that they have
themselves prepared for the publication of their letters. There was
Doddridge:--he left a copy of every letter and note that he ever wrote,
for this very purpose. There was Madame D'Arblay:--on her death-bed,
and in extreme old age, she revised and had copies made of all the
letters she received and wrote when in the height of her fame as Fanny
Burney,--preparing for publication the smooth compliments and

monstrous flatteries written by hands that had long become dust. There
was Southey:--he too kept copies, or left directions, by which he
arranged the method of making his private letters to his friends
property to his heirs. These, and many more, were of a different way of
thinking from you."--They were indeed: and my answer is,--what were
the letters worth, as letters, when these arrangements became known?
What would fireside conversation be worth, as confidential talk,