Harriet Martineaus Autobiography | Page 5

the night. There is
no doubt of the genuineness of the remembrance, as the facts could not
have been told me by any one else. I remember standing on the
threshold of a cottage, holding fast by the doorpost, and putting my foot
down, in repeated attempts to reach the ground. Having accomplished
the step, I toddled (I remember the uncertain feeling) to a tree before
the door, and tried to clasp and get round it; but the rough bark hurt my
hands. At night of the same day, in bed, I was disconcerted by the
coarse feel of the sheets,--so much less smooth and cold than those at
home; and I was alarmed by the creaking of the bedstead when I moved.
It was a turn-up bedstead in a cottage, or small farm-house at Carleton,
where I was sent for my health, being a delicate child. My mother's
account of things was that I was all but starved to death in the first
weeks of my life,--the wetnurse being very poor, and holding on to her
good place after her milk was going or gone. The discovery was made
when I was three months old, and when I was fast
sinking under diarrhoea. My bad health during my whole childhood
and youth, and even my deafness, was always ascribed by my mother
to this. However it might be about that, my health certainly was very
bad till I was nearer thirty than twenty years of age; and never was poor
mortal cursed with a more beggarly nervous system. The long years of
indigestion by day and night-mare terrors are mournful to think of
now.--Milk has radically disagreed with me, all my life: but when I was
a child, it was a thing unheard of for children not to be fed on milk: so,

till I was old enough to have tea at breakfast, I went on having a horrid
lump at my throat for hours of every morning, and the most terrific
oppressions in the night. Sometimes the dim light of the windows in the
night seemed to advance till it pressed upon my eyeballs, and then the
windows would seem to recede to an infinite distance. If I laid my hand
under my head on the pillow, the hand seemed to vanish almost to a
point, while the head grew as big as a mountain. Sometimes I was
panic struck at the head of the stairs, and was sure I could never get
down; and I could never cross the yard to the garden without flying and
panting, and fearing to look behind, because a wild beast was after me.
The starlight sky was the worst; it was always coming down, to stifle
and crush me, and rest upon my head. I do not remember any dread of
thieves or ghosts in particular; but things as I actually saw them were
dreadful to me; and it now appears to me that I had scarcely any respite
from the terror. My fear of persons was as great as any other. To the
best of my belief, the first person I was ever not afraid of was Aunt
Kentish, who won my heart and my confidence when I was sixteen. My
heart was ready enough to flow out; and it often did: but I always
repented of such expansion, the next time I dreaded to meet a human
face.--It now occurs to me, and it may be worth while to note it,--what
the extremest terror of all was about. We were often sent to walk on the
Castle Hill at Norwich. In the wide area below, the residents were wont
to expose their feather-beds, and to beat them with a stick. That
sound,--a dull shock,--used to make my heart stand still: and it was no
use my standing at the rails above, and seeing the process. The striking
of the blow and the arrival of the sound did not correspond; and this
made matters worse. I hated that walk; and I believe for that reason. My
parents knew nothing of all this. It never occurred to me to speak of
anything I felt most: and I doubt whether they ever had the slightest
idea of my miseries. It seems to me now that a little closer observation
would have shown them the causes of the bad health and fitful temper
which gave them so much anxiety on my account; and I am sure that a
little more of the cheerful tenderness which was in those days thought
bad for children, would have saved me from my worst faults, and from
a world of suffering.
My hostess and nurse at the above-mentioned cottage was a Mrs.

Merton, who was, as was her husband, a Methodist or melancholy
Calvinist of some sort. The family