Harriet Martineaus Autobiography | Page 8

When I was sent with the keys to a certain bureau in my
mother's room, to fetch miniatures of my father and grandfather, to be
shown to visitors, I used to stay an unconscionable time, though
dreading punishment for it, but utterly unable to resist the fascination of
a certain watch-ribbon kept in a drawer there. This ribbon had a pattern
in floss silk, gay and beautifully shaded; and I used to look at it till I
was sent for, to be questioned as to what I had been about. The young
wild parsley and other weeds in the hedges used to make me sick with
their luscious green in spring. One crimson and purple sunrise I well
remember, when James could hardly walk alone, and I could not
therefore have been more than five. I awoke very early, that summer
morning, and saw the maid sound asleep in her bed, and "the baby" in
his crib. The room was at the top of the house; and some rising ground
beyond the city could be seen over the opposite roofs. I crept out of bed,
saw James's pink toes showing themselves invitingly through the rails
of his crib, and gently pinched them, to wake him. With a world of
trouble I got him over the side, and helped him to the window, and
upon a chair there. I wickedly opened the window, and the cool air

blew in; and yet the maid did not wake. Our arms were smutted with
the blacks on the window-sill, and our bare feet were corded with the
impression of the rush-buttomed chair; but we were not found out. The
sky was gorgeous, and I talked very religiously to the child. I remember
the mood, and the pleasure of expresing it, but nothing of what I said.
I must have been a remarkably religious child, for the only support and
pleasure I remember having from a very early age was from that source.
I was just seven when the grand event of my childhood took place,--a
journey to Newcastle to spend the summer (my mother and four of her
children) at my grandfather's; and I am certain that I cared more for
religion before and during that summer than for anything else. It was
after our return, when Ann Turner, daughter of the Unitarian Minister
there, was with us, that my piety first took a practical character; but it
was familiar to me as an indulgence long before. While I was afraid of
everybody I saw, I was not in the least afraid of God. Being usually
very unhappy, I was constantly longing for heaven, and seriously, and
very frequently planning suicide in order to get there. I knew it was
considered a crime; but I did not feel it so. I had a devouring passion
for justice;--justice, first to my own precious self, and then to other
oppressed people. Justice was precisely what was least understood in
our house, in regard to servants and children. Now and then I
desperately poured out my complaints; but in general I brooded over
my injuries, and those of others who dared not speak; and then the
temptation to suicide was very strong. No doubt, there was much
vindictiveness in it. I gloated over the thought that I would make
somebody care about me in some sort of way at last: and, as to my
reception in the other world, I felt sure that God could not be very
angry with me for making haste to him when nobody else cared for me,
and so many people plagued me. One day I went to the kitchen to get
the great carving knife, to cut my throat; but the servants were at dinner,
and this put it off for that time. By degrees, the design dwindled down
into running away. I used to lean out of the window, and look up and
down the street, and wonder how far I could go without being caught. I
had no doubt at all that if I once got into a farm-house, and wore a
woollen petticoat, and milked the cows, I should be safe, and that
nobody would inquire about me any more.--It is evident enough that

my temper must have been very bad. It seems to me now that it was
downright devilish, except for a placability which used to annoy me
sadly. My temper might have been early made a thoroughly good one,
by the slightest indulgence shown to my natural affections, and any
rational dealing with my faults: but I was almost the youngest of a large
family, and subject, not only to the rule of severity to which all were
liable, but also to the rough and contemptuous treatment of the elder
children, who meant no harm, but injured