Harriet Martineaus Autobiography | Page 9

me irreparably. I had no
self-respect, and an unbounded need of approbation and affection. My
capacity for jealousy was something frightful. When we were little
more than infants, Mr. Thomas Watson, son of my father's partner, one
day came into the yard, took Rachel up in his arms, gave her some
grapes off the vine, and carried her home, across the street, to give her
Gay's Fables, bound in red and gold. I stood with a bursting heart,
beating my hoop, and hating every body in the world. I always hated
Gay's Fables, and for long could not abide a red book. Nobody dreamed
of all this; and the "taking down" system was pursued with me as with
the rest, issuing in the assumed doggedness and wilfulness which made
me desperately disagreeable during my youth, to every body at home.
The least word or tone of kindness melted me instantly, in spite of the
strongest predeterminations to be hard and offensive. Two occasions
stand out especially in my memory, as indeed almost the only instances
of the enjoyment of tenderness manifested to myself individually.
When I was four or five years old, we were taken to a lecture of Mr.
Drummond's, for the sake, no doubt, of the pretty shows, we were to
see,--the chief of which was the Phantasmagoria of which we had heard,
as a fine sort of magic-lantern. I did not like the darkness, to begin with;
and when Minerva appeared, in a red dress, at first extremely small,
and then approaching, till her owl seemed coming directly upon me, it
was so like my nightmare dreams that I shrieked aloud. I remember my
own shriek. A pretty lady who sat next us, took me on her lap, and let
me hide my face in her bosom, and held me fast. How intensely I loved
her, without at all knowing who she was! From that time we knew her,
and she filled a large space in my life; and above forty years after, I had
the honor of having her for my guest in my own house. She was Mrs.
Lewis Cooper, then the very young mother of two girls of the ages of

Rachel and myself, of whom I shall have to say more presently.--The
other occasion was when I had a terrible ear-ache one Sunday. The rest
went to chapel in the afternoon; and my pain grew worse. Instead of
going into the kitchen to the cook, I wandered into a lumber room at
the top of the house. I laid my aching ear against the cold iron screw of
a bedstead, and howled with pain; but nobody came to me. At last, I
heard the family come home from chapel. I heard them go into the
parlor, one after another, and I knew they were sitting round the fire in
the dusk. I stole down to the door, and stood on the mat, and heard
them talking and laughing merrily. I stole in, thinking they would not
observe me, and got into a dark corner. Presently my mother called to
me, and asked what I was doing there. Then I burst out,--that my ear
ached so I did not know what to do! Then she and my father both called
me tenderly, and she took me on her lap, and laid the ear on her warm
bosom. I was afraid of spoiling her starched muslin handkerchief with
the tears which would come; but I was very happy, and wished that I
need never move again. Then of course came remorse for all my
naughtiness; but I was always suffering that, though never, I believe, in
my whole childhood, being known to own myself wrong. I must have
been an intolerable child; but I need not have been so.
I was certainly fond of going to chapel before that Newcastle era which
divided my childhood into two equal portions: but my besetting
troubles followed me even there. My passion for justice was baulked
there, as much as any where. The duties preached were those of
inferiors to superiors, while the per contra was not insisted on with any
equality of treatment at all. Parents were to bring up their children "in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord," and to pay servants due wages;
but not a word was ever preached about the justice due from the
stronger to the weaker. I used to thirst to hear some notice of the
oppression which servants and children had (as I supposed universally)
to endure, in regard to their feelings, while duly clothed, fed, and taught:
but nothing of the sort ever came; but instead, a doctrine of passive
obedience which only made me remorseful and miserable. I was
abundantly obedient in act; for I never dreamed of