MArtineau

HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802 - 1876)

When the Grainger Market buildings were opened in 1835, the Green Market was incorporated and is mentioned by Harriet Martineau as a grandly-decorated place of evening promenade and dancing during the meeting of the British association in Newcastle in 1838. Such was Harriet's celebrity that her sister borrowed an ear-trumpet (Harriet was deaf) and walked about the market to draw the throng away from Harriet. She had arrived in the Tyne on a ship from Scotland with many of the participants, who good-naturedly shouted to the inquisitive folk of South Shields that they were 'savants', 'philosophers', 'nondescripts'!

Harriet Martineau contributed to Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words (he called her 'Hanny') and was a famous author in her own right, having become a national figure after the huge success of her Illustrations of Political Economy. She was lionised in London society and wrote widely on many progressive subjects, like the enfranchisement of women and the establishment of a national system of education. She sometimes wrote several leaders a week for the Daily News, and may be regarded as the first woman in Britain to be a regular journalist.

Harriet's chronic ill-health was due to an ovarian cyst, and she visited her brother-in-law, the celebrated Newcastle doctor Thomas Michael Greenhow on several occasions to try to alleviate her symptoms - on the last occasion staying for six months in the family house at 28 Eldon Square. She then moved down-river to Tynemouth, where she stayed at Mrs Halliday's boarding -house, 57 Front Street for nearly five years from 16 March 1840. A plaque marks the house where she produced at least three books, including a novel about the Haitian slave leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Life in the Sick-Room, describing her life in Tynemouth. She also devotes some hundred pages of her autobiography to this period. Notable visitors included Richard Cobden - and Thomas Carlyle and his wife. Carlyle found the inhabitants of Tynemouth 'Scotch in features, in character and dialect'.

Harriet had expected to remain an invalid for the rest of her life and delighted in the freedom her telescope allowed. Across the Tyne was the sandy beach 'where there are frequent wrecks - too interesting to an invalid... and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying their kites; lovers and friends taking their breezy walks on Sundays...' She also gives a lyrical picture of Tynemouth:

When I look forth in the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with glistening snow, while the myrtle-green sea tumbles... there is none of the deadness of winter in the landscape; no leafless trees, no locking up with ice; and the air comes in through my open upper sash, but sun-warmed. The robins twitter and hop in my flower-boxes... and at night, what a heaven! What an expanse of stars above, appearing more steadfast, the more the Northern Lights dart and quiver!

Eventually, in 1844, following Spencer Timothy Hall's performance in Newcastle, she was successfully treated by mesmerism. Her natural enthusiasm for the controversial method caused much public discussion as well as friction with her family which led to her leaving Tynemouth and moving to Ambleside. Harriet wrote of her departure:

'[Elizabeth Greenhow's] home at Newcastle with all possible kindness from her hospitable husband and herself, was always at my command, without hindrance or difficulty, until my recovery from a hopeless illness in 1844 by Mesmerism proved too much for the natural prejudices of a surgeon and a surgeon's wife, and caused by the help, or the ill offices of another relation, a family breach as absurd as it was lamentable.'

The busybody Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House is probably based on Harriet Martineau, who nevertheless retained her high regard for Dickens.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802 - 1876) When the Grainger Market buildings were opened in 1835, the Green Market was incorporated and is mentioned by Harriet Martineau as a grandly-decorated place of evening promenade and dancing during the meeting of the British association in Newcastle in 1838. Such was Harriet's celebrity that her sister borrowed an ear-trumpet (Harriet was deaf) and walked about the market to draw the throng away from Harriet. She had arrived in the Tyne on a ship from Scotland with many of the participants, who good-naturedly shouted to the inquisitive folk of South Shields that they were 'savants', 'philosophers', 'nondescripts'! Harriet Martineau contributed to Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words (he called her 'Hanny') and was a famous author in her own right, having become a national figure after the huge success of her Illustrations of Political Economy. She was lionised in London society and wrote widely on many progressive subjects, like the enfranchisement of women and the establishment of a national system of education. She sometimes wrote several leaders a week for the Daily News, and may be regarded as the first woman in Britain to be a regular journalist. Harriet's chronic ill-health was due to an ovarian cyst, and she visited her brother-in-law, the celebrated Newcastle doctor Thomas Michael Greenhow on several occasions to try to alleviate her symptoms - on the last occasion staying for six months in the family house at 28 Eldon Square. She then moved down-river to Tynemouth, where she stayed at Mrs Halliday's boarding -house, 57 Front Street for nearly five years from 16 March 1840. A plaque marks the house where she produced at least three books, including a novel about the Haitian slave leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Life in the Sick-Room, describing her life in Tynemouth. She also devotes some hundred pages of her autobiography to this period. Notable visitors included Richard Cobden - and Thomas Carlyle and his wife. Carlyle found the inhabitants of Tynemouth 'Scotch in features, in character and dialect'. Harriet had expected to remain an invalid for the rest of her life and delighted in the freedom her telescope allowed. Across the Tyne was the sandy beach 'where there are frequent wrecks - too interesting to an invalid... and above the rocks, a spreading heath, where I watch troops of boys flying their kites; lovers and friends taking their breezy walks on Sundays...' She also gives a lyrical picture of Tynemouth: When I look forth in the morning, the whole land may be sheeted with glistening snow, while the myrtle-green sea tumbles... there is none of the deadness of winter in the landscape; no leafless trees, no locking up with ice; and the air comes in through my open upper sash, but sun-warmed. The robins twitter and hop in my flower-boxes... and at night, what a heaven! What an expanse of stars above, appearing more steadfast, the more the Northern Lights dart and quiver! Eventually, in 1844, following Spencer Timothy Hall's performance in Newcastle, she was successfully treated by mesmerism. Her natural enthusiasm for the controversial method caused much public discussion as well as friction with her family which led to her leaving Tynemouth and moving to Ambleside. Harriet wrote of her departure: '[Elizabeth Greenhow's] home at Newcastle with all possible kindness from her hospitable husband and herself, was always at my command, without hindrance or difficulty, until my recovery from a hopeless illness in 1844 by Mesmerism proved too much for the natural prejudices of a surgeon and a surgeon's wife, and caused by the help, or the ill offices of another relation, a family breach as absurd as it was lamentable.' The busybody Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House is probably based on Harriet Martineau, who nevertheless retained her high regard for Dickens.
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