Mrs. Martineau and the family were thus suddenly deprived of all means of support.  The boys were sent to work in the mills, and the two older girls, having five sound senses each, found places where they could do housework and put money in their purses.  Harriet Martineau stayed at home and kept house.  She also studied, read and wrote a little—­there was no other way!

* * * * *

Six years passed, and the name of Harriet Martineau was recognized as a power in the land.  Her “Illustrations of Political Economy” had sold well up into the hundred thousands.  The little stories were read by old and young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned.  Sir Robert Peel had written Harriet a personal letter of encouragement; Lord Brougham had paid for and given away a thousand copies of the booklets; Richard Cobden had publicly endorsed them; Coleridge had courted the author; Florence Nightingale had sung her praises, and the Czar of Russia had ordered that “all the books of Harriet Martineau’s found in Russia shall be destroyed.”  Besides, she had incurred the wrath of King Philippe of France, who after first lavishly praising her and ordering the “Illustrations” translated into French, to be used in the public schools, suddenly discovered a hot chapter entitled, “The Error Called the Divine Right of Kings,” and although Philippe was only a “citizen-king” he made haste to recall his kind words.

And I wish here to remark in parentheses that the author who has not made warm friends and then lost them in an hour by writing things that did not agree with the preconceived idea of these friends, has either not written well or not been read.  Every preacher who preaches ably has two doors to his church—­one where the people come in and another through which he preaches them out.  And I do not see how any man, even though he be divine, could expect or hope to have as many as twelve disciples and hold them for three years without being doubted, denied and betrayed.  If you have thoughts, and honestly speak your mind, Golgotha for you is not far away.

Harriet Martineau was essentially an agitator.  She entered into life in its fullest sense, and no phase of existence escaped her keen and penetrating investigation.  From writing books giving minute directions to housemaids, to lengthy advice to prime ministers, her work never lagged.  She was widely read, beloved, respected, feared and well hated.

When her political-economy tales were selling their best, the Government sent her word that on application she could have a pension of two hundred pounds a year for life.  A pension of this kind comes nominally as a reward for excellent work or heroic service.  But a pension may mean something else:  it often implies that the receiver shall not offend nor affront the one that bestows it.  Could we trace the true inner history of pensions granted by monarchies, we would find that they are usually diplomatic moves.