made an entry in her own diary for November, 1839, — quoted by Mrs. Chapman in her appendix;[1] and this record says of the letter then received: —
“Tuesday. An immense letter from Margaret Fuller. Sad about herself, and very severe on my book; — righteously so, but with much mistake in it. The spirit is very noble. Do I improve in courage about learning the consequences of what I do? I commit myself boldly, but I suffer a good deal. But I do not think I go back. I suffered a good deal from her letter.”
Now if the letter thus described was not the letter which Margaret Fuller “declared she sent,” what was it? It certainly was not that “unworthy” letter which Miss Martineau imputes to her, or it would not have been praised so highly. The fact is that the letter which Miss Martineau had characterized at the time as “very noble” she afterwards so far forgets as to insinuate that it never was really sent; but she remembers an “unworthy” letter, about which she gives no particulars and of whose existence there is no other memorial.
As to the letter itself, there is nothing unreasonable in it; nothing which history has not confirmed. Miss Martineau’s self-identification with the abolitionists was courageous and noble, but the habitual exaggeration of her mental action, and her liability to error through her temperament and her deafness, followed her into this
- ↑ Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, ii. 319.
