JAMES MARTINEAU

BOOK I

THE MAN

CHAPTER I

ANCESTRY, FAMILY, EARLY HOME

LOUIS XIV. conferred incalculable benefit upon other nations by acting the tyrant within his own. The Edict of Nantes, their Magna Charta of religious privilege, had given the Protestants within his realm a legal if precarious exercise of their worship. The Revocation of this Edict in 1685 made Protestantism an outlaw. The horrible detail of persecution that followed, the demolition of churches, the separation of children from their parents, the galleys, the Dragonade, need not be recounted here. The inevitable result was a flow of emigration which the severest penalties and a ubiquitous police could not check. The refugees went, availing themselves of every favorable circumstance, in every manner of disguise, the arrest of some only leading others to plot more skilfully; and with them went the bravest manhood, the sturdiest intelligence, the most profitable industry. They recruited the armies with which France was soon to be struggling, and carried French manufactures into countries wherewith France was competing. More than this, they carried the latent intelligence that was destined to unfold in children and

in children's children, that should have added to the triumphs of French art and letters and statesmanship and philosophy.

Among these refugees was one in whom we have a special interest, a certain Gaston Martineau, son of Elie Martineau of Bergerac. There is also a tradition that makes him a surgeon of Dieppe. Bergerac, as we know from general history, was one of the places visited by the Dragonade, and the Martineaus may therefore have witnessed, perhaps experienced, its atrocities. After the Revocation of the Edict, this Gaston, a young man and a surgeon, came into England. On the ship that bore him across the Channel was a family of Pierres, also refugees; and one of these, Marie Pierre, became afterwards his wife. They settled first in London, afterwards in Norwich, where were already a considerable number of Huguenot exiles, and here he practised his skill and reared his family. Eight children were born to him. What was his age when he came into England, or the date of his coming, it is impossible to say; but the records of the Walloon Church in Norwich, in which he and his immediate descendants worshipped, show him to have been the father of two children in 1695. This is all that can now be told of one the full record of whose life we should be so glad to know.1

Of the children of Gaston Martineau, the third was named David. He adopted the medical profession, and blessed Norwich by walking in his father's footsteps. To him was born a son, also named David, who became a surgeon likewise. Though he died at the early age of thirty-seven, he left seven children. The oldest of these, Philip Meadows Martineau, fulfilled the family expectation of a surgeon, and in the practice of that noble science.

1 Since writing the above I have learned that he was married at Spitalfields in 1693, and that his first child was baptized there in 1694.

advanced the family fame. The youngest of the seven, Thomas, born after his father's death, became the father of him whose life and work now engage our studious interest. Of Thomas Martineau little need be said. He settled in his ancestral Norwich, and engaged in the manufacture of bombazine, a species of cloth much in use in those days, of which Norwich was the chief source of supply. From a notice of him published several years ago, the impression has gone widely abroad that he was also a wine-merchant. This is an error. His customers in other countries would sometimes send him wine in recognition of some business favor or from friendly regard. His wine was consequently often of choicer flavor than that of his neighbors and friends, who would therefore sometimes ask him to secure a pipe for them. This he would do, though not as business, but as accommodation.

Thomas Martineau married Elizabeth Rankin, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a woman of hardy Northumbrian stock, vigorous, affectionate, and capable. She bore him eight children. Of these the sixth was Harriet, born in 1802, with whom the world has become well acquainted through her large intelligence, broad sympathies, and heroic work; the seventh was James, born April 21, 1805, the lion of this tribe of Judah. The other six sustained, perhaps not less worthily, their less conspicuous part. Of these Elizabeth, the first born, and Ellen, the last, married each a surgeon, and so imported into the fifth generation a native product of the preceding four. Rachel never married, and for many years conducted a boarding-school in Liverpool. There were three brothers, Thomas, Henry, Robert. The latter was a prominent manufacturer in Birmingham, and at one time mayor of the city. His eldest son afterwards twice held the same office, and in 1887 was knighted by the queen. Ellen left also a son, who is now a nonconformist minister.

Of this large group James was for many years the sole survivor. It was his fortune to enjoy far more than the customary period of earthly life, and to be vigorously employed at an age when most must rest. It was not till January 11, 1900, then a little less than ninety-five, that he put off mortality.

Of the early home life details are scanty, though such as we have afford a tolerable picture. The father was a man of fine taste and kindly spirit, and, as we shall see further on, of unbending integrity. He was, however, immersed in business, and his part in the home could be hardly more than a wholesome and cheerful influence. The management of the family, therefore, fell mainly on the mother. A mother with eight children may be as a sun in the domestic firmament, that shines on all alike; but though they may severally have all her love, they must of necessity divide her care, and so early learn the useful lessons of selfdependence and mutual helpfulness. It was thus in this household. A portrait of her, taken in old age, shows a strong and self-reliant character; and her gifted son speaks of her sympathies as "open and flexible to new admirations, to new thoughts, to new virtues." He also tells us that "Burns was the poet of her heart," and that "she would repeat his lines with a mellow and racy simplicity, whose tones ring in my memory to this hour." She was, too, a woman of large executive ability, also of unbending conscientiousness, braced and softened by religious sensibility.

"1

As respects the general flow of family intimacy and affection, it is fair to remember that this family were of the early part of the present century, when ideas and standards were very different from now. Dr. Martineau himself says: "In old nonconformist families especially, the Puritan tradition and the reticence of a persecuted race had left their austere impress on speech and demeanour unused to be

1 1884.