Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

This week, the distinguished contemporary writer Ali Smith gave the inaugural Harriet Martineau lecture for Norwich Writers’ Centre, bringing alive a woman who in her time was ubiquitous, but who now is hardly known.  Martineau was a political journalist, an early sociologist, a radical campaigner, a traveller and an author who inspired Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and many others.

Ali Smith began by pointing out the extraordinary coincidence that first Harriet Martineau and twenty years later Elizabeth Fry (neé Gurney) were born in the same house, Gurney Court, off Magdalen Street, Norwich, ten minutes walk from where I am writing this blog.  Martineau was shaped by the Nonconformist Unitarian milieu in which she grew up.   As a child, Martineau was a prodigious learner, for example she committed Paradise Lost to memory.  Perhaps as a result, she was always a redoubtable free-thinker.  She was arguing with the Bible from the age of 8, and later decided that gods, whether in Eastern or Western versions, were no more than human creations.  This conclusion rather dismayed her Unitarian family.

Growing up, with a mother who promoted feminine graces, she seems to have used sewing as a cover for learning: "When I was young, it was not thought proper for young ladies to study very conspicuously; and especially with pen in hand.  Young ladies...were expected to sit down in the parlour to sew, - during which reading aloud was permitted".  Not only did she sew all her own clothes, she also used needlework as a way of supporting herself as a young writer, after the collapse of the family textile business in 1828.  "I sewed indefatigably all those years...I made literally all my clothes, as I grew up...The amount of time spent in sewing now appears frightful: but it was the way in those days, among people like ourselves". 

Martineau began to go deaf at the age of 12.  She also lost her sense of smell and taste.  But she did not let this undermine her, saying later “this same deafness is about the best thing that ever happened to me”.  Ali Smith talked about how Martineau had to work out how to hold her ear trumpet so it did not disturb her hat.  Her 1834 essay “Letter to the Deaf” advises people with hearing loss to be independent and sociable.  Hearing  people, she suggested, should be matter-of-fact about deafness.  The essay was reprinted by welfare societies for the benefit of deaf people.

In the late 1830s, Martineau came to fame as a writer with a series of monthly parables about economics which were read around the world and underpinned her financial security, as well as earning her a lifetime ban from Russia.  In 1835, she toured America and spoke at anti-slavery meetings which led to mob protests and death-threats.  On her return, she wrote Society in America, with the abolitionist theme again leading to outrage across the pond.  It was at this time, through a friendship with his brother Erasmus that came close to marriage, that Martineau influenced Charles Darwin.  Her work against slavery later earned her a commemorative statue in Wellesley College, near Boston.

For feminist Martineau, the personal was political.  Every experience turned into an essay.   For example, in the 1840s, she spent five years as an invalid, possibly suffering from a uterine tumour (I was glad to discover she stayed for a time with her brother in Newcastle, and in Tynemouth, using her telescope to watch the beach).  Eventually, her symptoms were miraculously cured by the fashionable new technique of Mesmerism, or hypnosis.  Immediately she wrote about her illness and cure, in another collection of essays, Life in the Sick-Room. 

In 1845, Martineau went to the Lake District to convalesce after illness, and fell in love with the scenery.  She bought a field near Ambleside, and designed and had built “The Knoll”, which still exists and can be rented as a holiday cottage.  She would hold tea and dinner parties, where guests like Wordsworth and Coleridge would be encouraged to plant  trees in her grounds.

In 1846, travelling in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, she was very interested in the life of the Harem, which she considered must be extremely boring.  According to Ali Smith, Marteau asked her host to buy skipping ropes for the women she had met there, so they would have something to do and a means to keep healthy.  For herself, after a rather disastrous early romance, she seems to have decided that she was better off single.

In 1851, Martineau wrote Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, a proto-evolutionary text (eight years before Darwin published).  Written in epistolary form and promoting atheism, it was widely condemned for its secularism.  When Darwin finally published Origin of Species in 1859, she lamented his obfuscation on the matter of God.  In 1853, she translated the work of Auguste Comte, the pioneering French sociologist, into English.  Two years later, fearing imminent death from heart disease, she wrote her autobiography in three months.  She was to live for another twenty years and her auobiography would be published posthumously.

Harriet Martineau wrote 1642 newspaper editorials and 100 books, and had opinions, and influence, on every topic of the day.   Many of her articles were unashamedly feminist, for example when she wrote about the problem of wife-beating.  She campaigned for women’s suffrage and against the notorious Contagious Disease Act, favouring instead regulated prostitution.  She also collaborated with another great Victorian thinker and disabled person, Florence Nightingale, to improve the situation in hospitals. With her first-hand knowledge and personal contacts, Martineau covered the American Civil War extensively, naturally taking a pro-North, pro-Lincoln campaigning stand.

But Martineau was by no means a straightforwardly progressive figure.  Coming from a manufacturing background, Martineau supported a laissez-faire approach in economics, in contrast to Dickens and others who favoured regulation of factories to achieve better health and safety – what she described as “meddling legislation”.   Her outspokenness naturally caused friction, but she was also widely admired.  George Eliot wrote "she is a trump -- the only English woman that possesses thoroughly the art of writing."

Harriet Martineau’s novels include The Hour and the Man, a historical novel about the Haiti slave rebellion of Toussaint l’Ouverture, and Deerbrook, about a failed romance.   She also wrote four novels for children.  To modern readers, her style appears long-winded and ponderous, which is perhaps why she is not often read today.  Ali Smith quoted the obituary that typically Martineau wrote for herself:

Her original power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and intellectual clearness within a certain range. With small imaginative and suggestive powers, and therefore nothing approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did see, and give a clear expression to what she had to say. In short, she could popularize while she could neither discover nor invent.

This modesty obscures the reality that Harriet Martineau was an inspiring, pioneering, passionate, original woman: would that any of us could leave a legacy half as significant as hers.   

In closing, Ali Smith suggested that now that Elizabeth Fry is to be replaced on banknotes by Winston Churchill, we might all ink in Martineau’s image by way of protest at the lack of women on our currency.  For a neglected Englishwoman whose fame began with her writings on political economy, it would be an appropriate memorial.

Django Reinhardt (1910-1953)

Disability is hardly incompatible with musical success, as deaf Beethoven or Evelyn Glennie,  and a myriad of blind classical, jazz and blues musicians can attest.  Several great musicians have had physical impairments, including reputedly Paganini with Marfan syndrome.  But Django Reinhardt was perhaps the best example of a musician who overcame a career-ending injury to achieve international distinction: along the way, he invented a whole new style of jazz guitar.

Jean Reinhardt was born in a Gypsy caravan in Belgium, the son of an itinerant musician and a dancer.  The nickname Django means “I awake” in the Romani language.  Reinhardt spent his youth in Roma encampments near to Paris.  He had minimal formal education, and nor did he join the family enterprise of furniture making.  Instead, he learned to play violin and banjo from an early age, and was making a living from music by the time he was 13. 

When he was 18, Django Reinhardt was injured in a caravan fire,  which was caused by a knocked-over candle that ignited the paper and celluloid flowers that his first wife Bella made to sell.  The burns were so extensive that doctors wanted to amputate his left leg.   But Reinhardt discharged himself from hospital, taught himself to walk, and within a year was mobile with a stick. The fire also left Reinhardt’s left hand badly damaged: he was unable to bend the two smaller fingers, and he had limited function in the rest of the hand.  But Reinhardt learned to play the guitar again, using his thumb, index and middle fingers to pick out tunes, with the damaged fingers only used for chords.

During his convalescence, his wife left him, taking his baby son.  But the following years were a turning point for Reinhardt, as he first heard American jazz music on record, and he met Stephane Grappelli, a younger violinist.  With other musicians, they began to jam together and develop a new style based on stringed instruments.  In 1934, they were invited to play as the Quintette du Hot Club de France, in Paris.  Reinhardt's style has been described as "the clock that laughs", because of the combination of relentless beat and lightness.  Thanks to their increasing success, Reinhardt was able to play with many American jazz musicians who visited Paris, such as Coleman Hawkins.  He also married again, and had another son.

When war broke out, the Quintette were on tour in England, but Reinhardt returned to Paris.  Under the Nazi occupation, jazz had an ambiguous status: never formally banned, it was nevertheless persecuted as Negro music.  However, some Nazis enjoyed and supported jazz music.  Trying several times to escape France, Reinhardt knew he was in some danger because of his Romani heritage: the Nazis exterminated several hundred thousand European Romani people.

In 1946, Django Reinhardt toured the United States with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, taking six curtain calls when they played Carnegie Hall.  However, he never really did well in America, and returned to France in 1947, to continue collaborating with Grappelli and playing the jazz clubs of Paris.  Despite a somewhat unpredictable approach to performing - turning up late, with unpolished shoes, or disappearing to play billiards or go fishing - he recorded albums, and began to experiment with electric guitar. 

In 1953, Django Reinhardt collapsed with a stroke, after walking home from the railway station after an evening playing in a Paris club.   Because it was a weekend, it took 24 hours before he got medical attention, and then he was found dead on arrival at the Fontainebleau hospital.

Since his untimely death, Django Reinhardt has gained legendary status in the world of music, despite only coming 66th  in the Flemish and 76th in the Walloon versions of The Greatest Belgian competition.   His own family have continued his musical tradition.  Reinhardt’s distinctive approach has influenced not just jazz, but also rock and country guitar players.  For example, Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead, who also damaged a finger in an accident, said of Django Reinhardt:

"His technique is awesome! Even today, nobody has really come to the state that he was playing at. As good as players are, they haven’t gotten to where he is. There’s a lot of guys that play fast and a lot of guys that play clean, and the guitar has come a long way as far as speed and clarity go, but nobody plays with the whole fullness of expression that Django has. I mean, the combination of incredible speed – all the speed you could possibly want – but also the thing of every note have a specific personality. You don’t hear it. I really haven’t heard it anywhere but with Django"

Trying to pin down that personality, I spoke to my friend the violinist and researcher Tom Ling, who still plays the tunes of the Hot Club de Paris: for him, the music of Django Reinhardt 

"comes closest to simulating pure joy.  Not profundity, but floating, astonishing joy."

Links

Django Reinhardt playing with the Quintette du Hot Club de Paris

Miles Kington talking about jazz under the Nazis 

Bryan Pearce (1929-2007)

Obituaries in The Times, The Guardian and The Independent would suggest a life of distinction for any person, but are a unique achievement for a man with intellectual disabilities.  But Bryan Pearce earned his fame more for what he did than for who he was.  One of the leading naïve artists of the twentieth century, his oil paintings now hang in the Tate Gallery and at Kettle’s Yard, and he has been the subject of no less than three biographies.

Bryan Pearce was born in St Ives, Cornwall in 1929.  His father was a butcher and a rugby player, and his mother was a keen amateur painter.  Nature and nurture are a theme that runs through his life.   Pearce had the genetic condition Phenylketonuria, which mean that as a developing infant, he was unable to metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine.  Today, all children are tested at birth for PKU, and if they have the mutation, are placed on a diet free of phenylalanine, and so grow up unaffected.  In 1929, the condition was unknown, and as a result, Bryan experienced intellectual impairment and other health problems, and so attended a school for children with special needs.

St Ives has a long tradition of fine painting, and was the home of the naïve artist/fisherman Alfred Wallis (1855-1942).  As a teenager, Bryan was encouraged by his mother and other artists to paint.   His obvious talent meant that he attended the St Ives School of Painting during his twenties.  Importantly, Leonard Fuller’s School welcomed both novice and professional artists, and had a commitment to inclusion.

The turning point in Bryan Pearce’s career came in 1957 when he started painting in oils, and he began to exhibit soon after.  Two years later he had his first solo exhibition at the Newlyn Gallery.    Although he painted slowly, producing perhaps one picture a month, he had a long and very successful career, exhibiting throughout England.  Late in life, he made etchings and his work was also sold in the form of  limited-edition screen prints.  His work has been bought by both major public collections and private collectors.

Mostly Bryan Pearce painted his own home town of St Ives.   He would take long walks around the area, and come back to paint sunny scenes, full of vivid colour, reminiscent of Matisse or perhaps of modernist stained glass.  However, Pearce himself did not study other artists, and his style was his own, not the result of external influences.   Nor was he bothered by art-world politics.   One obituary suggested that he was:

“a visionary artist of a quite particular kind, whose distinction had to do with the solitary nature of his artistic experience and the use he made of a profound creative solitude in the midst of a world experienced with preternatural vividness. That enforced and productive apartness is not to be confused with social solitude or loneliness; it was, rather, the necessary condition of his imaginative freedom and his peculiar talent.”

Whereas other St Ives artists sometimes struggled to achieve authenticity, his mentor Peter Lanyon said:

 “It is necessary to accept these works as the labour of a man who has to communicate this way because there is no other.”

Bryan’s mother abandoned her own work to support her son. He was also guided by other significant figures, such as the art historian Sir Alan Bowness who said of him:

 “a therapy has become a profession… This has given his work particular innocence that, in the nature of things, can’t be corrupted by self-consciousness”.   

While I would criticize this somewhat patronizing approach, Bryan Pearce was undoubtedly provided with the security and support that he needed to become a major painter.  He remained in the family home for the rest of his life, supported by full time assistants after his mother’s death in 1997.  Benefitting from shelter, and the support of a local artistic community, he was able to devote himself to his art for fifty years, dying aged 77 on 22 January 2007.  The following month, a major exhibition of his work was held at Tate St Ives.

Bryan Pearce was limited in his ability to learn and communicate verbally.  But alongside his deficits was a huge talent to see and communicate through art.  As he said to his mother:

"What would I do if I didn't paint? What would I do?”

This talent was fostered by the unique community within which he grew up, and that recognized him as an artist like any other.  His painting made him happy, and has made many other people happy as a result.

Further reading

Ruth Jones, The Path of the Son (1976)

Marion Whybrow, Bryan Pearce: a private view (1985)

Janet Axten, The Artist and His Work (2004)

Note

A note to acknowledge that my search for distinguished people with intellectual disability has been assisted by the psychiatrist Jane Bernal, whose mother Margot Heinemann was my mentor in the Communist Party when I was a student, and who now lives in Cornwall.  In her own professional work, she uses the paintings of Bryan Pearce to show others what people with learning disabilities can achieve, if they are supported.

Mabel Cooper (1944-2013)

For some time, I have been seeking out a person with intellectual disability to include in this website.  Despite books such as Downs: a history, and other historical research about intellectual disability, very few named individuals with intellectual disability have left a record.  In the late twentieth century, with the growth of deinstitutionalization and consensus about normalization and human rights, this situation has begun to change.  Increased recognition of people with intellectual disability is important because it shows that all people have value and significance and are worthy of respect.

Mabel Cooper was one of the leading lights of this new generation of people with learning difficulties.   She was born in London, where her mother lived on the street.  The pair were picked up by the authorities, and sent to separate institutions, and her mother subsequently disappeared.  Mabel spent her childhood in various children’s homes.  She did not attend school, and consequently did not learn to read and write.  Later she was labeled as having learning disability and sent to St Lawrence’s Hospital, a long-stay institution in Caterham, Surrey, which she lived for the next 20 years.

“I moved to St Lawrence’s when I was seven, because they only took children what went to school in this home.  And I never went to school so I had to move.  In them days they gave you a test.  You went to London or somewhere because they’d give you a test before they made you go anywhere.”

“When I first went in there, even just getting out of the car you could hear the racket.  You think you’re going to a madhouse.  When you first went there you could hear people screaming and shouting outside.  It was very noisy but I think you do get used to them after a little while because it’s like verywhere that’s big.  If there’s a lot of noise, and they had like big dormitories, didn’t they?”

A similar institution played a much smaller role in my own life, because my father was the GP for Manor House Hospital in Aylesbury, a smaller, residential hospital for people with intellectual disability.  Every Christmas Day from as early as I can remember, my dad and I would visit the wards – or “houses’, as they were called – and meet the residents and staff.   Later, I worked at Manor House during my year off before University, and in my vacations.  I remember a friendly, cheerful place, which was clean and warm and seemed benign.   As you toured the hospital, you encountered a cross-section of the intellectual disability population, ranging from people who were profoundly impaired, lacked speech and barely interacted with you, through to Bierton House, which was where people who had mild intellectual disability lived.   Many of these folks were great communicators and very engaging, and they always interacted with my father and myself.  One of them, David Seward, became a family friend and would come for tea at my home from time to time.  It was this group in particular who one felt should never have been in an institution in the first place.

Mabel  Cooper, who I never had the opportunity to meet, seems to have been such a person.  Mabel left  St Lawrence’s Hospital in 1977 to live in the community.  Later, the hospital was completely closed down, and she was given the honour of pressing the button to blow it up.  She was adamant that large institutions should never be allowed in future. 

Cooper had become an intellectual disability celebrity through her work with Croydon People First, a self-advocacy group.  She eventually became chair of London People First.  In both roles, she supported other people with learning difficulties to be heard.  She collaborated with Dorothy Atkinson and other researchers at the Open University, who helped people with learning difficulties to research and tell their stories as part of the Life History Project. 

Mabel  Cooper’s own life story was published in Forgotten Lives (1997), and inspired many readers with and without learning difficulties.  Mabel went into schools to  talk to children and young people about the discrimination and bullying which people with learning difficulties face.  With Dorothy Atkinson, she also presented at conferences.  She seems to have been a very charismatic person, who used humour to get her points across and changed perceptions about intellectual disability. 

As recognition for her work, Mabel Cooper was awarded an honorary degree by the Open University, during a ceremony at the Barbican in London in 2010.   As  Dorothy Atkinson has written in a tribute for The Guardian, Mabel

“had a tremendous ability to draw on personal experience to tell stories that, written or spoken, engaged and inspired her readers and listeners in many walks of life.”

The inclusion of her obituary in the Radio 4 Last Word programme, after she died of cancer in April 2013, is another example of how this ordinary woman with intellectual disability achieved unprecedented recognition and made an extraordinary impact.

Links

Interview with Mabel Cooper
The Guardian obituary