MARIAN EVANS [LEWES]: _Letter to Mrs. Bray_, 1877. ‘George Eliot’s Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885. * * * * * [Sidenote: Personal appearance.] In the porch stood Miss Martineau herself. A lady of middle height, “inclined,” as the novelists say, “to embonpoint,” with a smile on her kindly face, and her trumpet at her ear. She was at that time, I suppose, about fifty years of age; her brown hair had a little gray in it, and was arranged with peculiar flatness over a low, but broad forehead. I don’t think she could ever have been pretty, but her features were not uncomely, and their expression was gentle and motherly. JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: One of her letters described.] Aunt Charles read us a clever letter from Harriet Martineau, combining the smoker, the moralist, the political economist, the gossip, and the woman. CAROLINE FOX: _Journal_ (1849). ‘Memories of Old Friends.’ Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882. * * * * * [Sidenote: Smoking.] The degree of deafness, as I have said, varied; and she tried all sorts of remedies. No one who knew her would suspect her of anything “fast” or unfeminine, but under the advice of some scientific person, or another, she tried smoking. [Sidenote: Cigars.] I had the privilege of providing her privately with some very mild cigars, and many and many a summer night have we sat together for half an hour or so in her porch at “The Knoll,” smoking. If some of the good people, her neighbors, had known of _that_, it would, we agreed, have really given them something to talk about. She only tried this remedy, if I remember right, for a few months, but she fancied it had a beneficial effect upon her hearing. For my part, I enjoyed nothing so much as these evenings. JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: A chiboque.] Sleepless nights were a source of great suffering to her in these latest years. Under medical advice, she tried smoking as a means of procuring better rest, with some success. She smoked usually through the chiboque, which she had brought home with her from the East, and which she had there learned to use, as she relates with her customary simplicity and directness in the appendix to ‘Eastern Life’: “I found it good for my health,” she says there, “and I saw no more reason why I should not take it than why English ladies should not take their glass of sherry at home--an indulgence which I do not need. I continued the use of my chiboque for some weeks after my return, and then only left it off because of the inconvenience.” When health and comfort were to be promoted by it, she resumed it. MRS. FENWICK MILLER: ‘Harriet Martineau.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Charlotte Brontë’s account of a visit to Ambleside.]