Harriet Martineau, on plans for, and execution of, her work on Toussaint L'Ouverture: 'I went to my confidante, with a sheetful of notes, and a heartful of longings to draw that glorious character [...] But my friend could not see the subject as I did [...] I gave it up; but a few years after, when ill at Tynemouth, I reverted to my scheme and fulfilled it; and my kind adviser, while never liking the subject in an artistic sense, graciously told me that the book had kept her up, over her dressing-room fire, till three in the morning.'