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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of
+the Rights of Woman, by William Godwin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman
+
+Author: William Godwin
+
+Release Date: July 4, 2005 [EBook #16199]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMOIRS OF THE AUTHOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.]
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIRS
+OF THE
+AUTHOR
+OF A
+VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.
+
+By WILLIAM GODWIN.
+
+_LONDON_:
+PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, NO. 72, ST. PAUL'S
+CHURCH.YARD; AND G.G. AND J. ROBINSON,
+PATERNOSTER-ROW.
+1798.
+
+[Transcriber's Note: corrobation has been corrected to corroboration]
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIRS.
+
+
+CHAP. I.
+
+1759-1775.
+
+
+It has always appeared to me, that to give to the public some account of
+the life of a person of eminent merit deceased, is a duty incumbent on
+survivors. It seldom happens that such a person passes through life,
+without being the subject of thoughtless calumny, or malignant
+misrepresentation. It cannot happen that the public at large should be
+on a footing with their intimate acquaintance, and be the observer of
+those virtues which discover themselves principally in personal
+intercourse. Every benefactor of mankind is more or less influenced by a
+liberal passion for fame; and survivors only pay a debt due to these
+benefactors, when they assert and establish on their part, the honour
+they loved. The justice which is thus done to the illustrious dead,
+converts into the fairest source of animation and encouragement to those
+who would follow them in the same carreer. The human species at large is
+interested in this justice, as it teaches them to place their respect
+and affection, upon those qualities which best deserve to be esteemed
+and loved. I cannot easily prevail on myself to doubt, that the more
+fully we are presented with the picture and story of such persons as the
+subject of the following narrative, the more generally shall we feel in
+ourselves an attachment to their fate, and a sympathy in their
+excellencies. There are not many individuals with whose character the
+public welfare and improvement are more intimately connected, than the
+author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
+
+The facts detailed in the following pages, are principally taken from
+the mouth of the person to whom they relate; and of the veracity and
+ingenuousness of her habits, perhaps no one that was ever acquainted
+with her, entertains a doubt. The writer of this narrative, when he has
+met with persons, that in any degree created to themselves an interest
+and attachment in his mind, has always felt a curiosity to be acquainted
+with the scenes through which they had passed, and the incidents that
+had contributed to form their understandings and character. Impelled by
+this sentiment, he repeatedly led the conversation of Mary to topics of
+this sort; and, once or twice, he made notes in her presence, of a few
+dates calculated to arrange the circumstances in his mind. To the
+materials thus collected, he has added an industrious enquiry among the
+persons most intimately acquainted with her at the different periods of
+her life.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April 1759. Her father's
+name was Edward John, and the name of her mother Elizabeth, of the
+family of Dixons of Ballyshannon in the kingdom of Ireland: her paternal
+grandfather was a respectable manufacturer in Spitalfields, and is
+supposed to have left to his son a property of about 10,000l. Three of
+her brothers and two sisters are still living; their names, Edward,
+James, Charles, Eliza, and Everina. Of these, Edward only was older than
+herself; he resides in London. James is in Paris, and Charles in or near
+Philadelphia in America. Her sisters have for some years been engaged in
+the office of governesses in private families, and are both at present
+in Ireland.
+
+I am doubtful whether the father of Mary was bred to any profession;
+but, about the time of her birth, he resorted, rather perhaps as an
+amusement than a business, to the occupation of farming. He was of a
+very active, and somewhat versatile disposition, and so frequently
+changed his abode, as to throw some ambiguity upon the place of her
+birth. She told me, that the doubt in her mind in that respect, lay
+between London, and a farm upon Epping Forest, which was the principal
+scene of the five first years of her life.
+
+Mary was distinguished in early youth, by some portion of that exquisite
+sensibility, soundness of understanding, and decision of character,
+which were the leading features of her mind through the whole course of
+her life. She experienced in the first period of her existence, but few
+of those indulgences and marks of affection, which are principally
+calculated to sooth the subjection and sorrows of our early years. She
+was not the favourite either of her father or mother. Her father was a
+man of a quick, impetuous disposition, subject to alternate fits of
+kindness and cruelty. In his family he was a despot, and his wife
+appears to have been the first, and most submissive of his subjects. The
+mother's partiality was fixed upon the eldest son, and her system of
+government relative to Mary, was characterized by considerable rigour.
+She, at length, became convinced of her mistake, and adopted a different
+plan with her younger daughters. When, in the Wrongs of Woman, Mary
+speaks of "the petty cares which obscured the morning of her heroine's
+life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional
+submission to orders, which, as a mere child, she soon discovered to be
+unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory; and the being
+often obliged to sit, in the presence of her parents, for three or four
+hours together, without daring to utter a word;" she is, I believe, to
+be considered as copying the outline of the first period of her own
+existence.
+
+But it was in vain, that the blighting winds of unkindness or
+indifference, seemed destined to counteract the superiority of Mary's
+mind. It surmounted every obstacle; and, by degrees, from a person
+little considered in the family, she became in some sort its director
+and umpire. The despotism of her education cost her many a heart-ache.
+She was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of a
+despot; but I have heard her remark more than once, that, when she felt
+she had done wrong, the reproof or chastisement of her mother, instead
+of being a terror to her, she found to be the only thing capable of
+reconciling her to herself. The blows of her father on the contrary,
+which were the mere ebullitions of a passionate temper, instead of
+humbling her, roused her indignation. Upon such occasions she felt her
+superiority, and was apt to betray marks of contempt. The quickness of
+her father's temper, led him sometimes to threaten similar violence
+towards his wife. When that was the case, Mary would often throw herself
+between the despot and his victim, with the purpose to receive upon her
+own person the blows that might be directed against her mother. She has
+even laid whole nights upon the landing-place near their chamber-door,
+when, mistakenly, or with reason, she apprehended that her father might
+break out into paroxysms of violence. The conduct he held towards the
+members of his family, was of the same kind as that he observed towards
+animals. He was for the most part extravagantly fond of them; but, when
+he was displeased, and this frequently happened, and for very trivial
+reasons, his anger was alarming. Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have
+called, "a very good hater." In some instance of passion exercised by
+her father to one of his dogs, she was accustomed to speak of her
+emotions of abhorrence, as having risen to agony. In a word, her conduct
+during her girlish years, was such, as to extort some portion of
+affection from her mother, and to hold her father in considerable awe.
+
+In one respect, the system of education of the mother appears to have
+had merit. All her children were vigorous and healthy. This seems very
+much to depend upon the management of our infant years. It is affirmed
+by some persons of the present day, most profoundly skilled in the
+sciences of health and disease, that there is no period of human life so
+little subject to mortality, as the period of infancy. Yet, from the
+mismanagement to which children are exposed, many of the diseases of
+childhood are rendered fatal, and more persons die in that, than in any
+other period of human life. Mary had projected a work upon this subject,
+which she had carefully considered, and well understood. She has indeed
+left a specimen of her skill in this respect in her eldest daughter,
+three years and a half old, who is a singular example of vigorous
+constitution and florid health. Mr. Anthony Carlisle, surgeon, of
+Soho-square, whom to name is sufficiently to honour, had promised to
+revise her production. This is but one out of numerous projects of
+activity and usefulness, which her untimely death has fatally
+terminated.
+
+The rustic situation in which Mary spent her infancy, no doubt
+contributed to confirm the stamina of her constitution. She sported in
+the open air, and amidst the picturesque and refreshing scenes of
+nature, for which she always retained the most exquisite relish. Dolls
+and the other amusements usually appropriated to female children, she
+held in contempt; and felt a much greater propensity to join in the
+active and hardy sports of her brothers, than to confine herself to
+those of her own sex.
+
+About the time that Mary completed the fifth year of her age, her father
+removed to a small distance from his former habitation, and took a farm
+near the Whalebone upon Epping Forest, a little way out of the
+Chelmsford road. In Michaelmas 1765, he once more changed his residence,
+and occupied a convenient house behind the town of Barking in Essex,
+eight miles from London. In this situation some of their nearest
+neighbours were, Bamber Gascoyne, esquire, successively member of
+parliament for several boroughs, and his brother, Mr. Joseph Gascoyne.
+Bamber Gascoyne resided but little on this spot; but his brother was
+almost a constant inhabitant, and his family in habits of the most
+frequent intercourse with the family of Mary. Here Mr. Wollstonecraft
+remained for three years. In September 1796, I accompanied my wife in a
+visit to this spot. No person reviewed with greater sensibility, the
+scenes of her childhood. We found the house uninhabited, and the garden
+in a wild and ruinous state. She renewed her acquaintance with the
+market-place, the streets, and the wharf, the latter of which we found
+crowded with barges, and full of activity.
+
+In Michaelmas 1768, Mr. Wollstonecraft again removed to a farm near
+Beverley in Yorkshire. Here the family remained for six years, and
+consequently, Mary did not quit this residence, till she had attained
+the age of fifteen years and five months. The principal part of her
+school-education passed during this period; but it was not to any
+advantage of infant literature, that she was indebted for her subsequent
+eminence; her education in this respect was merely such, as was afforded
+by the day-schools of the place, in which she resided. To her
+recollections Beverley appeared a very handsome town, surrounded by
+genteel families, and with a brilliant assembly. She was surprized, when
+she visited it in 1795, upon her voyage to Norway, to find the reality
+so very much below the picture in her imagination.
+
+Hitherto Mr. Wollstonecraft had been a farmer; but the restlessness of
+his disposition would not suffer him to content himself with the
+occupation in which for some years he had been engaged, and the
+temptation of a commercial speculation of some sort being held out to
+him, he removed to a house in Queen's-Row, in Hoxton near London, for
+the purpose of its execution. Here he remained for a year and a half;
+but, being frustrated in his expectations of profit, he, after that
+term, gave up the project in which he was engaged, and returned to his
+former pursuits. During this residence at Hoxton, the writer of these
+memoirs inhabited, as a student, at the dissenting college in that
+place. It is perhaps a question of curious speculation to enquire, what
+would have been the amount of the difference in the pursuits and
+enjoyments of each party, if they had met, and considered each other
+with the same distinguishing regard in 1776, as they were afterwards
+impressed with in the year 1796. The writer had then completed the
+twentieth, and Mary the seventeenth year of her age. Which would have
+been predominant; the disadvantages of obscurity, and the pressure of a
+family; or the gratifications and improvement that might have flowed
+from their intercourse?
+
+One of the acquaintances Mary formed at this time was with a Mr. Clare,
+who inhabited the next house to that which was tenanted by her father,
+and to whom she was probably in some degree indebted for the early
+cultivation of her mind. Mr. Clare was a clergyman, and appears to have
+been a humourist of a very singular cast. In his person he was deformed
+and delicate; and his figure, I am told, bore a resemblance to that of
+the celebrated Pope. He had a fondness for poetry, and was not destitute
+of taste. His manners were expressive of a tenderness and benevolence,
+the demonstrations of which appeared to have been somewhat too
+artificially cultivated. His habits were those of a perfect recluse. He
+seldom went out of his drawing-room, and he showed to a friend of Mary a
+pair of shoes, which had served him, he said, for fourteen years. Mary
+frequently spent days and weeks together, at the house of Mr. Clare.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. II
+
+1775-1783.
+
+
+But a connection more memorable originated about this time, between Mary
+and a person of her own sex, for whom she contracted a friendship so
+fervent, as for years to have constituted the ruling passion of her
+mind. The name of this person was Frances Blood; she was two years older
+than Mary. Her residence was at that time at Newington Butts, a village
+near the southern extremity of the metropolis; and the original
+instrument for bringing these two friends acquainted, was Mrs. Clare,
+wife of the gentleman already mentioned, who was on a footing of
+considerable intimacy with both parties. The acquaintance of Fanny, like
+that of Mr. Clare, contributed to ripen the immature talents of Mary.
+
+The situation in which Mary was introduced to her, bore a resemblance to
+the first interview of Werter with Charlotte. She was conducted to the
+door of a small house, but furnished with peculiar neatness and
+propriety. The first object that caught her sight, was a young woman of
+a slender and elegant form, and eighteen years of age, busily employed
+in feeding and managing some children, born of the same parents, but
+considerably inferior to her in age. The impression Mary received from
+this spectacle was indelible; and, before the interview was concluded,
+she had taken, in her heart, the vows of an eternal friendship.
+
+Fanny was a young woman of extraordinary accomplishments. She sung and
+played with taste. She drew with exquisite fidelity and neatness; and,
+by the employment of this talent, for some time maintained her father,
+mother, and family, but ultimately ruined her health by her
+extraordinary exertions. She read and wrote with considerable
+application; and the same ideas of minute and delicate propriety
+followed her in these, as in her other occupations.
+
+Mary, a wild, but animated and aspiring girl of sixteen, contemplated
+Fanny, in the first instance, with sentiments of inferiority and
+reverence. Though they were much together, yet, the distance of their
+habitation being considerable, they supplied the want of mere frequent
+interviews by an assiduous correspondence. Mary found Fanny's letters
+better spelt and better indited than her own, and felt herself abashed.
+She had hitherto paid but a superficial attention to literature. She had
+read, to gratify the ardour of an inextinguishable thirst of knowledge;
+but she had not thought of writing as an art. Her ambition to excel was
+now awakened, and she applied herself with passion and earnestness.
+Fanny undertook to be her instructor; and, so far as related to accuracy
+and method, her lessons were given with considerable skill.
+
+It has already been mentioned that, in the spring of the year 1776, Mr.
+Wollstonecraft quitted his situation at Hoxton, and returned to his
+former agricultural pursuits. The situation upon which he now fixed was
+in Wales, a circumstance that was felt as a severe blow to Mary's
+darling spirit of friendship. The principal acquaintance of the
+Wollstonecrafts in this retirement, was the family of a Mr. Allen, two
+of whose daughters are since married to the two elder sons of the
+celebrated English potter, Josiah Wedgwood.
+
+Wales however was Mr. Wollstonecraft's residence for little more than a
+year. He returned to the neighbourhood of London; and Mary, whose spirit
+of independence was unalterable, had influence enough to determine his
+choice in favour of the village of Walworth, that she might be near her
+chosen friend. It was probably before this, that she has once or twice
+started the idea of quitting her parental roof, and providing for
+herself. But she was prevailed upon to resign this idea, and conditions
+were stipulated with her, relative to her having an apartment in the
+house that should be exclusively her own, and her commanding the other
+requisites of study. She did not however think herself fairly treated in
+these instances, and either the conditions abovementioned, or some
+others, were not observed in the sequel, with the fidelity she expected.
+In one case, she had procured an eligible situation, and every thing was
+settled respecting her removal to it, when the intreaties and tears of
+her mother led her to surrender her own inclinations, and abandon the
+engagement.
+
+These however were only temporary delays. Her propensities continued the
+same, and the motives by which she was instigated were unabated. In the
+year 1778, she being nineteen years of age, a proposal was made to her
+of living as a companion with a Mrs. Dawson of Bath, a widow lady, with
+one son already adult. Upon enquiry she found that Mrs. Dawson was a
+woman of great peculiarity of temper, that she had had a variety of
+companions in succession, and that no one had found it practicable to
+continue with her. Mary was not discouraged by this information, and
+accepted the situation, with a resolution that she would effect in this
+respect, what none of her predecessors had been able to do. In the
+sequel she had reason to consider the account she had received as
+sufficiently accurate, but she did not relax in her endeavours. By
+method, constancy and firmness, she found the means of making her
+situation tolerable; and Mrs. Dawson would occasionally confess, that
+Mary was the only person that had lived with her in that situation, in
+her treatment of whom she had felt herself under any restraint.
+
+With Mrs. Dawson she continued to reside for two years, and only left
+her, summoned by the melancholy circumstance of her mother's rapidly
+declining health. True to the calls of humanity, Mary felt in this
+intelligence an irresistible motive, and eagerly returned to the
+paternal roof, which she had before resolutely quitted. The residence of
+her father at this time, was at Enfield near London. He had, I believe,
+given up agriculture from the time of his quitting Wales, it appearing
+that he now made it less a source of profit than loss, and being thought
+advisable that he should rather live upon the interest of his property
+already in possession.
+
+The illness of Mrs. Wollstonecraft was lingering, but hopeless. Mary was
+assiduous in her attendance upon her mother. At first, every attention
+was received with acknowledgments and gratitude; but, as the attentions
+grew habitual, and the health of the mother more and more wretched, they
+were rather exacted, than received. Nothing would be taken by the
+unfortunate patient, but from the hands of Mary; rest was denied night
+or day, and by the time nature was exhausted in the parent, the
+daughter was qualified to assume her place, and become in turn herself a
+patient. The last words her mother ever uttered were, "A little
+patience, and all will be over!" and these words are repeatedly referred
+to by Mary in the course of her writings.
+
+Upon the death of Mrs. Wollstonecraft, Mary bid a final adieu to the
+roof of her father. According to my memorandums, I find her next the
+inmate of Fanny at Walham Green, near the village of Fulham. Upon what
+plan they now lived together I am unable to ascertain; certainly not
+that of Mary's becoming in any degree an additional burthen upon the
+industry of her friend. Thus situated, their intimacy ripened; they
+approached more nearly to a footing of equality; and their attachment
+became more rooted and active.
+
+Mary was ever ready at the call of distress, and, in particular, during
+her whole life was eager and active to promote the welfare of every
+member of her family. In 1780 she attended the death-bed of her mother;
+in 1782 she was summoned by a not less melancholy occasion, to attend
+her sister Eliza, married to a Mr. Bishop, who, subsequently to a
+dangerous lying-in, remained for some months in a very afflicting
+situation. Mary continued with her sister without intermission, to her
+perfect recovery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. III.
+
+1783-1785.
+
+
+Mary was now arrived at the twenty-fourth year of her age. Her project,
+five years before, had been personal independence; it was now
+usefulness. In the solitude of attendance on her sister's illness, and
+during the subsequent convalescence, she had had leisure to ruminate
+upon purposes of this sort. Her expanded mind led her to seek something
+more arduous than the mere removal of personal vexations; and the
+sensibility of her heart would not suffer her to rest in solitary
+gratifications. The derangement of her father's affairs daily became
+more and more glaring; and a small independent provision made for
+herself and her sisters, appears to have been sacrificed in the wreck.
+For ten years, from 1782 to 1792, she may be said to have been, in a
+great degree, the victim of a desire to promote the benefit of others.
+She did not foresee the severe disappointment with which an exclusive
+purpose of this sort is pregnant; she was inexperienced enough to lay a
+stress upon the consequent gratitude of those she benefited; and she did
+not sufficiently consider that, in proportion as we involve ourselves in
+the interests and society of others, we acquire a more exquisite sense
+of their defects, and are tormented with their untractableness and
+folly.
+
+The project upon which she now determined, was no other than that of a
+day-school, to be superintended by Fanny Blood, herself, and her two
+sisters.
+
+They accordingly opened one in the year 1783, at the village of
+Islington; but in the course of a few months removed it to Newington
+Green. Here Mary formed some acquaintances who influenced the future
+events of her life. The first of these in her own estimation, was Dr.
+Richard Price, well known for his political and mathematical
+calculations, and universally esteemed by those who knew him, for the
+simplicity of his manners, and the ardour of his benevolence. The regard
+conceived by these two persons for each other, was mutual, and partook
+of a spirit of the purest attachment. Mary had been bred in the
+principles of the church of England, but her esteem for this venerable
+preacher led her occasionally to attend upon his public instructions.
+Her religion was, in reality, little allied to any system of forms; and,
+as she has often told me, was founded rather in taste, than in the
+niceties of polemical discussion. Her mind constitutionally attached
+itself to the sublime and the amiable. She found an inexpressible
+delight in the beauties of nature, and in the splendid reveries of the
+imagination. But nature itself, she thought, would be no better than a
+vast blank, if the mind of the observer did not supply it with an
+animating soul. When she walked amidst the wonders of nature, she was
+accustomed to converse with her God. To her mind he was pictured as not
+less amiable, generous and kind, than great, wise and exalted. In fact,
+she had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and her religion
+was almost entirely of her own creation. But she was not on that account
+the less attached to it, or the less scrupulous in discharging what she
+considered as its duties. She could not recollect the time when she had
+believed the doctrine of future punishments. The tenets of her system
+were the growth of her own moral taste, and her religion therefore had
+always been a gratification, never a terror, to her. She expected a
+future state; but she would not allow her ideas of that future state to
+be modified by the notions of judgment and retribution. From this
+sketch, it is sufficiently evident, that the pleasure she took in an
+occasional attendance upon the sermons of Dr. Price, was not accompanied
+with a superstitious adherence to his doctrines. The fact is, that, as
+far down as the year 1787, she regularly frequented public worship, for
+the most part according to the forms of the church of England. After
+that period her attendance became less constant, and in no long time was
+wholly discontinued. I believe it may be admitted as a maxim, that no
+person of a well furnished mind, that has shaken off the implicit
+subsection of youth, and is not the zealous partizan of a sect, can
+bring himself to conform to the public and regular routine of sermons
+and prayers.
+
+Another of the friends she acquired at this period, was Mrs. Burgh,
+widow of the author of the Political Disquisitions, a woman universally
+well spoken of for the warmth and purity of her benevolence. Mary,
+whenever she had occasion to allude to her, to the last period of her
+life, paid the tribute due to her virtues. The only remaining friend
+necessary to be enumerated in this place, is the rev. John Hewlet, now
+master of a boarding-school at Shacklewel near Hackney, whom I shall
+have occasion to mention hereafter.
+
+I have already said that Fanny's health had been materially injured by
+her incessant labours for the maintenance of her family. She had also
+suffered a disappointment, which preyed upon her mind. To these
+different sources of ill health she became gradually a victim; and at
+length discovered all the symptoms of a pulmonary consumption. By the
+medical men that attended her, she was advised to try the effects of a
+southern climate; and, about the beginning of the year 1785, sailed for
+Lisbon.
+
+The first feeling with which Mary had contemplated her friend, was a
+sentiment of inferiority and reverence; but that, from the operation of
+a ten years' acquaintance, was considerably changed. Fanny had
+originally been far before her in literary attainments; this disparity
+no longer existed. In whatever degree Mary might endeavour to free
+herself from the delusions of self-esteem, this period of observation
+upon her own mind and that of her friend, could not pass, without her
+perceiving that there were some essential characteristics of genius,
+which she possessed, and in which her friend was deficient. The
+principal of these was a firmness of mind, an unconquerable greatness of
+soul, by which, after a short internal struggle, she was accustomed to
+rise above difficulties and suffering. Whatever Mary undertook, she
+perhaps in all instances accomplished; and, to her lofty spirit,
+scarcely anything she desired, appeared hard to perform. Fanny, on the
+contrary, was a woman of a timid and irresolute nature, accustomed to
+yield to difficulties, and probably priding herself in this morbid
+softness of her temper. One instance that I have heard Mary relate of
+this sort, was, that, at a certain time, Fanny, dissatisfied with her
+domestic situation, expressed an earnest desire to have a home of her
+own. Mary, who felt nothing more pressing than to relieve the
+inconveniences of her friend, determined to accomplish this object for
+her. It cost her infinite exertions; but at length she was able to
+announce to Fanny that a house was prepared, and that she was on the
+spot to receive her. The answer which Fanny returned to the letter of
+her friend, consisted almost wholly of an enumeration of objections to
+the quitting her family, which she had not thought of before, but which
+now appeared to her of considerable weight.
+
+The judgment which experience had taught Mary to form of the mind of her
+friend, determined her in the advice she gave, at the period to which I
+have brought down the story. Fanny was recommended to seek a softer
+climate, but she had no funds to defray the expence of such an
+undertaking. At this time Mr. Hugh Skeys of Dublin, but then resident
+in the kingdom of Portugal, paid his addresses to her. The state of her
+health Mary considered as such as scarcely to afford the shadow of a
+hope; it was not therefore a time at which it was most obvious to think
+of marriage. She conceived however that nothing should be omitted, which
+might alleviate, if it could not cure; and accordingly urged her speedy
+acceptance of the proposal. Fanny accordingly made the voyage to Lisbon;
+and the marriage took place on the twenty-fourth of February 1785.
+
+The change of climate and situation was productive of little benefit;
+and the life of Fanny was only prolonged by a period of pregnancy, which
+soon declared itself. Mary, in the mean time, was impressed with the
+idea that her friend would die in this distant country; and, shocked
+with the recollection of her separation from the circle of her friends,
+determined to pass over to Lisbon to attend her. This resolution was
+treated by her acquaintance as in the utmost degree visionary; but she
+was not to be diverted from her point. She had not money to defray her
+expences: she must quit for a long time the school, the very existence
+of which probably depended upon her exertions.
+
+No person was ever better formed for the business of education; if it be
+not a sort of absurdity to speak of a person as formed for an inferior
+object, who is in possession of talents, in the fullest degree adequate
+to something on a more important and comprehensive scale. Mary had a
+quickness of temper, not apt to take offence with inadvertencies, but
+which led her to imagine that she saw the mind of the person with whom
+she had any transaction, and to refer the principle of her approbation
+or displeasure to the cordiality or injustice of their sentiments. She
+was occasionally severe and imperious in her resentments; and, when she
+strongly disapproved, was apt to express her censure in terms that gave
+a very humiliating sensation to the person against whom it was directed.
+Her displeasure however never assumed its severest form, but when it was
+barbed by disappointment. Where she expected little, she was not very
+rigid in her censure of error.
+
+But, to whatever the defects of her temper might amount, they were never
+exercised upon her inferiors in station or age. She scorned to make use
+of an ungenerous advantage, or to wound the defenceless. To her servants
+there never was a mistress more considerate or more kind. With children
+she was the mirror of patience. Perhaps, in all her extensive experience
+upon the subject of education, she never betrayed one symptom of
+irascibility. Her heart was the seat of every benevolent feeling; and
+accordingly, in all her intercourse with children, it was kindness and
+sympathy alone that prompted her conduct. Sympathy, when it mounts to a
+certain height, inevitably begets affection in the person towards whom
+it is exercised; and I have heard her say, that she never was concerned
+in the education of one child, who was not personally attached to her,
+and earnestly concerned, not to incur her displeasure. Another eminent
+advantage she possessed in the business of education, was that she was
+little troubled with scepticism and uncertainty. She saw, as it were by
+intuition, the path which her mind determined to pursue, and had a firm
+confidence in her own power to effect what she desired. Yet, with all
+this, she had scarcely a tincture of obstinacy. She carefully watched
+symptoms as they rose, and the success of her experiments; and governed
+herself accordingly. While I thus enumerate her more than maternal
+qualities, it is impossible not to feel a pang at the recollection of
+her orphan children!
+
+Though her friends earnestly dissuaded her from the journey to Lisbon,
+she found among them a willingness facilitate the execution of her
+project, when it was once fixed. Mrs. Burgh in particular, supplied her
+with money, which however she always conceived came from Dr. Price. This
+loan, I have reason to believe, was faithfully repaid.
+
+It was during her residence at Newington Green, that she was introduced
+to the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, who was at that time considered as
+in some sort the father of English literature. The doctor treated her
+with particular kindness and attention, had a long conversation with
+her, and desired her to repeat her visit often. This she firmly purposed
+to do; but the news of his last illness, and then of his death,
+intervened to prevent her making a second visit.
+
+Her residence in Lisbon was not long. She arrived but a short time
+before her friend was prematurely delivered, and the event was fatal to
+both mother and child. Frances Blood, hitherto the chosen object of
+Mary's attachment, died on the twenty-ninth of November 1785.
+
+It is thus that she speaks of her in her Letters from Norway, written
+ten years after her decease. "When a warm heart has received strong
+impressions, they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and
+the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly
+retracing them. I cannot, without a thrill of delight, recollect views I
+have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every
+nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear
+friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear
+her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath."
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IV.
+
+1785-1787.
+
+
+No doubt the voyage to Lisbon tended considerably to enlarge the
+understanding of Mary. She was admitted into the best company the
+English factory afforded. She made many profound observations on the
+character of the natives, and the baleful effects of superstition. The
+obsequies of Fanny, which it was necessary to perform by stealth and in
+darkness, tended to invigorate these observations in her mind.
+
+She sailed upon her voyage home about the twentieth of December. On this
+occasion a circumstance occurred, that deserves to be recorded. While
+they were on their passage, they fell in with a French vessel, in great
+distress, and in daily expectation of foundering at sea, at the same
+time that it was almost destitute of provisions. The Frenchman hailed
+them, and intreated the English captain, in consideration of his
+melancholy situation, to take him and his crew on board. The Englishman
+represented in reply, that his stock of provisions was by no means
+adequate to such an additional number of mouths, and absolutely refused
+compliance. Mary, shocked at his apparent insensibility, took up the
+cause of the sufferers, and threatened the captain to have him called
+to a severe account, when he arrived in England. She finally prevailed,
+and had the satisfaction to reflect, that the persons in question
+possibly owed their lives to her interposition.
+
+When she arrived in England, she found that her school had suffered
+considerably in her absence. It can be little reproach to any one, to
+say that they were found incapable of supplying her place. She not only
+excelled in the management of the children, but had also the talent of
+being attentive and obliging to the parents, without degrading herself.
+
+The period at which I am now arrived is important, as conducting to the
+first step of her literary carreer. Mr. Hewlet had frequently mentioned
+literature to Mary as a certain source of pecuniary produce, and had
+urged her to make trial of the truth of his judgment. At this time she
+was desirous of assisting the father and mother of Fanny in an object
+they had in view, the transporting themselves to Ireland; and, as usual,
+what she desired in a pecuniary view, she was ready to take on herself
+to effect. For this purpose she wrote a duodecimo pamphlet of one
+hundred and sixty pages, entitled, Thoughts on the Education of
+Daughters. Mr. Hewlet obtained from the bookseller, Mr. Johnson in St.
+Paul's Church Yard, ten guineas for the copy-right of this manuscript,
+which she immediately applied to the object for the sake of which the
+pamphlet was written.
+
+Every thing urged Mary to put an end to the affair of the school. She
+was dissatisfied with the different appearance it presented upon her
+return, from the state in which she left it. Experience impressed upon
+her a rooted aversion to that sort of cohabitation with her sisters,
+which the project of the school imposed. Cohabitation is a point of
+delicate experiment, and is, in a majority of instances, pregnant with
+ill-humour and unhappiness. The activity and ardent spirit of adventure
+which characterized Mary, were not felt in an equal degree by her
+sisters, so that a disproportionate share of every burthen attendant
+upon the situation, fell to her lot. On the other hand, they could
+scarcely perhaps be perfectly easy, in observing the superior degree of
+deference and courtship, which her merit extorted from almost every one
+that knew her. Her kindness for them was not diminished, but she
+resolved that the mode of its exertion in future should be different,
+tending to their benefit, without intrenching upon her own liberty.
+
+Thus circumstanced, a proposal was made her, such as, regarding only the
+situations through which she had lately passed, is usually termed
+advantageous. This was, to accept the office of governess to the
+daughters of lord viscount Kingsborough, eldest son to the earl of
+Kingston of the kingdom of Ireland. The terms held out to her were such
+as she determined to accept, at the same time resolving to retain the
+situation only for a short time. Independence was the object after which
+she thirsted, and she was fixed to try whether it might not be found in
+literary occupation. She was desirous however first to accumulate a
+small sum of money, which should enable her to consider at leisure the
+different literary engagements that might offer, and provide in some
+degree for the eventual deficiency of her earliest attempts.
+
+The situation in the family of lord Kingsborough, was offered to her
+through the medium of the rev. Mr. Prior, at that time one of the under
+masters of Eton school. She spent some time at the house of this
+gentleman, immediately after her giving up the school at Newington
+Green. Here she had an opportunity of making an accurate observation
+upon the manners and conduct of that celebrated seminary, and the ideas
+she retained of it were by no means favourable. By all that she saw,
+she was confirmed in a very favourite opinion of her's, in behalf of
+day-schools, where, as she expressed it, "children have the opportunity
+of conversing with children, without interfering with domestic
+affections, the foundation of virtue."
+
+Though her residence in the family of lord Kingsborough continued
+scarcely more than twelve months, she left behind her, with them and
+their connections, a very advantageous impression. The governesses the
+young ladies had hitherto had, were only a species of upper servants,
+controlled in every thing by the mother; Mary insisted upon the
+unbounded exercise of her own discretion. When the young ladies heard of
+their governess coming from England, they heard in imagination of a new
+enemy, and declared their resolution to guard themselves accordingly.
+Mary however speedily succeeded in gaining their confidence, and the
+friendship that soon grew up between her and Margaret King, now countess
+Mount Cashel, the eldest daughter, was in an uncommon degree cordial and
+affectionate. Mary always spoke of this young lady in terms of the
+truest applause, both in relation to the eminence of her intellectual
+powers, and the ingenuous amiableness of her disposition. Lady
+Kingsborough, from the best motives, had imposed upon her daughters a
+variety of prohibitions, both as to the books they should read, and in
+many other respects. These prohibitions had their usual effects;
+inordinate desire for the things forbidden, and clandestine indulgence.
+Mary immediately restored the children to their liberty, and undertook
+to govern them by their affections only. The consequence was, that their
+indulgences were moderate, and they were uneasy under any indulgence
+that had not the sanction of their governess. The salutary effects of
+the new system of education were speedily visible; and lady Kingsborough
+soon felt no other uneasiness, than lest the children should love their
+governess better than their mother.
+
+Mary made many friends in Ireland, among the persons who visited lord
+Kingsborough's house, for she always appeared there with the air of an
+equal, and not of a dependent. I have heard her mention the ludicrous
+distress of a woman of quality, whose name I have forgotten, that, in a
+large company, singled out Mary, and entered into a long conversation
+with her. After the conversation was over, she enquired whom she had
+been talking with, and found, to her utter mortification and dismay,
+that it was Miss King's governess.
+
+One of the persons among her Irish acquaintance, whom Mary was
+accustomed to speak of with the highest respect, was Mr. George Ogle,
+member of parliament for the county of Wexford. She held his talents in
+very high estimation; she was strongly prepossessed in favour of the
+goodness of his heart; and she always spoke of him as the most perfect
+gentleman she had ever known. She felt the regret of a disappointed
+friend, at the part he has lately taken in the politics of Ireland.
+
+Lord Kingsborough's family passed the summer of the year 1787 at
+Bristol Hot-Wells, and had formed the project of proceeding from thence
+to the continent, a tour in which Mary purposed to accompany them. The
+plan however was ultimately given up, and Mary in consequence closed her
+connection with them, earlier than she otherwise had purposed to do.
+
+At Bristol Hot-Wells she composed the little book which bears the title
+of Mary, a Fiction. A considerable part of this story consists, with
+certain modifications, of the incidents of her own friendship with
+Fanny. All the events that do not relate to that subject are fictitious.
+
+This little work, if Mary had never produced any thing else, would
+serve, with persons of true taste and sensibility, to establish the
+eminence of her genius. The story is nothing. He that looks into the
+book only for incident, will probably lay it down with disgust. But the
+feelings are of the truest and most exquisite class; every circumstance
+is adorned with that species of imagination, which enlists itself under
+the banners of delicacy and sentiment. A work of sentiment, as it is
+called, is too often another name for a work of affectation. He that
+should imagine that the sentiments of this book are affected, would
+indeed be entitled to our profoundest commiseration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. V.
+
+1787-1790.
+
+
+Being now determined to enter upon her literary plan, Mary came
+immediately from Bristol to the metropolis. Her conduct under this
+circumstance was such as to do credit both to her own heart, and that of
+Mr. Johnson, her publisher, between whom and herself there now commenced
+an intimate friendship. She had seen him upon occasion of publishing
+her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, and she addressed two or
+three letters to him during her residence in Ireland. Upon her arrival
+in London in August 1787, she went immediately to his house, and frankly
+explained to him her purpose, at the same time requesting his advice and
+assistance as to its execution. After a short conversation, Mr. Johnson
+invited her to make his house her home, till she should have suited
+herself with a fixed residence. She accordingly resided at this time two
+or three weeks under his roof. At the same period she paid a visit or
+two of similar duration to some friends, at no great distance from the
+metropolis.
+
+At Michaelmas 1787, she entered upon a house in George street, on the
+Surry side of Black Friar's Bridge, which Mr. Johnson had provided for
+her during her excursion into the country. The three years immediately
+ensuing, may be said, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, to have
+been the most active period of her life. She brought with her to this
+habitation, the novel of Mary, which had not yet been sent to the press,
+and the commencement of a sort of oriental tale, entitled, the Cave of
+Fancy, which she thought proper afterwards to lay aside unfinished. I am
+told that at this period she appeared under great dejection of spirits,
+and filled with melancholy regret for the loss of her youthful friend. A
+period of two years had elapsed since the death of that friend; but it
+was possibly the composition of the fiction of Mary, that renewed her
+sorrows in their original force. Soon after entering upon her new
+habitation, she produced a little work, entitled, Original Stories from
+Real Life, intended for the use of children. At the commencement of her
+literary carreer, she is said to have conceived a vehement aversion to
+the being regarded, by her ordinary acquaintance, in the character of an
+author, and to have employed some precautions to prevent its occurrence.
+
+The employment which the bookseller suggested to her, as the easiest and
+most certain source of pecuniary income, of course, was translation.
+With this view she improved herself in her French, with which she had
+previously but a slight acquaintance, and acquired the Italian and
+German languages. The greater part of her literary engagements at this
+time, were such as were presented to her by Mr. Johnson. She
+new-modelled and abridged a work, translated from the Dutch, entitled,
+Young Grandison: she began a translation from the French, of a book,
+called, the New Robinson; but in this undertaking, she was, I believe,
+anticipated by another translator: and she compiled a series of extracts
+in verse and prose, upon the model of Dr. Enfield's Speaker, which bears
+the title of the Female Reader; but which, from a cause not worth
+mentioning, has hitherto been printed with a different name in the
+title-page.
+
+About the middle of the year 1788, Mr. Johnson instituted the Analytical
+Review, in which Mary took a considerable share. She also translated
+Necker on the Importance of Religious Opinions; made an abridgment of
+Lavater's Physiognomy, from the French, which has never been published;
+and compressed Salzmann's Elements of Morality, a German production,
+into a publication in three volumes duodecimo. The translation of
+Salzmann produced a correspondence between Mary and the author; and he
+afterwards repaid the obligation to her in kind, by a German translation
+of the Rights of Woman. Such were her principal literary occupations,
+from the autumn of 1787, to the autumn of 1790.
+
+It perhaps deserves to be remarked that this sort of miscellaneous
+literary employment, seems, for the time at least, rather to damp and
+contract, than to enlarge and invigorate, the genius. The writer is
+accustomed to see his performances answer the mere mercantile purpose of
+the day, and confounded with those of persons to whom he is secretly
+conscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to
+reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the
+man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full
+vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with
+the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced
+during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit
+themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its
+commencement. Among effusions of a nobler cast, I find occasionally
+interspersed some of that homily-language, which, to speak from my own
+feelings, is calculated to damp the moral courage, it was intended to
+awaken. This is probably to be assigned to the causes above described.
+
+I have already said that one of the purposes which Mary had conceived, a
+few years before, as necessary to give a relish to the otherwise
+insipid, or embittered, draught of human life, was usefulness. On this
+side, the period of her existence of which I am now treating, is more
+brilliant, than in a literary view. She determined to apply as great a
+part as possible of the produce of her present employments, to the
+assistance of her friends and of the distressed; and, for this purpose,
+laid down to herself rules of the most rigid economy. She began with
+endeavouring to promote the interest of her sisters. She conceived that
+there was no situation in which she could place them, at once so
+respectable and agreeable, as that of governess in private families.
+She determined therefore in the first place, to endeavour to qualify
+them for such an undertaking. Her younger sister she sent to Paris,
+where she remained near two years. The elder she placed in a school near
+London, first as a parlour-boarder, and afterwards as a teacher. Her
+brother James, who had already been at sea, she first took into her
+house, and next sent to Woolwich for instruction, to qualify him for a
+respectable situation in the royal navy, where he was shortly after made
+a lieutenant. Charles, who was her favourite brother, had been articled
+to the eldest, an attorney in the Minories; but, not being satisfied
+with his situation, she removed him; and in some time after, having
+first placed him with a farmer for instruction, she fitted him out for
+America, where his speculations, founded upon the basis she had
+provided, are said to have been extremely prosperous. The reason so much
+of this parental sort of care fell upon her, was, that her father had by
+this time considerably embarrassed his circumstances. His affairs having
+grown too complex for himself to disentangle, he had intrusted them to
+the management of a near relation; but Mary, not being satisfied with
+the conduct of the business, took them into her own hands. The exertions
+she made, and the struggle into which she entered however, in this
+instance, were ultimately fruitless. To the day of her death her father
+was almost wholly supported by funds which she supplied to him. In
+addition to her exertions for her own family, she took a young girl of
+about seven years of age under her protection and care, the niece of
+Mrs. John Hunter, and of the present Mrs. Skeys, for whose mother, then
+lately dead, she had entertained a sincere friendship.
+
+The period, from the end of the year 1787 to the end of the year 1790,
+though consumed in labours of little eclat, served still further to
+establish her in a friendly connection from which she derived many
+pleasures. Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, contracted a great personal
+regard for her, which resembled in many respects that of a parent. As
+she frequented his house, she of course became acquainted with his
+guests. Among these may be mentioned as persons possessing her esteem,
+Mr. Bonnycastle, the mathematician, the late Mr. George Anderson,
+accountant to the board of control, Dr. George Fordyce, and Mr. Fuseli,
+the celebrated painter. Between both of the two latter and herself,
+there existed sentiments of genuine affection and friendship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VI.
+
+1790-1792.
+
+
+Hitherto the literary carreer of Mary, had for the most part, been
+silent; and had been productive of income to herself, without apparently
+leading to the wreath of fame. From this time she was destined to
+attract the notice of the public, and perhaps no female writer ever
+obtained so great a degree of celebrity throughout Europe.
+
+It cannot be doubted that, while, for three years of literary
+employment, she "held the noiseless tenor of her way," her mind was
+insensibly advancing towards a vigorous maturity. The uninterrupted
+habit of composition gave a freedom and firmness to the expression of
+her sentiments. The society she frequented, nourished her understanding,
+and enlarged her mind. The French revolution, while it gave a
+fundamental shock to the human intellect through every region of the
+globe, did not fail to produce a conspicuous effect in the progress of
+Mary's reflections. The prejudices of her early years suffered a
+vehement concussion. Her respect for establishments was undermined. At
+this period occurred a misunderstanding upon public grounds, with one of
+her early friends, whose attachment to musty creeds and exploded
+absurdities, had been increased, by the operation of those very
+circumstances, by which her mind had been rapidly advanced in the race
+of independence.
+
+The event, immediately introductory to the rank which from this time she
+held in the lids of literature, was the publication of Burke's
+Reflections on the Revolution in France. This book, after having been
+long promised to the world, finally made its appearance on the first of
+November 1790; and Mary, full of sentiments of liberty, and impressed
+with a warm interest in the struggle that was now going on, seized her
+pen in the first burst of indignation, an emotion of which she was
+strongly susceptible. She was in the habit of composing with rapidity,
+and her answer, which was the first of the numerous ones that appeared,
+obtained extraordinary notice. Marked as it is with the vehemence and
+impetuousness of its eloquence, it is certainly chargeable with a too
+contemptuous and intemperate treatment of the great man against whom its
+attack is directed. But this circumstance was not injurious to the
+success of the publication. Burke had been warmly loved by the most
+liberal and enlightened friends of freedom, and they were proportionably
+inflamed and disgusted by the fury of his assault, upon what they deemed
+to be its sacred cause.
+
+Short as was the time in which Mary composed her Answer to Burke's
+Reflections, there was one anecdote she told me concerning it, which
+seems worth recording in this place. It was sent to the press, as is
+the general practice when the early publication of a piece is deemed a
+matter of importance, before the composition was finished. When Mary had
+arrived at about the middle of her work, she was seized with a temporary
+fit of torpor and indolence, and began to repent of her undertaking. In
+this state of mind, she called, one evening, as she was in the practice
+of doing, upon her publisher, for the purpose of relieving herself by an
+hour or two's conversation. Here, the habitual ingenuousness of her
+nature, led her to describe what had just past in her thoughts. Mr.
+Johnson immediately, in a kind and friendly way, intreated her not to
+put any constraint upon her inclination, and to give herself no
+uneasiness about the sheets already printed, which he would cheerfully
+throw aside, if it would contribute to her happiness. Mary had wanted
+stimulus. She had not expected to be encouraged, in what she well knew
+to be an unreasonable access of idleness. Her friend's so readily
+falling in with her ill-humour, and seeming to expect that she would lay
+aside her undertaking, piqued her pride. She immediately went home; and
+proceeded to the end of her work, with no other interruptions but what
+were absolutely indispensible.
+
+It is probable that the applause which attended her Answer to Burke,
+elevated the tone of her mind. She had always felt much confidence in
+her own powers; but it cannot be doubted, that the actual perception of
+a similar feeling respecting us in a multitude of others, must increase
+the confidence, and stimulate the adventure of any human being. Mary
+accordingly proceeded, in a short time after, to the composition of her
+most celebrated production, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
+
+Never did any author enter into a cause, with a more ardent desire to be
+found, not a flourishing and empty declaimer, but an effectual champion.
+She considered herself as standing forth in defence of one half of the
+human species, labouring under a yoke which, through all the records of
+time, had degraded them from the station of rational beings, and almost
+sunk them to the level of the brutes. She saw indeed, that they were
+often attempted to be held in silken fetters, and bribed into the love
+of slavery; but the disguise and the treachery served only the more
+fully to confirm her opposition. She regarded her sex, in the language
+of Calista, as
+
+    "In every state of life the slaves of men:"
+
+the rich as alternately under the despotism of a father, a brother, and
+a husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from the
+acquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out from
+the very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views she
+entertained of the subject; and such the feelings with which she warmed
+her mind.
+
+The work is certainly a very bold and original production. The strength
+and firmness with which the author repels the opinions of Rousseau, Dr.
+Gregory, and Dr. James Fordyce, respecting the condition of women,
+cannot but make a strong impression upon every ingenuous reader. The
+public at large formed very different opinions respecting the character
+of the performance. Many of the sentiments are undoubtedly of a rather
+masculine description. The spirited and decisive way in which the author
+explodes the system of gallantry, and the species of homage with which
+the sex is usually treated, shocked the majority. Novelty produced a
+sentiment in their mind, which they mistook for a sense of injustice.
+The pretty, soft creatures that are so often to be found in the female
+sex, and that class of men who believe they could not exist without such
+pretty, soft creatures to resort to, were in arms against the author of
+so heretical and blasphemous a doctrine. There are also, it must be
+confessed, occasional passages of a stern and rugged feature,
+incompatible with the true stamina of the writer's character. But, if
+they did not belong to her fixed and permanent character, they belonged
+to her character _pro tempore_; and what she thought, she scorned to
+qualify.
+
+Yet, along with this rigid, and somewhat amazonian temper, which
+characterised some parts of the book, it is impossible not to remark a
+luxuriance of imagination, and a trembling delicacy of sentiment, which
+would have done honour to a poet, bursting with all the visions of an
+Armida and a Dido.
+
+The contradiction, to the public apprehension, was equally great, as to
+the person of the author, as it was when they considered the temper of
+the book. In the champion of her sex, who was described as endeavouring
+to invest them with all the rights of man, those whom curiosity prompted
+to seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy,
+muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when,
+instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and, in
+the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners.
+
+The Vindication of the Rights of Woman is undoubtedly a very unequal
+performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When
+tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it
+can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of human
+productions. But when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and
+the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it
+will be read as long as the English language endures. The publication of
+this book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and Mary
+Wollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed more
+substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other
+writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated in the
+behalf of oppressed and injured beauty.
+
+The censure of the liberal critic as to the defects of this performance,
+will be changed into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of this
+inestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and finished in the state in
+which it now appears, in a period of no more than six weeks.
+
+It is necessary here that I should resume the subject of the friendship
+that subsisted between Mary and Mr. Fuseli, which proved the source of
+the most memorable events in her subsequent history. He is a native of
+the republic of Switzerland, but has spent the principal part of his
+life in the island of Great-Britain. The eminence of his genius can
+scarcely be disputed; it has indeed received the testimony which is the
+least to be suspected, that of some of the most considerable of his
+contemporary artists. He has one of the most striking characteristics of
+genius, a daring, as well as persevering, spirit of adventure. The work
+in which he is at present engaged, a series of pictures for the
+illustration of Milton, upon a very large scale, and produced solely
+upon the incitement of his own mind, is a proof of this, if indeed his
+whole life had not sufficiently proved it.
+
+Mr. Fuseli is one of Mr. Johnson's oldest friends, and was at this time
+in the habit of visiting him two or three times a week. Mary, one of
+whose strongest characteristics was the exquisite sensations of pleasure
+she felt from the associations of visible objects, had hitherto never
+been acquainted, or never intimately acquainted, with an eminent
+painter. The being thus introduced therefore to the society of Mr.
+Fuseli, was a high gratification to her; while he found in Mary, a
+person perhaps more susceptible of the emotions painting is calculated
+to excite, than any other with whom he ever conversed. Painting, and
+subjects closely connected with painting, were their almost constant
+topics of conversation; and they found them inexhaustible. It cannot be
+doubted, but that this was a species of exercise very conducive to the
+improvement of Mary's mind.
+
+Nothing human however is unmixed. If Mary derived improvement from Mr.
+Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of some
+of his faults. In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached to
+literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from
+keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that
+belles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, the
+favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with
+Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton,
+Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. The
+nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean
+Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a
+favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the
+opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau's conception
+of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness
+of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at
+improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt
+and indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity of
+genius. This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands of
+the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius
+are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no
+subsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat
+of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search,
+in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Mary
+came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she
+went into it.
+
+But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary,
+and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuseli
+frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it
+was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to
+frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned.
+Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper
+to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius,
+without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she
+transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this
+respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint
+in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished
+society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent
+affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the
+acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this
+circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of any
+difficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible to
+the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex,
+but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, in
+conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct.
+
+There cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state her
+principles upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew her
+best. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an
+opposite sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. It
+was her maxim, "that the imagination should awaken the senses, and not
+the senses the imagination." In other words, that whatever related to
+the gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of a
+pure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. She
+regarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in that
+respect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtue
+would prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, and
+the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed.--There is
+no reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period
+of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it
+was, she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a
+distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of
+personal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing
+in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself.
+
+In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in
+George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store street,
+Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the
+laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary
+career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had
+always scrupulously observed a certain degree of elegance, and those
+temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound
+and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure.
+
+It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writer
+of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it
+relates. He dined with her at a friend's, together with Mr. Thomas Paine
+and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his
+object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had
+never before conversed.
+
+The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually
+displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I had
+barely looked into her Answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary
+men are apt to be, with a few offences, against grammar and other minute
+points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs.
+Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine,
+in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in
+occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks; the conversation lay
+principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, very
+frequently when I wished to hear Paine.
+
+We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the
+characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been
+observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of
+seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a
+plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful. I, on
+the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, and
+particularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to
+incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilated
+in this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtained
+from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number
+have treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at last
+provoked to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished
+it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We
+discussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which her
+opinions approached much nearer to the received ones, than mine. As the
+conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own
+share in it. We touched upon all topics, without treating forcibly and
+connectedly upon any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an
+account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was
+not sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active
+and independent thinking. On her side, she did me no part of what
+perhaps I considered as justice.
+
+We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made
+a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance.
+
+In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she
+continued to reside for upwards of two years. One of her principal
+inducements to this step, related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had, at
+first, considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what I
+may be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not,
+in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had
+originally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much
+pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent
+imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she
+should have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union.
+She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender
+charities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the
+dearest band of human society. General conversation and society could
+not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass
+of her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best years
+of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made
+the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of
+her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She
+conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her
+mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and
+mingle in different scenes.
+
+It is singular, that during her residence in Store street, which lasted
+more than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles in
+the Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employed
+upon the Sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behind
+her a single paper, that can, with any certainty, be assigned to have
+had this destination.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VII.
+
+1792-1795.
+
+
+The original plan of Mary, respecting her residence in France, had no
+precise limits in the article of duration; the single purpose she had in
+view being that of an endeavour to heal her distempered mind. She did
+not proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, to
+some friends who saw her immediately before her departure, she spoke
+merely of an absence of six weeks.
+
+It is not to be wondered at, that her excursion did not originally seem
+to produce the effects she had expected from it. She was in a land of
+strangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power of
+receiving and communicating ideas with facility in the language of the
+country. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she had
+been invited, but the master of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent at
+the time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surrounded
+only with servants. The gloominess of her mind communicated its own
+colour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series of
+Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which she
+forwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of her
+posthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and it
+is, as she justly remarks, tinged with the saturnine temper which at
+that time pervaded her mind.
+
+Mary carried with her introductions to several agreeable families in
+Paris. She renewed her acquaintance with Paine. There also subsisted a
+very sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author of
+a collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided in
+Paris. Another person, whom Mary always spoke of in terms of ardent
+commendation, both for the excellence of his disposition, and the force
+of his genius, was a count Slabrendorf, by birth, I believe, a Swede. It
+is almost unnecessary to mention, that she was personally acquainted
+with the majority of the leaders in the French revolution.
+
+But the house that, I believe, she principally frequented at this time,
+was that of Mr. Thomas Christie, a person whose pursuits were
+mercantile, and who had written a volume on the French revolution. With
+Mrs. Christie her acquaintance was more intimate than with the husband.
+
+It was about four months after her arrival at Paris in December 1792,
+that she entered into that species of connection, for which her heart
+secretly panted, and which had the effect of diffusing an immediate
+tranquillity and cheerfulness over her manners. The person with whom it
+was formed (for it would be an idle piece of delicacy, to attempt to
+suppress a name, which is known to every one whom the reputation of
+Mary has reached), was Mr. Gilbert Imlay, native of the United States of
+North America.
+
+The place at which she first saw Mr. Imlay was at the house of Mr.
+Christie; and it perhaps deserves to be noticed, that the emotions he
+then excited in her mind, were, I am told, those of dislike, and that,
+for some time, she shunned all occasions of meeting him. This sentiment
+however speedily gave place to one of greater kindness.
+
+Previously to the partiality she conceived for him, she had determined
+upon a journey to Switzerland, induced chiefly by motives of economy.
+But she had some difficulty in procuring a passport; and it was probably
+the intercourse that now originated between her and Mr. Imlay, that
+changed her purpose, and led her to prefer a lodging at Neuilly, a
+village three miles from Paris. Her habitation here was a solitary house
+in the midst of a garden, with no other inhabitants than herself and the
+gardener, an old man, who performed for her many of the offices of a
+domestic, and would sometimes contend for the honour of making her bed.
+The gardener had a great veneration for his guest, and would set before
+her, when alone, some grapes of a particularly fine sort, which she
+could not without the greatest difficulty obtain, when she had any
+person with her as a visitor. Here it was that she conceived, and for
+the most part executed, her Historical and Moral View of the French
+Revolution[A], into which, as she observes, are incorporated most of the
+observations she had collected for her Letters, and which was written
+with more sobriety and cheerfulness than the tone in which they had been
+commenced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by a
+walk in a neighbouring wood, from which her old host in vain endeavoured
+to dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murders
+that had been committed there.
+
+[A] No part of the proposed continuation of this work, has been found
+among the papers of the author.
+
+The commencement of the attachment Mary now formed, had neither
+confident nor adviser. She always conceived it to be a gross breach of
+delicacy to have any confidant in a matter of this sacred nature, an
+affair of the heart. The origin of the connection was about the middle
+of April 1793, and it was carried on in a private manner for four
+months. At the expiration of that period a circumstance occurred that
+induced her to declare it. The French convention, exasperated at the
+conduct of the British government, particularly in the affair of Toulon,
+formed a decree against the citizens of this country, by one article of
+which the English, resident in France, were ordered into prison till the
+period of a general peace. Mary had objected to a marriage with Mr.
+Imlay, who, at the time their connection was formed, had no property
+whatever; because she would not involve him in certain family
+embarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him
+answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her. She
+however considered their engagement as of the most sacred nature; and
+they had mutually formed the plan of emigrating to America, as soon as
+they should have realized a sum, enabling them to do it in the mode
+they desired. The decree however that I have just mentioned, made it
+necessary, not that a marriage should actually take place, but that Mary
+should take the name of Imlay, which, from the nature of their
+connexion, she conceived herself entitled to do, and obtain a
+certificate from the American ambassador, as the wife of a native of
+that country.
+
+Their engagement being thus avowed, they thought proper to reside under
+the same roof, and for that purpose removed to Paris.
+
+Mary was now arrived at the situation, which, for two or three preceding
+years, her reason had pointed out to her as affording the most
+substantial prospect of happiness. She had been tossed and agitated by
+the waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had known
+few of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness of
+childhood. The temper of her father had early given to her mind a severe
+cast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for the
+confidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance upon
+womanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of her
+mother, and the still more afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Her
+exertions to create a joint independence for her sisters and herself,
+had been attended, neither with the success, nor the pleasure, she had
+hoped from them. Her first youthful passion, her friendship for Fanny,
+had encountered many disappointments, and, in fine, a melancholy and
+premature catastrophe. Soon after these accumulated mortifications, she
+was engaged in a contest with a near relation, whom she regarded as
+unprincipled, respecting the wreck of her father's fortune. In this
+affair she suffered the double pain, which arises from moral
+indignation, and disappointed benevolence. Her exertions to assist
+almost every member of her family, were great and unremitted. Finally,
+when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondly
+imagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, she
+perceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mind
+fruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it only
+served to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her.
+
+Some persons may be inclined to observe, that the evils here enumerated,
+are not among the heaviest in the catalogue of human calamities. But
+evils take their rank, more from the temper of the mind that suffers
+them, than from their abstract nature. Upon a man of a hard and
+insensible disposition, the shafts of misfortune often fall pointless
+and impotent. There are persons, by no means hard and insensible, who,
+from an elastic and sanguine turn of mind, are continually prompted to
+look on the fair side of things, and, having suffered one fall,
+immediately rise again, to pursue their course, with the same eagerness,
+the same hope, and the same gaiety, as before. On the other hand, we not
+unfrequently meet with persons, endowed with the most exquisite and
+delicious sensibility, whose minds seem almost of too fine a texture to
+encounter the vicissitudes of human affairs, to whom pleasure is
+transport, and disappointment is agony indescribable. This character is
+finely pourtrayed by the author of the Sorrows of Werter. Mary was in
+this respect a female Werter.
+
+She brought then, in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, to
+take refuge in the bosom of a chosen friend. Let it not however be
+imagined, that she brought a heart, querulous, and ruined in its taste
+for pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change of
+fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and
+she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She
+was like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears again
+with the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its
+happiest age. She was playful, full of confidence, kindness and
+sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and
+smoothness. Her voice became chearful; her temper overflowing with
+universal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to
+day illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so well
+recollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affection of almost
+every one that beheld it.
+
+Mary now reposed herself upon a person, of whose honour and principles
+she had the most exalted idea. She nourished an individual affection,
+which she saw no necessity of subjecting to restraint; and a heart like
+her's was not formed to nourish affection by halves. Her conception of
+Mr. Imlay's "tenderness and worth, had twisted him closely round her
+heart;" and she "indulged the thought, that she had thrown out some
+tendrils, to cling to the elm by which she wished to be supported." This
+was "talking a new language to her;" but, "conscious that she was not a
+parasite-plant," she was willing to encourage and foster the
+luxuriancies of affection. Her confidence was entire; her love was
+unbounded. Now, for the first time in her life she gave a loose to all
+the sensibilities of her nature.
+
+Soon after the time I am now speaking of, her attachment to Mr. Imlay
+gained a new link, by finding reason to suppose herself with child.
+
+Their establishment at Paris, was however broken up almost as soon as
+formed, by the circumstance of Mr. Imlay's entering into business,
+urged, as he said, by the prospect of a family, and this being a
+favourable crisis in French affairs for commercial speculations. The
+pursuits in which he was engaged, led him in the month of September to
+Havre de Grace, then called Havre Marat, probably to superintend the
+shipping of goods, in which he was jointly engaged with some other
+person or persons. Mary remained in the capital.
+
+The solitude in which she was now left, proved an unexpected trial.
+Domestic affections constituted the object upon which her heart was
+fixed; and she early felt, with an inward grief, that Mr. Imlay "did not
+attach those tender emotions round the idea of home," which, every time
+they recurred, dimmed her eyes with moisture. She had expected his
+return from week to week, and from month to month, but a succession of
+business still continued to detain him at Havre. At the same time the
+sanguinary character which the government of France began every day more
+decisively to assume, contributed to banish tranquillity from the first
+months of her pregnancy. Before she left Neuilly, she happened one day
+to enter Paris on foot (I believe, by the _Place de Louis Quinze_), when
+an execution, attended with some peculiar aggravations, had just taken
+place, and the blood of the guillotine appeared fresh upon the pavement.
+The emotions of her soul burst forth in indignant exclamations, while a
+prudent bystander warned her of her danger, and intreated her to hasten
+and hide her discontents. She described to me, more than once, the
+anguish she felt at hearing of the death of Brissot, Vergniaud, and the
+twenty deputies, as one of the most intolerable sensations she had ever
+experienced.
+
+Finding the return of Mr. Imlay continually postponed, she determined,
+in January 1794, to join him at Havre. One motive that influenced her,
+though, I believe, by no means the principal, was the growing cruelties
+of Robespierre, and the desire she felt to be in any other place, rather
+than the devoted city, in the midst of which they were perpetrated.
+
+From January to September, Mr. Imlay and Mary lived together, with great
+harmony, at Havre, where the child, with which she was pregnant, was
+born, on the fourteenth of May, and named Frances, in remembrance of
+the dear friend of her youth, whose image could never be erased from
+her memory.
+
+In September, Mr. Imlay took his departure from Havre for the port of
+London. As this step was said to be necessary in the way of business, he
+endeavoured to prevail upon Mary to quit Havre, and once more take up
+her abode at Paris. Robespierre was now no more, and, of consequence,
+the only objection she had to residing in the capital, was removed. Mr.
+Imlay was already in London, before she undertook her journey, and it
+proved the most fatiguing journey she ever made; the carriage, in which
+she travelled, being overturned no less than four times between Havre
+and Paris.
+
+This absence, like that of the preceding year in which Mr. Imlay had
+removed to Havre, was represented as an absence that was to have a
+short duration. In two months he was once again to join her at Paris. It
+proved however the prelude to an eternal separation. The agonies of such
+a separation, or rather desertion, great as Mary would have found them
+upon every supposition, were vastly increased, by the lingering method
+in which it was effected, and the ambiguity that, for a long time, hung
+upon it. This circumstance produced the effect, of holding her mind, by
+force, as it were, to the most painful of all subjects, and not
+suffering her to derive the just advantage from the energy and
+elasticity of her character.
+
+The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of one
+advantage. It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamities
+that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional
+three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very
+dear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, than
+dyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It was
+wasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind is
+continually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, expiring
+hope.
+
+Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred, unhappy passion?
+Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuate
+itself. He does not love, who can resign this cherished sentiment,
+without suffering some of the sharpest struggles that our nature is
+capable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon this
+chosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submit
+to receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it has
+fixed all its esteem. Mary had struggled to entertain a favourable
+opinion of human nature; she had unweariedly fought for a kindred mind,
+in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. Mr. Imlay undertook
+to prove, in his letters written immediately after their complete
+separation, that his conduct towards her was reconcilable to the
+strictest rectitude; but undoubtedly Mary was of a different opinion.
+Whatever the reader may decide in this respect, there is one sentiment
+that, I believe, he will unhesitatingly admit: that of pity for the
+mistake of the man, who, being in possession of such a friendship and
+attachment as those of Mary, could hold them at a trivial price, and,
+"like the base Indian, throw a pearl away, richer than all his
+tribe.[A]"
+
+[A] A person, from whose society at this time Mary derived particular
+gratification, was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had lately become a
+fugitive from Ireland, in consequence of a political prosecution, and in
+whom she found those qualities which were always eminently engaging to
+her, great integrity of disposition, and great kindness of heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. VIII.
+
+1795, 1796.
+
+
+In April 1795, Mary returned once more to London, being requested to do
+so by Mr. Imlay, who even sent a servant to Paris to wait upon her in
+the journey, before she could complete the necessary arrangements for
+her departure. But, notwithstanding these favourable appearances, she
+came to England with a heavy heart, not daring, after all the
+uncertainties and anguish she had endured, to trust to the suggestions
+of hope.
+
+The gloomy forebodings of her mind, were but too faithfully verified.
+Mr. Imlay had already formed another connexion; as it is said, with a
+young actress from a strolling company of players. His attentions
+therefore to Mary were formal and constrained, and she probably had but
+little of his society. This alteration could not escape her penetrating
+glance. He ascribed it to pressure of business, and some pecuniary
+embarrassments which, at that time, occurred to him; it was of little
+consequence to Mary what was the cause. She saw, but too well, though
+she strove not to see, that his affections were lost to her for ever.
+
+It is impossible to imagine a period of greater pain and mortification
+than Mary passed, for about seven weeks, from the sixteenth of April to
+the sixth of June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided for
+her. She had come over to England, a country for which she, at this
+time, expressed "a repugnance, that almost amounted to horror," in
+search of happiness. She feared that that happiness had altogether
+escaped her; but she was encouraged by the eagerness and impatience
+which Mr. Imlay at length seemed to manifest for her arrival. When she
+saw him, all her fears were confirmed. What a picture was she capable of
+forming to herself, of the overflowing kindness of a meeting, after an
+interval of so much anguish and apprehension! A thousand images of this
+sort were present to her burning imagination. It is in vain, on such
+occasions, for reserve and reproach to endeavour to curb in the emotions
+of an affectionate heart. But the hopes she nourished were speedily
+blasted. Her reception by Mr. Imlay, was cold and embarrassed.
+Discussions ("explanations" they were called) followed; cruel
+explanations, that only added to the anguish of a heart already
+overwhelmed in grief! They had small pretensions indeed to explicitness;
+but they sufficiently told, that the case admitted not of remedy.
+
+Mary was incapable of sustaining her equanimity in this pressing
+emergency. "Love, dear, delusive love!" as she expressed herself to a
+friend some time afterwards, "rigorous reason had forced her to resign;
+and now her rational prospects were blasted, just as she had learned to
+be contented with rational enjoyments". Thus situated, life became an
+intolerable burthen. While she was absent from Mr. Imlay, she could
+talk of purposes of reparation and independence. But, now that they were
+in the same house, she could not withhold herself from endeavours to
+revive their mutual cordiality; and unsuccessful endeavours continually
+added fuel to the fire that destroyed her. She formed a desperate
+purpose to die.
+
+This part of the story of Mary is involved in considerable obscurity. I
+only know, that Mr. Imlay became acquainted with her purpose, at a
+moment when he was uncertain whether or no it were already executed, and
+that his feelings were roused by the intelligence. It was perhaps owing
+to his activity and representations, that her life was, at this time,
+saved. She determined to continue to exist. Actuated by this purpose,
+she took a resolution, worthy both of the strength and affectionateness
+of her mind. Mr. Imlay was involved in a question of considerable
+difficulty, respecting a mercantile adventure in Norway. It seemed to
+require the presence of some very judicious agent, to conduct the
+business to its desired termination. Mary determined to make the voyage,
+and take the business into her own hands. Such a voyage seemed the most
+desireable thing to recruit her health, and, if possible, her spirits,
+in the present crisis. It was also gratifying to her feelings, to be
+employed in promoting the interest of a man, from whom she had
+experienced such severe unkindness, but to whom she ardently desired to
+be reconciled. The moment of desperation I have mentioned, occurred in
+the close of May, and, in about a week after, she set out upon this new
+expedition.
+
+The narrative of this voyage is before the world, and perhaps a book of
+travels that so irresistibly seizes on the heart, never, in any other
+instance, found its way from the press. The occasional harshness and
+ruggedness of character, that diversify her Vindication of the Rights of
+Woman, here totally disappear. If ever there was a book calculated to
+make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
+She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and
+dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius
+which commands all our admiration. Affliction had tempered her heart to
+a softness almost more than human; and the gentleness of her spirit
+seems precisely to accord with all the romance of unbounded attachment.
+
+Thus softened and improved, thus fraught with imagination and
+sensibility, with all, and more than all, "that youthful poets fancy,
+when they love," she returned to England, and, if he had so pleased, to
+the arms of her former lover. Her return was hastened by the ambiguity,
+to her apprehension, of Mr. Imlay's conduct. He had promised to meet her
+upon her return from Norway, probably at Hamburgh; and they were then to
+pass some time in Switzerland. The style however of his letters to her
+during her tour, was not such as to inspire confidence; and she wrote to
+him very urgently, to explain himself, relative to the footing upon
+which they were hereafter to stand to each other. In his answer, which
+reached her at Hamburgh, he treated her questions as "extraordinary and
+unnecessary," and desired her to be at the pains to decide for herself.
+Feeling herself unable to accept this as an explanation, she instantly
+determined to sail for London by the very first opportunity, that she
+might thus bring to a termination the suspence that preyed upon her
+soul.
+
+It was not long after her arrival in London in the commencement of
+October, that she attained the certainty she sought. Mr. Imlay procured
+her a lodging. But the neglect she experienced from him after she
+entered it, flashed conviction upon her, in spite of his asseverations.
+She made further enquiries, and at length was informed by a servant, of
+the real state of the case. Under the immediate shock which the painful
+certainty gave her, her first impulse was to repair to him at the
+ready-furnished house he had provided for his new mistress. What was the
+particular nature of their conference I am unable to relate. It is
+sufficient to say that the wretchedness of the night which succeeded
+this fatal discovery, impressed her with the feeling, that she would
+sooner suffer a thousand deaths, than pass another of equal misery.
+
+The agony of her mind determined her; and that determination gave her a
+sort of desperate serenity. She resolved to plunge herself in the
+Thames; and, not being satisfied with any spot nearer to London, she
+took a boat, and rowed to Putney. Her first thought had led her to
+Battersea-bridge, but she found it too public. It was night when she
+arrived at Putney, and by that time had begun to rain with great
+violence. The rain suggested to her the idea of walking up and down the
+bridge, till her clothes were thoroughly drenched and heavy with the
+wet, which she did for half an hour without meeting a human being. She
+then leaped from the top of the bridge, but still seemed to find a
+difficulty in sinking, which she endeavoured to counteract by pressing
+her clothes closely round her. After some time she became insensible;
+but she always spoke of the pain she underwent as such, that, though she
+could afterwards have determined upon almost any other species of
+voluntary death, it would have been impossible for her to resolve upon
+encountering the same sensations again. I am doubtful, whether this is
+to be ascribed to the mere nature of suffocation, or was not rather
+owing to the preternatural action of a desperate spirit.
+
+After having been for a considerable time insensible, she was recovered
+by the exertions of those by whom the body was found. She had sought,
+with cool and deliberate firmness, to put a period to her existence, and
+yet she lived to have every prospect of a long possession of enjoyment
+and happiness. It is perhaps not an unfrequent case with suicides, that
+we find reason to suppose, if they had survived their gloomy purpose,
+that they would, at a subsequent period, have been considerably happy.
+It arises indeed, in some measure, out of the very nature of a spirit of
+self-destruction; which implies a degree of anguish, that the
+constitution of the human mind will not suffer to remain long
+undiminished. This is a serious reflection, Probably no man would
+destroy himself from an impatience of present pain, if he felt a moral
+certainty that there were years of enjoyment still in reserve for him.
+It is perhaps a futile attempt, to think of reasoning with a man in that
+state of mind which precedes suicide. Moral reasoning is nothing but the
+awakening of certain feelings: and the feeling by which he is actuated,
+is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with other
+feelings, that should have force enough to counterbalance it. But, if
+the prospect of future tranquillity and pleasure cannot be expected to
+have much weight with a man under an immediate purpose of suicide, it is
+so much the more to be wished, that men would impress their minds, in
+their sober moments, with a conception, which, being rendered habitual,
+seems to promise to act as a successful antidote in a paroxysm of
+desperation.
+
+The present situation of Mary, of necessity produced some further
+intercourse between her and Mr. Imlay. He sent a physician to her; and
+Mrs. Christie, at his desire, prevailed on her to remove to her house in
+Finsbury-square. In the mean time Mr. Imlay assured her that his present
+was merely a casual, sensual connection; and, of course, fostered in her
+mind the idea that it would be once more in her choice to live with him.
+With whatever intention the idea was suggested, it was certainly
+calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however
+it produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have been
+looked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind,
+which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity of
+bringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years to
+roll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with an
+extraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, in effect, as
+follows: "If we are ever to live together again, it must be now. We meet
+now, or we part for ever. You say, You cannot abruptly break off the
+connection you have formed. It is unworthy of my courage and character,
+to wait the uncertain issue of that connexion. I am determined to come
+to a decision. I consent then, for the present, to live with you, and
+the woman to whom you have associated yourself. I think it important
+that you should learn habitually to feel for your child the affection of
+a father. But, if you reject this proposal, here we end. You are now
+free. We will correspond no more. We will have no intercourse of any
+kind. I will be to you as a person that is dead."
+
+The proposal she made, extraordinary and injudicious as it was, was at
+first accepted; and Mr. Imlay took her accordingly, to look at a house
+he was upon the point of hiring, that she might judge whether it was
+calculated to please her. Upon second thoughts however he retracted his
+concession.
+
+In the following month, Mr. Imlay, and the woman with whom he was at
+present connected, went to Paris, where they remained three months. Mary
+had, previously to this, fixed herself in a lodging in Finsbury-place,
+where, for some time, she saw scarcely any one but Mrs. Christie, for
+the sake of whose neighbourhood she had chosen this situation;
+"existing," as she expressed it, "in a living tomb, and her life but an
+exercise of fortitude, continually on the stretch."
+
+Thus circumstanced, it was unavoidable for her thoughts to brood upon a
+passion, which all that she had suffered had not yet been able to
+extinguish. Accordingly, as soon as Mr. Imlay returned to England, she
+could not restrain herself from making another effort, and desiring to
+see him once more. "During his absence, affection had led her to make
+numberless excuses for his conduct," and she probably wished to believe
+that his present connection was, as he represented it, purely of a
+casual nature. To this application, she observes, that "he returned no
+other answer, except declaring, with unjustifiable passion, that he
+would not see her."
+
+This answer, though, at the moment, highly irritating to Mary, was not
+the ultimate close of the affair. Mr. Christie was connected in business
+with Mr. Imlay, at the same time that the house of Mr. Christie was the
+only one at which Mary habitually visited. The consequence of this was,
+that, when Mr. Imlay had been already more than a fortnight in town,
+Mary called at Mr. Christie's one evening, at a time when Mr. Imlay was
+in the parlour. The room was full of company. Mrs. Christie heard Mary's
+voice in the passage, and hastened to her, to intreat her not to make
+her appearance. Mary however was not to be controlled. She thought, as
+she afterwards told me, that it was not consistent with conscious
+rectitude, that she should shrink, as if abashed, from the presence of
+one by whom she deemed herself injured. Her child was with her. She
+entered; and, in a firm manner, immediately led up the child, now near
+two years of age, to the knees of its father. He retired with Mary into
+another apartment, and promised to dine with her at her lodging, I
+believe, the next day.
+
+In the interview which took place in consequence of this appointment, he
+expressed himself to her in friendly terms, and in a manner calculated
+to sooth her despair. Though he could conduct himself, when absent from
+her, in a way which she censured as unfeeling; this species of sternness
+constantly expired when he came into her presence. Mary was prepared at
+this moment to catch at every phantom of happiness; and the gentleness
+of his carriage, was to her as a sun-beam, awakening the hope of
+returning day. For an instant she gave herself up to delusive visions;
+and, even after the period of delirium expired, she still dwelt, with an
+aching eye, upon the air-built and unsubstantial prospect of a
+reconciliation.
+
+At his particular request, she retained the name of Imlay, which, a
+short time before, he had seemed to dispute with her. "It was not," as
+she expresses herself in a letter to a friend, "for the world that she
+did so--not in the least--but she was unwilling to cut the Gordian knot,
+or tear herself away in appearance, when she could not in reality".
+
+The day after this interview, she set out upon a visit to the country,
+where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March. It was, I
+believe, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolary
+communication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from her
+mind, all remaining doubt as to the issue of the affair.
+
+Mary was now aware that every demand of forbearance towards him, of duty
+to her child, and even of indulgence to her own deep-rooted
+predilection, was discharged. She determined to rouse herself, and cast
+off for ever an attachment, which to her had been a spring of
+inexhaustible bitterness. Her present residence among the scenes of
+nature, was favourable to this purpose. She was at the house of an old
+and intimate friend, a lady of the name of Cotton, whose partiality for
+her was strong and sincere. Mrs. Cotton's nearest neighbour was Sir
+William East, baronet; and, from the joint effect of the kindness of her
+friend, and the hospitable and distinguishing attentions of this
+respectable family, she derived considerable benefit. She had been
+amused and interested in her journey to Norway; but with this
+difference, that, at that time, her mind perpetually returned with
+trembling anxiety to conjectures respecting Mr. Imlay's future conduct,
+whereas now, with a lofty and undaunted spirit, she threw aside every
+thought that recurred to him, while she felt herself called upon to make
+one more effort for life and happiness.
+
+Once after this, to my knowledge, she saw Mr. Imlay; probably, not long
+after her return to town. They met by accident upon the New Road; he
+alighted from his horse, and walked with her for some time; and the
+rencounter passed, as she assured me, without producing in her any
+oppressive emotion.
+
+Be it observed, by the way, and I may be supposed best to have known the
+real state of the case, she never spoke of Mr. Imlay with acrimony, and
+was displeased when any person, in her hearing, expressed contempt of
+him. She was characterised by a strong sense of indignation; but her
+emotions of this sort were short-lived, and in no long time subsided
+into a dignified sereneness and equanimity.
+
+The question of her connection with Mr. Imlay, as we have seen, was not
+completely dismissed, till March 1796. But it is worthy to be observed,
+that she did not, like ordinary persons under extreme anguish of mind,
+suffer her understanding, in the mean time, to sink into listlessness
+and debility. The most inapprehensive reader may conceive what was the
+mental torture she endured, when he considers, that she was twice, with
+an interval of four months, from the end of May to the beginning of
+October, prompted by it to purposes of suicide. Yet in this period she
+wrote her Letters from Norway. Shortly after its expiration she prepared
+them for the press, and they were published in the close of that year.
+In January 1796, she finished the sketch of a comedy, which turns, in
+the serious scenes, upon the incidents of her own story. It was offered
+to both the winter-managers, and remained among her papers at the
+period of her decease; but it appeared to me to be in so crude and
+imperfect a state, that I judged it most respectful to her memory to
+commit it to the flames. To understand this extraordinary degree of
+activity, we must recollect however the entire solitude, in which most
+of her hours were at that time consumed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. IX.
+
+1796, 1797.
+
+
+I am now led, by the progress of the story, to the last branch of her
+history, the connection between Mary and myself. And this I shall relate
+with the same simplicity that has pervaded every other part of my
+narrative. If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, that
+could impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. They
+could have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are no
+circumstances of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason,
+could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that
+needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon the
+universe to judge them. An event of the most deplorable sort, has
+awfully imposed silence upon the gabble of frivolity.
+
+We renewed our acquaintance in January 1796, but with no particular
+effect, except so far as sympathy in her anguish, added in my mind to
+the respect I had always entertained for her talents. It was in the
+close of that month that I read her Letters from Norway; and the
+impression that book produced upon me has been already related.
+
+It was on the fourteenth of April that I first saw her after her
+excursion into Berkshire. On that day she called upon me in Somers Town,
+she having, since her return, taken a lodging in Cumming-street,
+Pentonville, at no great distance from the place of my habitation. From
+that time our intimacy increased, by regular, but almost imperceptible
+degrees.
+
+The partiality we conceived for each other, was in that mode, which I
+have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It
+grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been
+impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and
+who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long-established
+custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so
+severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to
+have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in
+the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there
+was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other.
+
+In July 1796 I made an excursion into the county of Norfolk, which
+occupied nearly the whole of that month. During this period Mary
+removed, from Cumming-street, Pentonville, to Judd place West, which may
+be considered as the extremity of Somers Town. In the former situation,
+she had occupied a furnished lodging. She had meditated a tour to Italy
+or Switzerland, and knew not how soon she should set out with that view.
+Now however she felt herself reconciled to a longer abode in England,
+probably without exactly knowing why this change had taken place in her
+mind. She had a quantity of furniture locked up at a broker's ever since
+her residence in Store-street, and she now found it adviseable to bring
+it into use. This circumstance occasioned her present removal.
+
+The temporary separation attendant on my little journey, had its effect
+on the mind of both parties. It gave a space for the maturing of
+inclination. I believe that, during this interval, each furnished to the
+other the principal topic of solitary and daily contemplation. Absence
+bestows a refined and aërial delicacy upon affection, which it with
+difficulty acquires in any other way. It seems to resemble the
+communication of spirits, without the medium, or the impediment, of
+this earthly frame.
+
+When we met again, we met with new pleasure, and, I may add, with a more
+decisive preference for each other. It was however three weeks longer,
+before the sentiment which trembled upon the tongue, burst from the lips
+of either. There was, as I have already said, no period of throes and
+resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting
+into love. Previously to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured,
+yet each felt a certain trembling anxiety to have assurance complete.
+
+Mary rested her head upon the shoulder of her lover, hoping to find a
+heart with which she might safely treasure her world of affection;
+fearing to commit a mistake, yet, in spite of her melancholy
+experience, fraught with that generous confidence, which, in a great
+soul, is never extinguished. I had never loved till now; or, at least,
+had never nourished a passion to the same growth, or met with an object
+so consummately worthy.
+
+We did not marry. It is difficult to recommend any thing to
+indiscriminate adoption, contrary to the established rules and
+prejudices of mankind; but certainly nothing can be so ridiculous upon
+the face of it, or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as to
+require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that
+which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most
+sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment
+when it has arrived at its climax.
+
+There were however other reasons why we did not immediately marry. Mary
+felt an entire conviction of the propriety of her conduct. It would be
+absurd to suppose that, with a heart withered by desertion, she was not
+right to give way to the emotions of kindness which our intimacy
+produced, and to seek for that support in friendship and affection,
+which could alone give pleasure to her heart, and peace to her
+meditations. It was only about six months since she had resolutely
+banished every thought of Mr. Imlay; but it was at least eighteen that
+he ought to have been banished, and would have been banished, had it not
+been for her scrupulous pertinacity in determining to leave no measure
+untried to regain him. Add to this, that the laws of etiquette
+ordinarily laid down in these cases, are essentially absurd, and that
+the sentiments of the heart cannot submit to be directed by the rule and
+the square. But Mary had an extreme aversion to be made the topic of
+vulgar discussion; and, if there be any weakness in this, the dreadful
+trials through which she had recently passed, may well plead in its
+excuse. She felt that she had been too much, and too rudely spoken of,
+in the former instance; and she could not resolve to do any thing that
+should immediately revive that painful topic.
+
+For myself, it is certain that I had for many years regarded marriage
+with so well-grounded an apprehension, that, notwithstanding the
+partiality for Mary that had taken possession of my soul, I should have
+felt it very difficult, at least in the present stage of our
+intercourse, to have resolved on such a measure. Thus, partly from
+similar, and partly from different motives, we felt alike in this, as we
+did perhaps in every other circumstance that related to our intercourse.
+
+I have nothing further that I find it necessary to record, till the
+commencement of April 1797. We then judged it proper to declare our
+marriage, which had taken place a little before. The principal motive
+for complying with this ceremony, was the circumstance of Mary's being
+in a state of pregnancy. She was unwilling, and perhaps with reason, to
+incur that exclusion from the society of many valuable and excellent
+individuals, which custom awards in cases of this sort. I should have
+felt an extreme repugnance to the having caused her such an
+inconvenience. And, after the experiment of seven months of as intimate
+an intercourse as our respective modes of living would admit, there was
+certainly less hazard to either, in the subjecting ourselves to those
+consequences which the laws of England annex to the relations of husband
+and wife. On the sixth of April we entered into possession of a house,
+which had been taken by us in concert.
+
+In this place I have a very curious circumstance to notice, which I am
+happy to have occasion to mention, as it tends to expose certain
+regulations of polished society, of which the absurdity vies with the
+odiousness. Mary had long possessed the advantage of an acquaintance
+with many persons of genius, and with others whom the effects of an
+intercourse with elegant society, combined with a certain portion of
+information and good sense, sufficed to render amusing companions. She
+had lately extended the circle of her acquaintance in this respect; and
+her mind, trembling between the opposite impressions of past anguish and
+renovating tranquillity, found ease in this species of recreation.
+Wherever Mary appeared, admiration attended upon her. She had always
+displayed talents for conversation; but maturity of understanding, her
+travels, her long residence in France, the discipline of affliction, and
+the smiling, new-born peace which awaked a corresponding smile in her
+animated countenance, inexpressibly increased them. The way in which the
+story of Mr. Imlay was treated in these polite circles, was probably
+the result of the partiality she excited. These elegant personages were
+divided between their cautious adherence to forms, and the desire to
+seek their own gratification. Mary made no secret of the nature of her
+connection with Mr. Imlay; and in one instance, I well know, she put
+herself to the trouble of explaining it to a person totally indifferent
+to her, because he never failed to publish every thing he knew, and, she
+was sure, would repeat her explanation to his numerous acquaintance. She
+was of too proud and generous a spirit to stoop to hypocrisy. These
+persons however, in spite of all that could be said, persisted in
+shutting their eyes, and pretending they took her for a married woman.
+
+Observe the consequence of this! While she was, and constantly
+professed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the
+squeamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife,
+and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered.
+Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements,
+supposed that our marriage would place her upon a surer footing in the
+calendar of polished society, than ever. But it forced these people to
+see the truth, and to confess their belief of what they had carefully
+been told; and this they could not forgive. Be it remarked, that the
+date of our marriage had nothing to do with this, that question being
+never once mentioned during this period. Mary indeed had, till now,
+retained the name of Imlay which had first been assumed from necessity
+in France; but its being retained thus long, was purely from the
+aukwardness that attends the introduction of a change, and not from an
+apprehension of consequences of this sort. Her scrupulous explicitness
+as to the nature of her situation, surely sufficed to make the name she
+bore perfectly immaterial.
+
+It is impossible to relate the particulars of such a story, but in the
+language of contempt and ridicule. A serious reflection however upon the
+whole, ought to awaken emotions of a different sort. Mary retained the
+most numerous portion of her acquaintance, and the majority of those
+whom she principally valued. It was only the supporters and the subjects
+of the unprincipled manners of a court, that she lost. This however is
+immaterial. The tendency of the proceeding, strictly considered, and
+uniformly acted upon, would have been to proscribe her from all valuable
+society. And who was the person proscribed? The firmest champion, and,
+as I strongly suspect, the greatest ornament her sex ever had to boast!
+A woman, with sentiments as pure, as refined, and as delicate, as ever
+inhabited a human heart! It is fit that such persons should stand by,
+that we may have room enough for the dull and insolent dictators, the
+gamblers and demireps of polished society!
+
+Two of the persons, the loss of whose acquaintance Mary principally
+regretted upon this occasion, were Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons. Their
+acquaintance, it is perhaps fair to observe, is to be ranked among her
+recent acquisitions. Mrs. Siddons, I am sure, regretted the necessity,
+which she conceived to be imposed on her by the peculiarity of her
+situation, to conform to the rules I have described. She is endowed with
+that rich and generous sensibility, which should best enable its
+possessor completely to feel the merits of her deceased friend. She very
+truly observes, in a letter now before me, that the Travels in Norway
+were read by no one, who was in possession of "more reciprocity of
+feeling, or more deeply impressed with admiration of the writer's
+extraordinary powers."
+
+Mary felt a transitory pang, when the conviction reached her of so
+unexpected a circumstance, that was rather exquisite. But she disdained
+to sink under the injustice (as this ultimately was) of the supercilious
+and the foolish, and presently shook off the impression of the first
+surprize. That once subsided, I well know that the event was thought of,
+with no emotions, but those of superiority to the injustice she
+sustained; and was not of force enough, to diminish a happiness, which
+seemed hourly to become more vigorous and firm.
+
+I think I may venture to say, that no two persons ever found in each
+other's society, a satisfaction more pure and refined. What it was in
+itself, can now only be known, in its full extent, to the survivor. But,
+I believe, the serenity of her countenance, the increasing sweetness of
+her manners, and that consciousness of enjoyment that seemed ambitious
+that every one she saw should be happy as well as herself, were matters
+of general observation to all her acquaintance. She had always
+possessed, in an unparalleled degree, the art of communicating
+happiness, and she was now in the constant and unlimited exercise of it.
+She seemed to have attained that situation, which her disposition and
+character imperiously demanded, but which she had never before attained;
+and her understanding and her heart felt the benefit of it.
+
+While we lived as near neighbours only, and before our last removal, her
+mind had attained considerable tranquillity, and was visited but seldom
+with those emotions of anguish, which had been but too familiar to her.
+But the improvement in this respect, which accrued upon our removal and
+establishment, was extremely obvious. She was a worshipper of domestic
+life. She loved to observe the growth of affection between me and her
+daughter, then three years of age, as well as my anxiety respecting the
+child not yet born. Pregnancy itself, unequal as the decree of nature
+seems to be in this respect, is the source of a thousand endearments. No
+one knew better than Mary how to extract sentiments of exquisite
+delight, from trifles, which a suspicious and formal wisdom would
+scarcely deign to remark. A little ride into the country with myself and
+the child, has sometimes produced a sort of opening of the heart, a
+general expression of confidence and affectionate soul, a sort of
+infantine, yet dignified endearment, which those who have felt may
+understand, but which I should in vain attempt to pourtray.
+
+In addition to our domestic pleasures, I was fortunate enough to
+introduce her to some of my acquaintance of both sexes, to whom she
+attached herself with all the ardour of approbation and friendship.
+
+Ours was not an idle happiness, a paradise of selfish and transitory
+pleasures. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to mention, that, influenced
+by the ideas I had long entertained upon the subject of cohabitation, I
+engaged an apartment, about twenty doors from our house in the Polygon,
+Somers Town, which I designed for the purpose of my study and literary
+occupations. Trifles however will be interesting to some readers, when
+they relate to the last period of the life of such a person as Mary. I
+will add therefore, that we were both of us of opinion, that it was
+possible for two persons to be too uniformly in each other's society.
+Influenced by that opinion, it was my practice to repair to the
+apartment I have mentioned as soon as I rose, and frequently not to make
+my appearance in the Polygon, till the hour of dinner. We agreed in
+condemning the notion, prevalent in many situations in life, that a man
+and his wife cannot visit in mixed society, but in company with each
+other; and we rather sought occasions of deviating from, than of
+complying with, this rule. By these means, though, for the most part, we
+spent the latter half of each day in one another's society, yet we were
+in no danger of satiety. We seemed to combine, in a considerable degree,
+the novelty and lively sensation of visit, with the more delicious and
+heart-felt pleasures of domestic life.
+
+Whatever may be thought, in other respects, of the plan we laid down to
+ourselves, we probably derived a real advantage from it, as to the
+constancy and uninterruptedness of our literary pursuits. Mary had a
+variety of projects of this sort, for the exercise of her talents, and
+the benefit of society; and, if she had lived, I believe the world would
+have had very little reason to complain of any remission of her
+industry. One of her projects, which has been already mentioned, was of
+a series of Letters on the Management of Infants. Though she had been
+for some time digesting her ideas on this subject with a view to the
+press, I have found comparatively nothing that she had committed to
+paper respecting it. Another project, of longer standing, was of a
+series of books for the instruction of children. A fragment she left in
+execution of this project, is inserted in her Posthumous Works.
+
+But the principal work, in which she was engaged for more than twelve
+months before her decease, was a novel, entitled, The Wrongs of Woman. I
+shall not stop here to explain the nature of the work, as so much of it
+as was already written, is now given to the public. I shall only observe
+that, impressed, as she could not fail to be, with the consciousness of
+her talents, she was desirous, in this instance, that they should effect
+what they were capable of effecting. She was sensible how arduous a task
+it is to produce a truly excellent novel; and she roused her faculties
+to grapple with it. All her other works were produced with a rapidity,
+that did not give her powers time fully to expand. But this was written
+slowly and with mature consideration. She began it in several forms,
+which she successively rejected, after they were considerably advanced.
+She wrote many parts of the work again and again, and, when she had
+finished what she intended for the first part, she felt herself more
+urgently stimulated to revise and improve what she had written, than to
+proceed, with constancy of application, in the parts that were to
+follow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAP. X.
+
+
+I am now led, by the course of my narrative, to the last fatal scene of
+her life. She was taken in labour on Wednesday, the thirtieth of August.
+She had been somewhat indisposed on the preceding Friday, the
+consequence, I believe, of a sudden alarm. But from that time she was in
+perfect health. She was so far from being under any apprehension as to
+the difficulties of child-birth, as frequently to ridicule the fashion
+of ladies in England, who keep their chamber for one full month after
+delivery. For herself, she proposed coming down to dinner on the day
+immediately following. She had already had some experience on the
+subject in the case of Fanny; and I cheerfully submitted in every point
+to her judgment and her wisdom. She hired no nurse. Influenced by ideas
+of decorum, which certainly ought to have no place, at least in cases of
+danger, she determined to have a woman to attend her in the capacity of
+midwife. She was sensible that the proper business of a midwife, in the
+instance of a natural labour, is to sit by and wait for the operations
+of nature, which seldom, in these affairs, demand the interposition of
+art.
+
+At five o'clock in the morning of the day of delivery, she felt what
+she conceived to be some notices of the approaching labour. Mrs.
+Blenkinsop, matron and midwife to the Westminster Lying in Hospital, who
+had seen Mary several times previous to her delivery, was soon after
+sent for, and arrived about nine. During the whole day Mary was
+perfectly cheerful. Her pains came on slowly; and, in the morning, she
+wrote several notes, three addressed to me, who had gone, as usual, to
+my apartments, for the purpose of study. About two o'clock in the
+afternoon, she went up to her chamber,--never more to descend.
+
+The child was born at twenty minutes after eleven at night. Mary had
+requested that I would not come into the chamber till all was over, and
+signified her intention of then performing the interesting office of
+presenting the new-born child to its father. I was sitting in a parlour;
+and it was not till after two o'clock on Thursday morning, that I
+received the alarming intelligence, that the placenta was not yet
+removed, and that the midwife dared not proceed any further, and gave
+her opinion for calling in a male practitioner. I accordingly went for
+Dr. Poignand, physician and man-midwife to the same hospital, who
+arrived between three and four hours after the birth of the child. He
+immediately proceeded to the extraction of the placenta, which he
+brought away in pieces, till he was satisfied that the whole was
+removed. In that point however it afterwards appeared that he was
+mistaken.
+
+The period from the birth of the child till about eight o'clock the next
+morning, was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood was
+considerable, and produced an almost uninterrupted series of fainting
+fits. I went to the chamber soon after four in the morning, and found
+her in this state. She told me some time on Thursday, "that she should
+have died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leave
+me." She added, with one of those smiles which so eminently illuminated
+her countenance, "that I should not be like Porson," alluding to the
+circumstance of that great man having lost his wife, after being only a
+few months married. Speaking of what she had already passed through, she
+declared, "that she had never known what bodily pain was before."
+
+On Thursday morning Dr. Poignand repeated his visit. Mary had just
+before expressed some inclination to see Dr. George Fordyce, a man
+probably of more science than any other medical professor in England,
+and between whom and herself there had long subsisted a mutual
+friendship. I mentioned this to Dr. Poignand, but he rather
+discountenanced the idea, observing that he saw no necessity for it, and
+that he supposed Dr. Fordyce was not particularly conversant with
+obstetrical cases; but that I would do as I pleased. After Dr. Poignand
+was gone, I determined to send for Dr. Fordyce. He accordingly saw the
+patient about three o'clock on Thursday afternoon. He however perceived
+no particular cause of alarm; and, on that or the next day, quoted, as I
+am told, Mary's case, in a mixed company, as a corroboration of a
+favourite idea of his, of the propriety of employing females in the
+capacity of midwives. Mary "had had a woman, and was doing extremely
+well."
+
+What had passed however in the night between Wednesday and Thursday, had
+so far alarmed me, that I did not quit the house, and scarcely the
+chamber, during the following day. But my alarms wore off, as time
+advanced. Appearances were more favourable, than the exhausted state of
+the patient would almost have permitted me to expect. Friday morning
+therefore I devoted to a business of some urgency, which called me to
+different parts of the town, and which, before dinner, I happily
+completed. On my return, and during the evening, I received the most
+pleasurable sensations from the promising state of the patient. I was
+now perfectly satisfied that every thing was safe, and that, if she did
+not take cold, or suffer from any external accident, her speedy recovery
+was certain.
+
+Saturday was a day less auspicious than Friday, but not absolutely
+alarming.
+
+Sunday, the third of September, I now regard as the day, that finally
+decided on the fate of the object dearest to my heart that the universe
+contained. Encouraged by what I considered as the progress of her
+recovery, I accompanied a friend in the morning in several calls, one of
+them as far as Kensington, and did not return till dinner-time. On my
+return I found a degree of anxiety in every face, and was told that she
+had had a sort of shivering fit, and had expressed some anxiety at the
+length of my absence. My sister and a friend of hers, had been engaged
+to dine below stairs, but a message was sent to put them off, and Mary
+ordered that the cloth should not be laid, as usual, in the room
+immediately under her on the first floor, but in the ground-floor
+parlour. I felt a pang at having been so long and so unseasonably
+absent, and determined that I would not repeat the fault.
+
+In the evening she had a second shivering fit, the symptoms of which
+were in the highest degree alarming. Every muscle of the body trembled,
+the teeth chattered, and the bed shook under her. This continued
+probably for five minutes. She told me, after it was over, that it had
+been a struggle between life and death, and that she had been more than
+once, in the course of it, at the point of expiring. I now apprehend
+these to have been the symptoms of a decided mortification, occasioned
+by the part of the placenta that remained in the womb. At the time
+however I was far from considering it in that light. When I went for Dr.
+Poignand, between two and three o'clock on the morning of Thursday,
+despair was in my heart. The fact of the adhesion of the placenta was
+stated to me; and, ignorant as I was of obstetrical science, I felt as
+if the death of Mary was in a manner decided. But hope had re-visited my
+bosom; and her chearings were so delightful, that I hugged her
+obstinately to my heart. I was only mortified at what appeared to me a
+new delay in the recovery I so earnestly longed for. I immediately sent
+for Dr. Fordyce, who had been with her in the morning, as well as on
+the three preceding days. Dr. Poignand had also called this morning but
+declined paying any further visits, as we had thought proper to call in
+Dr. Fordyce.
+
+The progress of the disease was now uninterrupted. On Tuesday I found it
+necessary again to call in Dr. Fordyce in the afternoon, who brought
+with him Dr. Clarke of New Burlington-street, under the idea that some
+operation might be necessary. I have already said, that I pertinaciously
+persisted in viewing the fair side of things; and therefore the interval
+between Sunday and Tuesday evening, did not pass without some mixture of
+cheerfulness. On Monday, Dr. Fordyce forbad the child's having the
+breast, and we therefore procured puppies to draw off the milk. This
+occasioned some pleasantry of Mary with me and the other attendants.
+Nothing could exceed the equanimity, the patience and affectionateness
+of the poor sufferer. I intreated her to recover; I dwelt with trembling
+fondness on every favourable circumstance; and, as far it was possible
+in so dreadful a situation, she, by her smiles and kind speeches,
+rewarded my affection.
+
+Wednesday was to me the day of greatest torture in the melancholy
+series. It was now decided that the only chance of supporting her
+through what she had to suffer, was by supplying her rather freely with
+wine. This task was devolved upon me. I began about four o'clock in the
+afternoon. But for me, totally ignorant of the nature of diseases and of
+the human frame, thus to play with a life that now seemed all that was
+dear to me in the universe, was too dreadful a task. I knew neither what
+was too much, nor what was too little. Having begun, I felt compelled,
+under every disadvantage, to go on. This lasted for three hours. Towards
+the end of that time, I happened foolishly to ask the servant who came
+out of the room, "What she thought of her mistress?" she replied, "that,
+in her judgment, she was going as fast as possible." There are moments,
+when any creature that lives, has power to drive one into madness. I
+seemed to know the absurdity of this reply; but that was of no
+consequence. It added to the measure of my distraction. A little after
+seven I intreated a friend to go for Mr. Carlisle, and bring him
+instantly wherever he was to be found. He had voluntarily called on the
+patient on the preceding Saturday, and two or three times since. He had
+seen her that morning, and had been earnest in recommending the
+wine-diet. That day he dined four miles out of town, on the side of the
+metropolis, which was furthest from us. Notwithstanding this, my friend
+returned with him after three-quarters of an hour's absence. No one who
+knows my friend, will wonder either at his eagerness or success, when I
+name Mr. Basil Montagu. The sight of Mr. Carlisle thus unexpectedly,
+gave me a stronger alleviating sensation, than I thought it possible to
+experience.
+
+Mr. Carlisle left us no more from Wednesday evening, to the hour of her
+death. It was impossible to exceed his kindness and affectionate
+attention. It excited in every spectator a sentiment like adoration.
+His conduct was uniformly tender and anxious, ever upon the watch,
+observing every symptom, and eager to improve every favourable
+appearance. If skill or attention could have saved her, Mary would still
+live. In addition to Mr. Carlisle's constant presence, she had Dr.
+Fordyce and Dr. Clarke every day. She had for nurses, or rather for
+friends, watching every occasion to serve her, Mrs. Fenwick, author of
+an excellent novel, entitled Secrecy, another very kind and judicious
+lady, and a favourite female servant. I was scarcely ever out of the
+room. Four friends, Mr. Fenwick, Mr. Basil Montagu, Mr. Marshal, and Mr.
+Dyson, sat up nearly the whole of the last week of her existence in the
+house, to be dispatched, on any errand, to any part of the metropolis,
+at a moment's warning.
+
+Mr. Carlisle being in the chamber, I retired to bed for a few hours on
+Wednesday night. Towards morning he came into my room with an account
+that the patient was surprisingly better. I went instantly into the
+chamber. But I now sought to suppress every idea of hope. The greatest
+anguish I have any conception of, consists in that crushing of a
+new-born hope which I had already two or three times experienced. If
+Mary recovered, it was well, and I should see it time enough. But it was
+too mighty a thought to bear being trifled with, and turned out and
+admitted in this abrupt way.
+
+I had reason to rejoice in the firmness of my gloomy thoughts, when,
+about ten o'clock on Thursday evening, Mr. Carlisle told us to prepare
+ourselves, for we had reason to expect the fatal event every moment. To
+my thinking, she did not appear to be in that state of total exhaustion,
+which I supposed to precede death; but it is probable that death does
+not always take place by that gradual process I had pictured to myself;
+a sudden pang may accelerate his arrival. She did not die on Thursday
+night.
+
+Till now it does not appear that she had any serious thoughts of dying;
+but on Friday and Saturday, the two last days of her life, she
+occasionally spoke as if she expected it. This was however only at
+intervals; the thought did not seem to dwell upon her mind. Mr. Carlisle
+rejoiced in this. He observed, and there is great force in the
+suggestion, that there is no more pitiable object, than a sick man, that
+knows he is dying. The thought must be expected to destroy his courage,
+to co-operate with the disease, and to counteract every favourable
+effort of nature.
+
+On these two days her faculties were in too decayed a state, to be able
+to follow any train of ideas with force or any accuracy of connection.
+Her religion, as I have already shown, was not calculated to be the
+torment of a sick bed; and, in fact, during her whole illness, not one
+word of a religious cast fell from her lips.
+
+She was affectionate and compliant to the last. I observed on Friday and
+Saturday nights, that, whenever her attendants recommended to her to
+sleep, she discovered her willingness to yield, by breathing, perhaps
+for the space of a minute, in the manner of a person that sleeps, though
+the effort, from the state of her disorder, usually proved ineffectual.
+
+She was not tormented by useless contradiction. One night the servant,
+from an error in judgment, teazed her with idle expostulations, but she
+complained of it grievously, and it was corrected. "Pray, pray, do not
+let her reason with me," was her expression. Death itself is scarcely so
+dreadful to the enfeebled frame, as the monotonous importunity of nurses
+ever-lastingly repeated.
+
+Seeing that every hope was extinct, I was very desirous of obtaining
+from her any directions, that she might wish to have followed after her
+decease. Accordingly, on Saturday morning, I talked to her for a good
+while of the two children. In conformity to Mr. Carlisle's maxim of not
+impressing the idea of death, I was obliged to manage my expressions. I
+therefore affected to proceed wholly upon the ground of her having been
+very ill, and that it would be some time before she could expect to be
+well; wishing her to tell me any thing that she would choose to have
+done respecting the children, as they would now be principally under my
+care. After having repeated this idea to her in a great variety of
+forms, she at length said, with a significant tone of voice, "I know
+what you are thinking of," but added, that she had nothing to
+communicate to me upon the subject.
+
+The shivering fits had ceased entirely for the two last days. Mr.
+Carlisle observed that her continuance was almost miraculous, and he was
+on the watch for favourable appearances, believing it highly improper
+to give up all hope, and remarking, that perhaps one in a million, of
+persons in her state might possibly recover. I conceive that not one in
+a million, unites so good a constitution of body and of mind.
+
+These were the amusements of persons in the very gulph of despair. At
+six o'clock on Sunday morning, September the tenth, Mr. Carlisle called
+me from my bed to which I had retired at one, in conformity to my
+request, that I might not be left to receive all at once the
+intelligence that she was no more. She expired at twenty minutes before
+eight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her remains were deposited, on the fifteenth of September, at ten
+o'clock in the morning, in the church-yard of the parish church of St.
+Pancras, Middlesex. A few of the persons she most esteemed, attended the
+ceremony; and a plain monument is now erecting on the spot, by some of
+her friends, with the following inscription:
+
+       +------------------------------+
+       | MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN,  |
+       |          AUTHOR OF           |
+       |        A VINDICATION         |
+       |   OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.    |
+       |  BORN, XXVII APRIL MDCCLIX.  |
+       | DIED, X SEPTEMBER MDCCXCVII. |
+       +------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The loss of the world in this admirable woman, I leave to other men to
+collect; my own I well know, nor can it be improper to describe it. I do
+not here allude to the personal pleasures I enjoyed in her
+conversation: these increased every day, in proportion as we knew each
+other better, and as our mutual confidence increased. They can be
+measured only by the treasures of her mind, and the virtues of her
+heart. But this is a subject for meditation, not for words. What I
+purposed alluding to, was the improvement that I have for ever lost.
+
+We had cultivated our powers (if I may venture to use this sort of
+language) in different directions; I chiefly an attempt at logical and
+metaphysical distinction, she a taste for the picturesque. One of the
+leading passions of my mind has been an anxious desire not to be
+deceived. This has led me to view the topics of my reflection on all
+sides; and to examine and re-examine without end, the questions that
+interest me.
+
+But it was not merely (to judge at least from all the reports of my
+memory in this respect) the difference of propensities, that made the
+difference in our intellectual habits. I have been stimulated, as long
+as I can remember, by an ambition for intellectual distinction; but, as
+long as I can remember, I have been discouraged, when I have endeavoured
+to cast the sum of my intellectual value, by finding that I did not
+possess, in the degree of some other men, an intuitive perception of
+intellectual beauty. I have perhaps a strong and lively sense of the
+pleasures of the imagination; but I have seldom been right in aligning
+to them their proportionate value, but by dint of persevering
+examination, and the change and correction of my first opinions.
+
+What I wanted in this respect, Mary possessed, in a degree superior to
+any other person I ever knew. The strength of her mind lay in intuition.
+She was often right, by this means only, in matters of mere speculation.
+Her religion, her philosophy, (in both of which the errors were
+comparatively few, and the strain dignified and generous) were, as I
+have already said, the pure result of feeling and taste. She adopted one
+opinion, and rejected another, spontaneously, by a sort of tact, and the
+force of a cultivated imagination; and yet, though perhaps, in the
+strict sense of the term, she reasoned little, it is surprising what a
+degree of soundness is to be found in her determinations. But, if this
+quality was of use to her in topics that seem the proper province of
+reasoning, it was much more so in matters directly appealing to the
+intellectual taste. In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort,
+there is a kind of witchcraft; when it decides justly, it produces a
+responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense, my
+oscillation and scepticism were fixed by her boldness. When a true
+opinion emanated in this way from another mind, the conviction produced
+in my own assumed a similar character, instantaneous and firm. This
+species of intellect probably differs from the other, chiefly in the
+relation of earlier and later. What the one perceives instantaneously
+(circumstances having produced in it, either a premature attention to
+objects of this sort, or a greater boldness of decision) the other
+receives only by degrees. What it wants, seems to be nothing more than a
+minute attention to first impressions, and a just appreciation of them;
+habits that are never so effectually generated, as by the daily
+recurrence of a striking example.
+
+This light was lent to me for a very short period, and is now
+extinguished for ever!
+
+While I have described the improvement I was in the act of receiving, I
+believe I have put down the leading traits of her intellectual
+character.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
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