William Godwin - Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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William Godwin >> Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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6 [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.
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