Original Stories from Real Life

But having said this against the Original Stories, I have said all, for as the casket enshrining Mrs. Mason its value remains unassailable. It was well for Mrs. Mason that Mary Wollstone-X EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION craft set her on paper in 1788. Had she waited until the Vindkat'wn of the Rights of Women was written in 1792 (and dedicated to Talleyrand), had she waited until little Fainiy Imlay was bom into a stony world, Mrs. Mason would never have been. Because it is the likes of Mrs. Mason that keep the rights of women, as Mary Wollstonecraft saw them, in the background, and demand the production of marriage lines. Mrs. Mason would have been the first to regret the unwomanliness of the publication both of the book and of the baby. The Preface to this book suggests that Mary Wollstonecraft was at that time, before she had loved and lost and suffered, something of a Mrs. Mason herself; but Mrs. Mason remained Masonic to the end, whereas poor Mary's heart and mind were always in conflict. She may have loved pure Reason, but she loved Gilbert Imlay too. And this Mrs. Mason never did, Mrs. Mason never nods. Her tact, her mental reaction, her confidence, her sense of duty and knowledge of duty, are alike marvellous. When the higher mercy compels her to end a wounded lark's misery by putting her foot on its head, she ' turns her own the other way'. At the close of a walk during which her charges have been ' rational ', she shakes hands with them. Her highest praise to Mary, after the fruit-picking incident on page 40, is to call her * my friend ' ; ' and she deserved the name,' adds the lady, ' for she was no longer a child.' No child could be her friend.…