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MEMOIRS OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT mi - a HINTED sy arene ee Mire ae ee Marv Wollstonecraft Godwin.
MEMOIRS OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT Written by WILLIAM GODWIN And Edited with A PREFACE A SUPPLEMENT Chronologically Arranged and containing hitherto Unpublished or Uncollected Material and A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE by W. CLARK DURANT LONDON NEW YORK CONSTABLE GREENBERG €&f CO LTD PUBLISHER 1927 | M 2236849 ; = ie PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO, LTD ty a THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW. ’ J ADDRESSED PRINCIPALLY TO IBRARIANS AND TO THOSE CONCERNED WITH we \ c ¢ CHAPTER II =* ==> 5 gears CHAPTER III - = an 5 = CHAPTER IV. - Sat wiles - CHAPTER NS | cece gee gore ee te CHARTERS Vt 02 | heau ei aes eres CHAPTER Vil---—- =) Geese = CHAPTER VIII —— CHAETER Ks ues tke oe Passages Rewritten in the Second Edition - - - - 4 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS: I. 1759-1780. Childhood—Passages from Mary and Maria: A pe EEC SID wee Fanny Blood - - 11, 1780-1787. Mary on pensibittye; Sojourn: 2 in Ire- land as a Governess - - - Vv ¥ LIFE AND TIMES OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: — (1750-1803) _ aN pagish Ge ate tenn) "PREFACE TO MEMOIRS Se MGS se SS MEMOIRS: CHAPTERTED o-- hn) eg ee 112 127 138 155 NY @ CONTENTS SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS—Contd.
Til.
IV.
Vi.
Vil.
Vill, 1787-1790. Return to London—The Analytical Magazine, Correspondence with John- son—Relations with Fuseli - - - 1790-1791. Richard Price v. Edmund Burke—A Vindication of the Rights of Men - - 1791-1793. Original Stories from Real Life—A Vindication of the Rights of Woman— Visit to Paris—Meeting with jane Mary’s Friends - -..
1793-1794. Imlay’s Absence—Alone in Paris— Birth of Fanny—An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Sd sa of the French Revolution -: 1794-1795. Mary’s Letters to ee ERSaEy. to Sweden - - - 1795-1790.
Mary’s Attempted Suicide—Letters written during a short Residence in Sweden—Final Parting from Imlay - - 1796-1797.
Mary’s Meeting with Godwin and their Marriage—Mary’s Death in Childbirth—Tributes - -:.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 2 INDEX - vi PAGE 171 193 207 259 272 298 310 327 335 348 ‘TRYING TO TRACE THE SOUND, I DISCOVERED A ies LITTLE HUT, RUDELY BUILT” (after William 7 Blake) - =: - - - tae tert x bY so SAINT PANCRAS CHURCHYARD (from a painting) - “GOD CARES FoR THEM” (after William Blake) - ios “HOW DELIGHTED THE OLD BIRD WILL BE”? (after William Blake) - - E é ‘ ““LOOK, WHAT A FINE MORNING IT Is!” (after William Blake) - - 2 - é i ‘ AN UNNAMED AND UNUSED ILLUSTRATION (after William Blake) - 2 i pik A ““SHE TURNED HER EYES ON HER CRUEL MASTER”’ (after William Blake) - z:: z “THE DOG STROVE TO ATTRACT HIS ATTENTION” : (after William Blake) - - - - - ‘“* BE CALM, MY CHILD” (after William Blake) - - ““ECONOMY AND SELF-DENIAL ARE NECESSARY IN EVERY STATION TO ENABLE US TO BE GENEROUS ” (after William Blake) - - - vii “EVERY PROSPECT SMILED’? (after William Blake) '~ hi Bae ry ADVERTISEMENT Addressed Principally To Librarians And to Those Concerned with Indexing I EARNESTLY request all you gentlemen—and ladies, too, if any are present,—in your future dealings with Mary WOLisTONECRAFT, to allow her books to be indexed under her right name: under the name that appears as the writer in seven of the eleven books that she herself published.
Even the two books that Godwin published after her death are described as concerning ‘The Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.’ There is no talk of ‘ Mrs. Godwin.’
In nearly every Library one finds this entry in the Index: ‘ Wollstonecraft, Mary. See Godwin, Mrs. Mary (Wollstonecraft),’ the Index—against its better judgment I am sure—being forced to darken still further the obscurity of her actual name by concealing it between a pair of parenthesis. Notes and Queries carried even this harsh principle one step further, by 1x ADVERTISEMENT indexing a letter about this lady under the name of Shelley.’
She bore the name ‘ Godwin’ only from March 29 to September 10, 1797—less than six months, and in view of the brief period of time during which she was so known (as also of the additional circumstance that every single book she published was issued before she married Godwin) it is surely ridiculous to describe all of her books as by Mary ‘ Godwin.’
This practice, which in her case you are now following, is exactly as wrong as if you were to index Katherine Mansfield’s books under the name of ‘Murry.’ It would be difficult to find two lives, in plot and circumstance, more nearly identical than those of this talented pair. Both held unconventional views; both displayed talent at an early age; both wrote and published early books; both were stricken by the hand of death in the very prime of life and genius; and the Posthumous Works of both were collected and published by their respective husbands. Where then is the justice, I ask, of indexing the books of one under her husband’s name, and those of the other under her own?
I suppose all of you are informed how seldom Mary’s books are consulted or taken from your Libraries—yet I am willing to wager that even under the handicap which now obstructs them, they have a wider circula- tion than do those of him under whose name they are now indexed.
‘even a by Ehose ofa ks generation.
1750-1803!
Born: John Philpot Curran; Gustav, Graf von Schlabrendorf.
Born: Archibald Hamilton Rowan.
Born: John Bonnycastle (January); Fanny Burney; Thomas Chatterton.
Born: Thomas Bewick; Elizabeth Inchbald (née Simpson).
Born: Joel Barlow; J. P. Brissot (de War- ville); Gilbert Imlay; Louis XVI.; T. J. Mathias; Mme. Roland (née Manon Jeanne Phlipon); Caspar Johann Schweizer; Tally- rand.
Born: Marie Antoinette; Sarah Siddons (née Kemble).
The great tragedy at Calcutta: 146 Englishmen imprisoned in the ‘ Black Hole Prison,’ a dungeon of 18 ft. in cubic space. Only 23 survived the night.
Born: William Blake; John Philip Kemble.
Born: Lord Nelson; MRobespierre; Mary Robinson (‘ Perdita,’ née Derby). Walpole’s Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors.
Born: Mary Wollstonecraft (April 27, ‘at a farm in Epping Forest’); Robert Burns; Thomas Cooper of Manchester.
Died: W. Collins.
1 With the kind permission of Mr. Humphrey Milford of the Oxford University Press, I am using the same form he used in his splendid Oxford edition of The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt, London.
xiii ‘ TALE OMAN Dele Pay, A.D, AET. 1760 «I [Born: George Anderson; William Beck- ford; William Pitt. [Died: George II. [Macpherson’s Ossian; Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloise. 17 Otte (Marriage and Coronation of George III. {Born: Thomas Christie. Died: Samuel Richardson. 1702S [Born: Cobbett; George IV.
[Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World; Rous- seau’s Contrat Social and Emile; Smollett’s Siy Launcelot Greaves; Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England.
176 ilkes prosecuted. Meeting of Johnson eat See Bose Fuseli arrives a eygtandl and meets Joseph Johnson, bookseller.
[Born: Frederick Augustus, Duke of York; Samuel Rogers.
[Hoole’s Tasso; Smart’s A Song to David.
1764 5 Wollstonecrafts remove to ‘a farm on the Whalebone—a little way out of the Chelmsford road.’ {[Born: Ann Radcliffe (née Ward). Died: W. Hogarth.
[Gibbon begins his History; Goldsmith’s Traveller; Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.
1765 6 Wolistonecrafts again remove (Michaelmas) ‘ to the town of Barking in Essex,’ and become friends with the Gascoyne family.
[Stamp Act passed. [Died: Edward Young (Night Thoughis). [Johnson’s Shakespeare; Percy’s Reliques.
1766 7 [Stamp Act repealed. Rousseau in England (1766, 1767). Burke enters Parliament. [Born: Isaac Disraeli; T. R. Malthus. [Amory’s John Buncle; Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield; Smollett’s Tvravels through France and Italy.
1767 +8 [Born: Maria Edgeworth.
1768 9 Born: James Wollstonecraft (bapt. February 23 ‘at the Parish church of St. Margarett’s, Barking ’). . [Born: Sir Anthony Carlisle; Queen Caro- ine.
xiv LIFE AND TIMES A.D. AET. (Boswell’s Account of Corsica; Goldsmith’s Good-Natured Man; Walpole’s Historic Doubts on Richard III. and Mysterious Mother.
“In Michaelmas...Mr. Wollstonecraft again removed to a farm near Beverley in York- shire.’
1769 10 {[Born: Castlereagh; Sir Hudson Lowe; Napoleon; Wellington. [Burke’s Present State of the Nation; Letters of Junius begin. D770 v5. (Born: Sir F. Burdett; Canning; Basil Montagu; Wordsworth. Died: Akenside; Chatterton; Smart. [Burke’s Present Discontents; Goldsmith’s Deserted Village.
ily fy hho ma 9 [Born: James Montgomery; Robert Owen; Walter Scott; Sydney Smith. Died: T. Gray; Smollett. [Beattie’s Minstrel; Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling; Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker.
I772— 13 [Royal Marriage Bill passed. Born: S. T. Coleridge. 772-4 [Born: Francis Jeffrey; James Mill. [Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer; Hoole’s Antosto.
1774 15 In September Mr. Wollstonecraft removed ‘'toa house in Queen’s Row, in Hoxton, near London...Here he remained for a year and a half.’ In 1773 Godwin had entered Hoxton College as a student, and remained there five years.
[Burke’s speech on American taxation. [Born: Southey. Died: Goldsmith; Louis XV [Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther; Goldsmith’s Retaliation; Johnson’s Patriot. 1775 16 Mary meets Fanny Blood.
[American War of Independence.
[Born: Jane Austen; Lamb; Landor; M. G. (‘Monk’) Lewis; Crabb Robinson; James Smith.
[Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Taxation no Tyranny; Sheri- dan’s Rivals.
b XV A.D. AET.
1776 1777 1778 1779 1780 1781 1782 LIFE. AND TIMES 7a Linethe spring...Mr. Wollstonecraft quitted 18 19 20 21 22 23 his situation at Hoxton, and returned to his E former agricultural pursuits. The situation upon which he now fixed was in Wales.’ [Born: William Blackwood; Jane Porter. Died: Hume. [Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, i. (other vols. 1781, 1788); Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
“Wales however was Mr. Wollstonecraft’s residence for little more than a year. He returned to the neighbourhood of London...the village of Walworth.’ Say in April.
[Born: Thomas Campbell.
[Chatterton’s Rowley Poems; Sheridan’s School for Scandal; T. Warton’s Poems.
Mary goes as companion to Mrs. Dawson of Bath; remains two years.
[Horne Tooke imprisoned.
[Born: Brougham; Hazlitt; John Murray. Died: Lord Chatham; Rousseau.
[Fanny Burney’s Evelina.
[Born: Galt; T. Moore; Horace Smith. Died: Garrick.
[Cowper’s Olney Hymns; Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, vols. i-iv (v-x, 1781); Sheridan’s The Critic.
Wollstonecraft family now living at Enfield.
Mary returns on account of her mother’s rapidly declining health. Mrs. Elizabeth Wollstonecraft dies. James goes to sea. Mary goes with Fanny to Walham Green, near Fulham.
[The Gordon Riots.
[Crabbe’s Candidate; Holcroft’s Alwyn, or the Gentleman Comedian.
[Capitulation of Cornwallis.
[Born: Ebenezer Elliot; John Knowles; Vincent Novello.
[Robert Bage’s Mount Henneth; Cowper’s Anti-Thelyphthora; Crabbe’s Library; Hay- ley’s Triumphs of Temper; Holcroft’s Duplicity.
Mary nurses and attends her sister Eliza, whom she has persuaded to leave her husband, the brutal Mr. Bishop. Eliza half distracted. XV1 A.D. AET.
1783 24 1784 25 ime ZNO EME [Lamb goes to Christ’s Hospital. Mrs. Siddons’s début at Drury Lane.
[Fanny Burney’s Cecilia; Cowper’s Poems and ‘john Gilpin’; M. G. St. Jean de Crevecoeur’s Letives d'un Cultivateur americain; translated as Letters from an American Farmer; Rousseau’s Confessions.
Mary and Fanny start their school: first at Islington, soon remove to Newington Green. Here Mary meets Dr. Price, Mrs. Burgh, Rev. John Hewlett and Dr. Johnson.
[Born: Washington Irving.
[Blake’s Poetical Sketches; Crabbe’s Vil- lage; Day’s Sandford and Merton, i (ii, 1787; ili, 1789).
{[Kemble’s début in London.
[Born: Allan Cunningham; Leigh Hunt; . Sheridan Knowles; Lord Palmerston. Died: Dr. Johnson.
[Bage’s Barham Downs; Beaumarchais’s Mariage de Figaro; Beckford’s Vathek (English translation); Holcroft’s Noble Peasant.
1785 26 Fanny Blood marries Hugh Skeys (Feb. 24) and sails with him to Lisbon. Later she implores Mary to be with her in her confinement, and Mary goes. Fanny and child die together (Nov. 29); Mary sails for home ‘ about the 20th of December.’
[Prince of Wales secretly marries Mrs. Fitzherbert.
{[Born: De Quincey; Thomas Love Pea- cock; John Wilson (‘ Christopher North’).
[Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides; Cowper’s Task; The Flovence Miscellany (organ of the Della Cruscans); Hayley’s Phzlosophical, Historical, and Moral Essay on Old Maids, by a Friend to the Sisterhood; Holcroft’s Follies of the Day (from Figaro).
1786 27 Mary arrives London (January); closes school; spends the summer with the Priors at Eton; crosses with them to Ireland (end of Septem- ber); arrives Mitchelstown, co. Cork (Octo- ber), governess to the daughters of Lady Kingsborough; ‘In the winter the Kings- borough family went to Dublin.’
XV LIFE AND TIMES [Boydell begins his Shakespeare plan.
[Born: Charles Armitage Brown; Barron Field; W. J. Fox; Haydon.: Burns’s Poems; Holcroft’s trans. Caroline of Lichfield, A Novel; Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes of Johnson; Horne Tooke’s Diversions of Purley, i (ii, 1805).
1787 28 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. é In the summer Mary accompanies the Kings- boroughs to Bristol Hot-wells; writes Mary there; parts with Lady K.; arrives London in August; resides with Johnson two or three weeks; visits friends at Henley and Market Harborough same length of time; ‘ at Michaelmas...she entered upon a house in George street, on the Surrey side of Black Friar’s Bridge.’
[Impeachment of Warren Hastings.
{Born: C. Cowden Clarke; Edmund Kean; Miss Mitford; Bryan Waller Procter (“ Barry Cornwall’).
[Bage’s Fair Syrian; Beckford’s Vathek (French original); Holcroft’s Seduction, A Comedy.
1788 29 Original Stories from Real Life. Mary, A Fiction. Translation of Necker: On the Importance of Religious Opinions.: Probably in this year Mary first met Fuseli. [Bom: The Analytical Review (May); Barham; Byron; Theodore Hook; Charles Ollier; Sir R. Peel; Southwood Smith. Died: Charles Wesley. [Brissot in America. pico marries Sophia Rawlins (June 30). [Bage’s James Wallace; Gibbon completes Decline and Fall; Holcroft’s trans. Life of Baron Trenck. 1789 30 The Female Reader. [Born: Lady Blessington. [Affairs in France; States General open, May 5; National Assembly organized, June; Bastille falls, July 14; Queen’s apartment at Versailles stormed, October 6; Louis, XV1l1 A.D. AET.
LIFE AND TIMES A.D. AET.
Marie Antoinette and children go to Paris, kept under surveillance at the Tuileries.
[Dr. Price’s ‘ Discourse ’ at the Old Jewry, Nov. 4.
[Bentham’s Principles of Morals; Blake’s Songs of Innocence; Bowles’s Sonnets; British Album (Della Crusca); Erasmus Darwin’s Loves of the Plants; Holcroft’s trans. Lavater’s Physiognomy; Dr. Price’s Discourse on the Love of our Country.
1790 31 Young Grandison. Elements of Morality. A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Two editions.
{H. J. Pye succeeds T. Warton as Poet Laureate.
[Died: Benjamin Franklin; Adam Smith; T. Warton.
[Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France; Goethe’s Faust (fragment); Holcroft’s German Hotel.
1791 32 ‘In September...she removed from the house she occupied in George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store-street, Bed- ford-square.’ In this year she first meets Godwin, who records it: Nov. 13. ‘ Dine at Johnson’s with Paine, Shovet, and Wolsten- craft.’
[Affairs in France: Louis escapes from the Tuileries, June 20; captured at Varennes and taken back to Paris. National Assembly dissolves, Sept. 30; succeeded by Legislative Assembly, Oct. 1.
[Born: Charles Knight. Died: Mirabeau; Richard Price; John Wesley.
[Boswell’s Life of Johnson; Brissot’s Nouveau Voyage dans les Etats-Unis de VAmerique Septentrionale; Cowper’s Homer; Holcroft’s School for Arrogance; Mrs. Inch- bald’s Simple Story; I. d’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature; Paine’s Rights of Men (1st part).
1792 33 A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Mary meets and entertains Talleyrand, during his London visit, January to March. She pays Charles’s passage to America, for which XIX A.D. AET.
LLERE VAN DAT [IPE country he sails at the end of the year. On December 8 Mary departs for Paris, where she resides at first in the house of Mme. Fillietaz.
(Affairs in France: armed populace invade — hall of the Assembly and the Royal apartment in the Tuileries, June 20. Louis’s Swiss guard massacred, August 10. Revolutionary Com- mune now in power; Assembly has withered.
[Born: George Cruikshank; Thomas Jeffer- son Hogg; W. Howitt; Edward Irving; John Keble; Shelley; Trelawny.
[Bage’s Man as he is; Joel Barlow’s Letter to the National Convention of France and Advice to the Privileged Orders (both published by J. Johnson); Brissot’s New Travels in the United States of America, performed in 1788 by J. P. Brissot de Warville (trans. by Barlow); Holcroft’s Road to Ruin and Anna St. Ives; Imlay’s Topographical Description of the Western Territory of North America; Paine’s Rights of Men (2nd part); Rogers’s Pleasures of Memory.: 1793 34 In Marchor April Mary meets Imlay at the house fo) f Mr. Christie. Soon after she takes ‘a lodging at Neuilly, a village three miles from Paris.’ Imlay goes to Havre in September, leaving Mary in Paris.
[Revolutionary matters: Reign of Terror in France. Louis beheaded, January 21; Marie Antoinette, October 16. Brissot, with 21 Girondins, goes to the guillotine October 31. Mme. Roland is executed November 8; her husband on learning of the event falls on his own sword November 10. Count Schla- brendorf imprisoned in January; Paine im- prisoned from October 27, 1793, to October 30, 1794.
{Born: John Clare; Mrs. Hemans; Mac- ready; Joseph Severn.
[Blake’s Vision of the Daughters of Albion and America: a Prophecy; Burns’s Tam o’ Shanter, etc.; Godwin’s Political Justice; Mary Hays’ Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous; Imlay’s Emigrants, or, The History of an expatriated Family; Words- worth’s Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches.
XX Bie tAND PT EACE S.
A.D. AET, | 1794 35 An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution.
Mary goes to Havre in January, where Imlay has been living since last September. Fanny Imlay born, May 14 (d. October 11, 1816). In September Imlay goes to London; Mary, soon after his departure, returns to Paris. Rowan is in Paris from June 1794 to April 1795- [Last reports from France: Robespierre made president of the Convention, June 4; guillotined July 26; with his death Reign of Terror practically over.
{Holcroft and Horne Tooke tried for high treason: acquitted.
{Born: J. G. Lockhart. Died: Gibbon., [Barlow’s Conspiracy of Kings: A Poem; Blake’s Songs of Experience; Blake’s Europe; a Prophecy and The [First] Book of Urizen; Coleridge and Southey’s Fall of Robespierre; Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden; Gifford’s Baviad; Godwin’s Caleb Wiliams; Holcroft’s Love’s Frailties and Adventures of Hugh Trevor; T. J. Mathias’s Pursuits of Literature; Paine’s Age of Reason; Mrs. Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho; Southey’s Poems (with Robert Lovell).
1795 36 In April, Mary, at Imlay’s request, goes to England; leaving her house in Havre only a few days before Rowan takes shelter there while waiting for a vessel to carry him to Philadelphia. She finds Imlay living with an ‘actress from a strolling company of players.’ She lives ‘ for about seven weeks, from the 16th April to the 6th June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided for her.’ She makes an attempt at suicide, but it was “ perhaps owing to his activity and representa- tions, that her life was, at this time, saved.’ Imlay engages her as his attorney to straighten out his tangled business affairs in Scandinavia. About the 27th of May (as Kegan Paul dates, in brackets, one of her letters) she is in Hull, waiting for the vessel which will take her to Sweden. Adverse winds delay their start until June 21. She travels through Sweden, XX1 LERE UND: -TINles Norway and Denmark, most of the way accompanied by Fanny and her nurse (a: Frenchwoman), finishing the journey at Copenhagen, Hamburg and Altona, where she arrived September 25. On October 4, she had arrived at Dover, and when she reached London she found Imlay had a new mistress. A few days later she again attempted suicide: this time throwing herself from Putney Bridge into the Thames, but was saved. For a while she lives with Mrs. Christie in Finsbury- square. In November, Imlay and his new paramour go to Paris for three months. Mary takes a ‘ lodging in Finsbury-place, where, for some time, she saw scarcely any one but Mrs. Christie.’
(Warren Hastings acquitted. Prince of Wales marries Caroline of Brunswick.
[Born: Thomas Arnold; Carlyle; Darley; Keats; Talfourd.
[Died: Boswell.
[Burger’s Lenore (trans. H. J. Pye, P.L.; Blake’s designs for this, 1796); Gifford’s Maeviad; Holcroft’s Narrative of Facts, Letter to the Rt. Hon. Wm. Windham and Deserted Daughter; Landor’s Poems.
1796 37 Letters written during a shori Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
In January she finished a comedy, which Godwin two years later destroyed. In thesame month her acquaintance with Godwin is renewed. She sees Imlay on his return in February, and spends the month of March with friends in Berkshire. ‘ Once after this...she saw Mr. Imlay...by accident upon the New Road; he alighted from his horse and walked with her for some time; and the rencounter passed.’ On April 14 she called upon Godwin in Somers Town, ‘ she having, since her return [from Berkshire], taken a lodging in Cumming- street, Pentonville, at no great distance from ’ Godwin’s habitation.’
{Born: Princess Charlotte; Hartley Coleridge; J. Hamilton Reynolds. Died: George Anderson; Burns; Thomas Christie.
XXll A.D. AET.
LIFE AND TIMES A.D. AET.
sprong: ory Man as he is not; Coleridge’s Poems; Miss Edgeworth’s Parent’s Assistant; Mary Hays’s Memoirs of Emma Courtney; Holcroft’s Man of Ten Thousand and trans. of Stolberg’s Travels; Mrs. Inchbald’s Nature and Art; Southey’s Joan of Arc; Lt.-Col. Stedman’s Narrative of an Expedition against the revolted Negroes in the Colony of Surinam, published by J. Johnson, with several plates engraved by Blake after Stedman, and the names of Blake and Holcroft in the list of subscribers; James White’s Falstaff’s Letters.
1797 38 The marriage of Mary and Godwin took place at Old St. Pancras Church, March 29, and was announced at ‘the commencement of April.’ Mary was delivered of a daughter, August 30, and died September 10. She was buried in St. Pancras Church-yard on the 15th.
[Died: Burke; Horace Walpole; John Wilkes.
[Anti-Jacobin (edited by W. Gifford); Coleridge’s, Lamb’s and Lloyd’s Poems; Godwin’s Engquivey; Dr. Moore’s Edward; Mrs. Radclifie’s The Italian; Southey’s Poems.
1798 — Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Posthumous Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
[The Battle of the Nile. Irish Rebellion.
{Coleridge and Hazlitt meet. Coleridge and Wordsworth go to Germany.
{Joanna Baillie’s Plays on the Passions (1798, 1802, 1812); Coleridge and Words- worth’s Lyrical Ballads; Holcroft’s Knave or not? He’s much to blame, and Inquisitor; Landor’s Gebiy; Malthus’s On Population.
1799 — [Born: T. Hood; Mary Howitt; Mrs. Procter (née Skepper).
[Died: The Analytical Review (June); George Washington.
[Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope; Godwin’s St. Leon: Mary Hays’s Victim of Prejudice; Anna Seward’s Sonnets.
XXIl1 180l — 1802. — 1803. — LIFE ANDTIMES: [Union of England and Ireland. __ [Born: Macaulay; Pusey; Sir Henry Taylor; Charles Wells.: [Died: Cowper; Mary Robinson. ~ [Bloomfield’s Farmer’s Boy; Coleridge and Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, 2nd edition; Christabel, Part II written; Miss Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent; Gifford’s Epistle to Peter Pindar; Moore’s Anacreon; Schiller’s Wallen- stein (and Coleridge’s translation).
English Exercises. By Jane Gardiner. (11 letters by Mary.) [Battles of the Baltic and Copenhagen. [Born: J. H. Newman; Lord Shaftesbury. Died: Robert Bage; Lavater. [Holcroft’s Deaf and Dumb, and trans. Herman and Dorothea; Moore’s Poems of Thomas Little; Southey’s Thalaba.
[Peace of Amiens.
[Born: Letitia E. Landon (‘L.E.L.’); Harriet Martineau.: [Died: Erasmus Darwin; George Fordyce.
[Cobbett’s Political Register, i; Edinburgh Review, i; Gifford’s Juvenal; MHolcroft’s Tale of Mystery; WLandor’s Poetry; Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary (abridgement).
(War with France renewed.
[Born: Thomas Lovell Beddoes; Emerson; R. H. Horne; Douglas Jerrold; Bulwer Lytton.
[Died: Alfieri; Beattie.
[A Defence of the Character and Conduct of the late Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (anony- mous); Coleridge’s Poems; MHayley’s Life of Cowper; Mary Hays’s Female Biography, ov Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of all Ages and Countries. (Not a mention of her friend, Mary Wollstonecraft, although she includes Sappho, Charlotte Corday, Mrs. Chapone, Ninon de l’Enclos, of whom she relates many amours; Mrs. Mac- aulay; and allots over 200 pp. to Mary’s friend, Mme. Roland.)
XXIV . j 4 PREFACE TO MEMOIRS She creates at her will a little moony night and a silence With spaces of sweet gardens and a tent of elegant beauty: Closed in by a sandy desart and a night of stars shining, And a little tender moon and hovering angels on the wing. WILLIAM BLAKE.
WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836), philosopher and novelist, came into contemporary pro- minence by what was practically his first published work: An Enquiry Concerning Political Fustice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness.
Kegan Paul, Godwin’s biographer, says of the book: The publication of Political Fustice marked an epoch in English thought. It was coincident with the rise of a school of philosophical radicals, and in large measure placed in clear words the views of that school, on many, though perhaps not all, of the subjects treated.
In the following year Godwin gained another wide popularity, though of a different kind. In 1794 was published a novel in three volumes—Things as They are: Or Caleb 1 Two volumes, 1793. XXV PREFACE TO MEMOIRS Williams—a book highly praised by contemporary critics, as well as, later, by Hazlitt and Scott. It went through many subsequent editions, under the title Caleb Williams.
But of all Godwin’s books the two which possess the best chance of survival are, per- haps, the pleasant little volume entitled Essay on Sepulchres* and Memoirs of the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
William Bates, in The Maclise Portratt Gallery, remarks of the former: A charming little book of Godwin’s is his Essay on Sepulchres. This was the favourite of Charles Lamb, who affronted the author by telling him that it was ‘ better than Hervey but inferior to Sir Thomas Browne.’ Lamb calls it ‘a pretty absurd book’; and Talfourd says of the book that it is ‘quite chimerical in itself, but accompanied with solemn and touching musings on life and death, and fame, embodied in a style of singular refinement and beauty.’
This essay Mary Godwin would take with her in 1814 to read beside her mother’s grave in St. Pancras Churchyard.
But more abiding even than his Essay on Sepulchres will be the Memoir of that earlier Mary, to whose sweet reputation this present volume is wholly dedicated. The book is * Essay / on / Sepulchres; / Or, / A Proposal for erecting some Memorial of the Illustrious / Dead in all Ages on the Spot / Where their Remains have / been Interred. / By William Godwin. / Not one of these shall perish. / The ye / London: / Printed for W, Miller, Albemarle Street. / 1809.
XXV1 im." *-2* PREFACE TO MEMOIRS written in Godwin’s best and most delightful style—frank, candid and simple; more im- portantly, it concerns a noble and lovely woman, and in its pages her personality blossoms afresh.
Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT—heroine of this book and herself the writer of an important part of it—possessed, together with her brilliant intellect, great personal charm. I like to think that the lovely lines of Blake’s quoted at the beginning of this Preface were written about her.
Let us allow a few contemporary, and some later friends, to express their views of her.
Count von Schlabrendorf, whom she visited and comforted while he was in a Paris prison in 1793, was the most enthusiastic of all Mary’s admirers, and his testimony deserves first place: Mary was the noblest, purest and most intelligent woman I have ever met. I knew her well...Ma was...of a charming grace. Her face, so full of expression, presented a style of beauty beyond that of merely regular features. There was enchant- ment in her glance, her voice, and her movement...She enthralled me more and more. Not until after she had left Paris, did I realise that I loved her.
Next speaks that pretty, impulsive Amelia Alderson, who, after having avoided the advances of William Godwin was to become the wife of John Opie. She first met Mary XXVil PREFACE TO MEMOIRS (at that time still known to her friends as Mrs. Imlay) in the spring of 1796, and wrote to her that the first sight of all long expected and desired things had always proved to be disappointing—‘ except those of Mrs. Imlay and the Cumberland Lakes!’
Mrs. Siddons, about the same time, after reading Mary’s recently published Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, etc., wrote to her then friend Godwin that the book was read by no one in possession of ‘more reciprocity of feeling, or more deeply impressed by the author’s extraordinary powers.’
The next year, in the month that Mary passed on to happier spheres, The Monthly Magazine printed this notice by her faithful friend and companion—Mary Hays: This extraordinary woman, no less distinguished by admirable talents and a masculine understanding than by active humanity, exquisite sensibility, and endearing qualities of heart, commanding the respect and winning the affections of all who were favoured with her friendship and confidence, or who were within the sphere of her influence, may justly be considered as a public loss...A wife, a mother, surrounded by tender, admiring, intelligent friends, her heart expanded, her powers acquired new vigour, life brightened, and futurity opened a prospect beaming with hope and promise. At this interesting period, a fatal coincidence of events blasted every fair and fond expectation; and death, attended with more than its accustomed pangs and terrors, tore from the hapless offspring, XXViii — “ PREFACE TO MEMOTRS the tender husband, the numerous and zealous friends, from society, and from the world, the mother, wife, beloved companion, the ornament of her sex, the enlightened advocate of freedom, and the benevolent friend of human kind.
‘Not friends alone such obsequies deplore, They make mankind the mourners, carry sighs Far as the fatal fame can make its way.’
Mary Hays did not like the printing of this eulogy without her signature affixed, and wrote this letter to the magazine, which was printed in the October number (4: 245): To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.
SIR, To the paragraph in your Magazine for Septem- ber, announcing the decease of Mrs. Gopwin, it was my desire and intention to have afhxed my name, as a public testimony of respect and affection for my late admirable friend. But by some mis- conception this intention appears to have been defeated. Farther particulars respecting this extraordinary woman, I did not think myself at liberty to add, as they will probably, within a short period, be given to the public by a far abler hand.
To have been ranked among the number of her distinguished friends, to have awakened kindness in a heart exquisitely capable of every affectionate sympathy, to have had an opportunity of pouring the balm of tenderness into that heart, when lacerated by a sense of undeserved injury and calumny, are among the circumstances of my life, which I shall ever remember with equal pride and pleasure.
Oct=10,.5 707: Mary Hays.
XX1X PREFACE TO MEMOIRS In October The Gentleman’s Magazine printed the only kind words that Tory paper ever said about her. It called her: