political polemics in the language, and has not had the attention it deserves. Her biographers do not often quote it: one wonders if they have ever read it. For sheer virility and grip of her verbal instruments it is probably the finest of her works. Some of her sentences have the quality of a sword- edge, and they flash with the rapidity of a practised duellist...Mary Wollstonecraft, lately a distressed school mistress, who was of interest to few people except her creditors, danced the mighty Edmund Burke through the air as one would a toy balloon. She tossed him up with contemptuous satire, and pulled him down again by the string of ruthless logic. Her essay, though now too much forgotten, at that time struck home.* Mary published two other books in 1790—the first and very scarce two-volume edition of Elements of Morality, which Mary chose for translating as an aid in learning German; and an edition of Young Grandison, Translated from the Dutch of Madame de Cambon, with Alterations and Improvements. Her share in this book was confined to the ‘ Alterations and Improvements,’ although she is reported practi- cally to have re-written the book in carrying out her emendations. The translation had already been done by Rev. John Hall, Minister of the Scottish Church in Rotterdam.
The relative order of publication of these works I cannot determine, for I have found no review or notice of the Elements in its original form. The book 4 Mary Wollstonecraft | A Study in Economics and Ro- mance | By G. R. Stirling Taylor / Illustrated with Portraits in Photogravure / London: / Martin Secker / Number Five John Street Adelphi / mcmx1.
199 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS — itself is so wholly unknown that perhaps, like Blake’s French Revolution, it was set up in type by Johnson in 1791, and only one copy of proofs struck off. Young Grandison appeared probably in September. _ From the reviews it seems to have been an interesting work for juvenile readers, but it was never reprinted.
I quote a passage from Mary’s ‘Introductory Address to Parents’ in Elements of Morality, because it provoked several adverse criticisms from hostile Tory periodicals, and gave Thomas Taylor, ‘ the Platonist,’ an excuse for his scurrilous parody A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes.
In the course of the book, I have, I hope, treated all moral subjects with which children ought to be acquainted, excepting one.
I would willingly have said something of chastity and impurity; for impurity is now spread so far, that even children are infected; and by it the seeds of every virtue, as well as the germ of their posterity, which the Creator has implanted in them for wise purposes, are weakened or destroyed. I am thoroughly persuaded that the most efficacious method to root out this dreadful evil, which poisons the source of human happiness, would be to speak to children of the organs of generation as freely as we speak of the other parts of the body, and explain to them the noble use which they were designed for, and how they may be injured.
I have conversed with the most sensible school- masters on this subject, and they have confirmed me in my opinion; but I also know that my conviction will not have sufficient weight with the public to conquer long-fostered prejudices, and that many people would have been shocked at tales, which might early in life have accustomed their 200 ea ee oo.
200 ea ee oo.
“ELEMENTS OF MORALITY” children to see the dreadful consequences of incon- tinence; I have therefore been induced to leave them out, lest my book should be entirely useless to many parents and teachers.® It may have been this passage which led the American publishers, J. Hoff and H. Kammerer, Jun., to seek permission to print from a high authority, before they published in two volumes the 1796 Philadelphia edition. They printed in the first volume of this edition the following amusing letter: University of Pennsylvania, March II, 1796.
HavInG attentively perused the Books which you put into our hands a few weeks ago, entitled ‘Elements of Morality,’ etc., by C. G. Salzmann, we are of opinion that you will run no risk in reprinting it. It is certainly a valuable work; and cannot fail to be acceptable to all parents, who are aware of the importance of cultivating and improving the affections, as well as the understanding, of their children.
With due respect, we are, Sir, yours, etc., Joun AnpDreEws, D.D., Vice Provost and Professor of Moral Philosophy.
James Davipson, A.M., Professor of the Latin and Greek Languages.
Ropert Patterson, A.M., Professor of Mathematics.
Witu1am Rocers, D.D., Professor of English and Belles Lettres.
Sir, A note in Mr. Johnson’s autograph, which was included with the Shelley MS., and thence printed by 5 Elements of Morality, 3 vols. 1791: i. pp. xiii, xiv in ‘ Introductory Address to Parents.’
201 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS Kegan Paul,® tells in a few words much about Mary at this epoch and her benevolence.
She entered upon her house in George St. at Michaelmas 1787, and continued there till Michael- mas 1791.
Here she wrote the Rights of Woman. A trans-. lation from the Dutch of Young Grandison was put; into her hands, which she almost re-wrote. She translated Necker on Religious Opinions, compiled the Female Reader, introducing some original pieces, and prefixed a preface to it. She began a novel under the title of the Cave of Fancy, wrote many articles in the Analytical Review:—Answer to Burke, Elements of Morality from the German, which she first studied here, and a translation of Lavater’s Physiognomy from the French.
Her brothers and sisters were occasionally with her when they were unsettled. Hers was_ their home; and she took every method to improve and prepare them for respectable situations. She consulted with Mr. Barlow,’ on the probability of getting a farm in America for Charles, which was determined upon, and he was placed with a farmer here for instruction. He left England the latter end of 1792. James, who had been at sea, was sent to Woolwich for a few months to be under Mr. Bonny- castle, and afterwards on board Lord Hood’s fleet as a midshipman, where he was presently made a lieutenant. Much of the instruction which all of them obtained was obtained under her own roof, and most, if not all, of the situations which her sisters procured were by her exertions. In the beginning of 1788 she sent Everina to Paris for improvement in the language.
6 Wiliam Godwin, i. 193, 4. 7 Joel Barlow, 1754-1812, an account of whom will be given later. 202 CHARLES WOLLSTONECRAFT During her stay in George Street she spent many of her afternoons and most of her evenings with me. She was incapable of disguise. Whatever % was the state of her mind, it appeared when she i entered, and the tone of conversation might easily a be guessed. When harassed, which was very often ys the case, she was relieved by unbosoming herself, and generally returned home calm, frequently in spirits. ¢ In a part of this period, which certainly was the t most active of her life, she had the care of her father’s estate, which was attended with no little trouble to both of us. She could not during this time, I think, expend less than £200 on her brothers and sisters. At Michaelmas 1791 she went to Store Street, and continued till December 1792. She then went to Paris.
Johnson’s reference to Mary’s brothers encourages me to comment, in passing, on the wife of one of them who also was a Mary Wollstonecraft.
Charles, her second brother, was sent by Mary to America towards the end of the year 1792, and first engaged in farming somewhere near Philadelphia. When Mary’s friend, the expatriated Irishman, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, arrived in Philadelphia in the summer of 1795 he soon decided to go to Wilmington, and started a calico printing mill near that place, in which business Charles joined him. In 1798 he enlisted in the United States Army.
Heitman’s Historical Register ® (unauthorised but reliable), gives a summary account of his service: 8 Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, from its Organization, Sept. 29, 1789, to March 2, 1903. By Francis B. Heitman. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903.
203 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS Wollstonecraft, Charles. Born in England; en- listed from Pennsylvania. 2d It. artillery and engineers, 4 June 1798; artillery, 1 April 1802; captain 15 March 1805; transferred to artillery corps 12 May 1814; brevet major 15 March 1815 4 for 10 years faithful service in one grade; died 4 28 September 1817. 3 But it is in a quaint old volume, entitled Female Biography; Containing Notices of Distinguished Women in Different Nations and Ages (Boston, 1833), that I find reference to Charles Wollstonecraft’s wife. This book is a compilation by one Samuel Lorenzo Knapp (1783-1838), also the author of anonymous Letters of Shahcoolon, A Hindo (Boston, 1802), which volume contains many scurrilous references to our much maligned heroine.
In Knapp’s Female Biography! found an account of ‘Mary Wollstonecraft,’ andI expected (not unnaturally) a somewhat garbled record of my heroine’s career. But the notice proved to be concerned, not with her but with her sister-in-law! This lady had probably heard so much from her husband about his sister that she apparently moulded herself into a sort of pathetic caricature of the original. Knapp says: Mary Wo tstoncrart, the wife of Major Wolston- craft, of the United States Army, was the daughter of a New England clergyman. She was the second wife of the major, he having been divorced from the first. They lived together in New Orleans several years before the major’s death; and Mary, among other duties, was devoted to the education of a daughter of his, by his first wife...Her husband...was thought to be a man of great | 204 Fr i % Je he Ree al il 3 3 wealth, but which was in a degree lost by his death; for when a speculator of many concerns dies suddenly, the thousand things which drop from his hands are with difficulty gathered up by any one, however sagacious; but bad as it was, she realized something...Mrs. Wollstonecraft went back to her home in New England, but ‘found the winters too severe for a constitution so long accustomed to warmer suns, and she made purchase of estates, and took up her resi- dence in the island of Cuba.’ From here ‘She wrote a series of letters upon Cuba, evincing more knowledge of the soil, climate, productions, manners and customs of the inhabitants, than any other one who has written on the subject...Mrs. Wolstonecraft held a most vigorous pen, as the letters from Cuba, and the article on the ‘‘ Rights of Women,” published in the Boston Monthly Magazine, in 1825, will fully show. She had no sympathy in the religious sentiments of Mary Wolstonecraft the wife of Godwin, her husband’s sister, but she wrote on the rights of women, with quite as much force, and more justice. Seldom have we read an article of more pith and point than the one we allude to from her pen.’ ® Knapp goes on to say she regretted ‘ that she must leave this world before she could do some good in 9Mr. Walter B. Briggs, Assistant Librarian, Harvard College Library, kindly informs me that this article, under the title ‘The National Rights of Woman,’ signed ‘D’Anville,’ actually appeared in the number of the Boston Monthly Magazine for August 1825 (1: 126-35); and also informs me that Knapp himself was the editor and pro- prietor of this periodical, which expired, after fourteen numbers, in July 1826. This fact probably indicates that the article was printed rather out of friendship than from any literary merit.
205 TDDT CUP Taal ‘ maar in ihe most eet and plain: ida? Mrs. W. died a few years since in Cuba.’
— 200 UNNAMED AND UX USED ILLUSTR ATION FOR, “ORIGINAL STOR JES FROM REAL LIFE” From the original draswing by William Blake (cf. below, pp. 207-11) V 1791-1793 ORIGINAL STORIES FROM REAL LIFE—A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN— “VISIT TO PARIS—MEETING WITH IMLAY— MARY’S FRIENDS.
For the year 1791 I have found only three incidents in which Mary was concerned. ‘In September...she removed from the house she occupied in George Street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store Street, Bedford Square.’ In November she first met Godwin. He has recorded this meeting in Memoirs: and at the time it occurred he made this entry in his diary: Nov. 13. Su. Correct. Dyson and Dibdin call; talk of virtue and disinterest. Dine at Johnson’s with Paine, Shovet and Wolstencraft; talk of monarchy, Tooke, Johnson, Voltaire, pursuits and religion. Sup at Holcroft’s.
The third happening was the new issue of Original Stories from Real Life, adorned for the first time with Blake’s six illustrations, designed and engraved by himself.
Of the ten original drawings reproduced in the 207 \ SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS present volume only five served as models for the engravings published in this 1791 edition of Original Stories. The sixth (that facing p. 114—the graceful figure approaching the little hut in which the harper plays 1) was made from an original that does not form part of Mr. Newton’s series and has already been reproduced, though only as a woodcut, by Gilchrist in his Life of William Blake (see above, p. 3).
Gilchrist speaks depreciatingly of this little volume both in respect to the text and the engravings. He claims that it is written in the style of ‘the then prevailing Berquin School,’ and the design he calls ‘naive and crude.’ They ‘can hardly be pronounced a successful competition with Stothard,’ though ‘ traces of a higher feeling are visible in the graceful female forms—benevolent heroine, or despairing, famished peasant group.’ ‘The artist,’ he says, ‘moves in constraint, and the accessories of these domestic scenes are as simply generalised as a child’s. He also remarks that ‘ the book itself never went to a second edition.’ Yet the book, so far as text is concerned, was even then in its second printing, and before Gilchrist wrote it had been reprinted eight different times in London, Paris, Dublin and Chiswick. He goes on: More designs appear to have been made for this little work than were found available, and some of 1 Mr. S. Foster Damon, in William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols, says of this picture: ‘ When Mrs. Mason, that early and terrible example of the British matron, comes upon an old Welsh harper by night, Blake could not be literal. Something in the stilted prose stirred his poetic sense; so he changed the solid Mrs. Mason to a slender, ethereal girl wandering in a starlit garden, while the old man appeared as a radiant angel harping among Gothic ruins.’
208 a i = += = =e et ay tele tN eo OR TES the best were among the rejected. It may interest the reader to have a sample of Blake in this com- paratively humble department. Possessing most of the original drawings, we therefore give a print from one. Here he displayed, as a wood-cut, the plate numbered V. in the following group. His comment on this picture is there given.
I shall give briefly the passages in Original Stories which Blake intended these drawings to illustrate.
I Every prospect smiled.
ONE fine morning in spring, some time after Mary and Caroline were settled in their new abode, Mrs. Mason proposed a walk before breakfast, a custom she wished to teach imperceptibly, by rendering it amusing.
The sun had scarcely dispelled the dew that hung on every blade of grass, and filled the half-shut flowers; every prospect smiled...(Chap. I. p. (1) ).
This picture was not engraved for Original Stories. It is here first reproduced (see above, p. 137).
II God cares for them...Mary began to be attentive, and quickly followed Mrs. Mason’s example, and allowed a caterpillar and a spider to creep on her hand. You find them, she rejoined, very harmless; but a great number would destroy our vegetables and fruit; so birds are permitted to eat them, as we feed on animals, and in spring there are always more than at any other season of the year, to furnish food for M.W. 209 fe) SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS the young broods.—Half convinced, Mary said, but worms are of little consequence in the world. Yet, replied Mrs. Mason, God cares for them...(Chap. I. pp. 4, 5.)
This drawing was not engraved for Original Stories. It is one of the two that Geoffrey Keynes reproduced in his Bibliography of William Blake, published for the Grolier Club (see above, p. 155).
Ill How delighted the old bird will be.
The party of three had met a boy with a nest in his hand; they saw the mother bird perched on a tree near by, uttering ‘ intelligible tones of anguish,’ and— Caroline called him, and taking sixpence out of her little purse, offered to give it to him for the nest, if he would shew her where he had taken it from. The boy consented, and away ran Caroline to replace it—crying all the way, how delighted the old bird will be to find her brood again...(Chap. I. p- 9.)
This drawing was not engraved for Original Stories. It is the second drawing that Geoffrey Keynes reproduced in his Bibliography of William Blake (see above, p. 171).
IV Look, what a fine morning it is—Insects, Birds and Animals are all enjoying existence.
‘Now,’ said Mrs. Mason, ‘we will return to breakfast; give me your hands, my little girls, you have done good this morning, you have acted like rational creatures.
210 + z 4 ‘iy Mths LIN A Le OO) Ru ds Oo Look, what a fine morning it is. Insects, birds, and animals, are all enjoying this sweet day. Thank God for permitting me to see it, and for giving you an understanding which teaches you that you ought, by doing good, to imitate him. (Chap. I. p. 10.)
This Blake engraved for the frontispiece of Original Stories, where it bears the above caption (see above, p- 193). V For this drawing I can neither supply chapter nor verse. I have searched thoroughly through every tragic incident related in these Stories—and they are many—without finding one that this drawing can be supposed to interpret. I am of the firm opinion that this is a product of Blake’s own imagination, and that he meant it to bear the same relation to the beautiful group of three graceful figures shown in IV. preceding that his Songs of Experience do to his Songs of Innocence, even if he has brought in a boy changeling.
Gilchrist says of it: There is...a terrible extremity of voiceless despair in the upturned face of the principal figure, which perhaps no hand but that of him who conceived it could adequately reproduce.
This drawing was not engraved for Original Stories. Gilchrist reproduced it as a wood-cut in his Life of William Blake, 1863, i. 91 (see above, p. 207).
211 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS VI She turned her eyes on her cruel master.
A bitch had once all her litter stolen from her, and drowned in a neighbouring brook; she sought them out, and brought them one by one, laid them © at the feet of her cruel master;—and looking wistfully at them for some time, in dumb anguish, turning her eyes on the destroyer, she expired! (Chap. II. p. 18.)
This drawing was not engraved for Original Stories, and is here first reproduced (see below, p. 259).
Vil The Dog strove to attract his attention. He said, Thou wilt not leave me.
This is for the story of ‘crazy Robin,’ who was pursued by misfortune. ‘Several of his children died in their infancy, and...one misfortune had followed another till he had sunk under their accumu- lated weight.’ His wife caught cold; and through neglect, and her want of proper nourish- ment, her illness turned to a putrid fever; which two of the children caught from her, and died with her. The two who were left, Jacky and Nancy, went to their father, and took with them a cur dog, that had long shared their frugal meals.
The children begged in the day, and at night slept with their wretched father. Poverty and dirt soon robbed their cheeks of the roses which the country air made bloom with a peculiar freshness; so that they soon caught a jail fever, and died. The poor father, who was now bereft of all his children, hung over their bed in speechless anguish; 212 PM ee PNY Le ORY E SS not a groan or a tear escaped from him, whilst he stood, two or three hours, in the same attitude, looking at the dead bodies of his little darlings. The dog licked his hands, and strove to attract his attention; but for awhile he seemed not to observe his caresses; when he did, he said mourn- fully, thou wilt not leave me—and then he began to laugh. (Chap. Ill. pp. 23, 4.)
Blake engraved this for Original Stories. It faces p. 24 (see below, p. 272).
VI Indeed we are very happy!
This story is for the story of ‘honest Jack, the sailor’ who ‘ lost the use of his limbs’ from ‘ standing in the water so long’ after the ship has been ‘ dashed against the rocks.’
We catch fish for Madam [Mason], and I watch for a storm, hoping some time or other to be as kind to a poor perishing soul as she has been to me. Indeed we are very happy—I might now have been begging about the streets, but for Madam, God bless her. (Chap. VIII. p. 74.)
Blake engraved this for Original Stories. It faces p. 74 (see below, p. 298).
IX Be calm, my child, remember that you must do all the good you can the present day.
But the night will overtake us, we must make haste home. Give me your hand, Mary, you tremble; surely I need not desire you to remember this story—Be calm, my child, and remember that you must attend to trifles; do all the good you can 213 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS the present day, nay hour, if you would keep your conscience clear. This circumspection may not produce dazzling actions, nor will your silent virtue — be supported by human applause; but your Father, who seeth in secret, will reward you.
(Chap. X. p. 94.) Blake engraved this for Original Stories. It faces p. 94 (see below, p. 310).
/ Xx Economy and self-denial are necessary, in every station, to enable us to be generous.
Mrs. Mason desired the woman to call on her the next day, and they left the family cheered by their bounty.
Caroline expected the reproof that soon proceeded from the mouth of her true friend. I am glad that this accident has occured (sic), to prove to you that prodigality and generosity are incompatible. Economy (sic) and self-denial are necessary in every station, to enable us to be generous, and to act conformably to the rules, of justice. (Chap. XXIV. p. 173.)
Blake engraved this for Original Stories. It faces p. 173 (see below, p. 327).
Mary’s next, and best known book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, may have been issued as early as December 1791, for the Monthly Review noticed it in January. But I am inclined to think that it did not actually appear until 1792.
214 “THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN" Her dedication ‘To M. Talleyrand-Perigord, Late Bishop of Autun,’ begins: Sir, Havine read with great pleasure a pamphlet, which you have lately published, on National Education, I dedicate this volume to you—the first dedication I have ever written, to induce you to read it with attention...
Curiously enough, Talleyrand himself was in England between January and March 1792, and while he was in London Mary entertained him in her new ‘ large and commodious apartment’ in Bedford Square, and served him tea and wine. It would be interesting reading if Mary had kept some notes of their con- versation; but she never mentions the meeting. John Knowles is the only authority for it.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman has been reprinted sixteen times, the latest in 1892—a round century after its first appearance—and since copies are available at any bookshop or library, I propose to omit quotations altogether, confining any mention of the book to a few contemporary and later opinions.
First, the Mrs. Trimmer whom Mary had found ‘a truly respectable woman.’ Mrs. Trimmer’s husband died on May 15, 1792, and on the 12th July she wrote to a friend: Of The Rights of Woman I can say nothing more than that I found so much happiness in having a husband to assist me in forming a proper judg- ment and in taking upon him the chief labour of providing for a family that I never wished for a further degree of liberty or consequence than I enjoyed. Miss Woolstonecraft is a woman of 215 & OP Pie EVEN ie Tes MEMOIRS extraordinary abilities, I confess; I cannot help thinking they might be employed to more advantage to society. But my recent misfortune has almost obliterated the remembrance of the contents of her book.
Hannah More, though without a husband to assist her ‘in forming a proper judgment,’ had very much the same idea. She wrote to Horace Walpole: I have been much pestered to read the Rights of Woman, but am invincibly resolved not to do it. Of all jargon, I hate metaphysical jargon; beside, there is something fantastic and absurd in the very title. How many ways there are of being ridi- culous! I am sure I have as much liberty as I can make good use of, now am an old maid; and when I was a young one, I had, I dare say, more than was good for me...To be unstable and capricious, I really think, is but too characteristic of our sex; and there is, perhaps, no animal so much indebted to subordination for its good behaviour as woman.
Pe er ey ae Horace Walpole agreed. He replied to Hannah More, on August 21, 1792: I cannot help venting a little of what haunts me. But it is better to thank Providence for the tran- quillity and happiness we have in this Country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have in our bosom, the Paines, the Tookes, and the Woolstone- crafts. I am glad you have not read the tract of the last-mentioned writer. I would not look at it, though assured it contains neither metaphysics nor politics; but as she entered the lists in the latter, and borrowed her title from the demon’s book, which aimed at spreading the wrongs of men, she is excommunicated from the pale of my library. We have had enough of new systems, and the world a great deal too much already...216 STHE RIGHTS OF -WOMAN” ; Mrs. Anne (MacVicar) Grant (1755-1838) wrote to Miss Ourry: Glasgow, Jan. 2, 1794.
I have seen Mary Woolstonecroft’s book, which is so run after here, that there is no keeping it long enough to read it leisurely, though one had leisure. It has produced no other conviction in my mind, but that of the author’s possessing considerable abilities, and greatly misapplying them. To refute her arguments would be to write another and a larger book;...Nothing could be more specious and plausible, for nothing can delight Misses more than to tell them they are as wise as their masters. Though, after all, they will in every emergency be like Trinculo in the storm, when he crept under Caliban’s gaberdine for shelter. I consider this work as every way dangerous. First, because the author to considerable powers adds feeling, and I daresay a degree of rectitude of intention. She speaks from conviction on her own part, and has completely imposed on herself before she attempts to mislead others. Then because she speaks in such a tone of seeming piety, and quotes Scripture in a manner so applicable and emphatick, that you are thrown off your guard, and surprised into partial acquiescence, before you observe that the deduction to be drawn from her position is in direct contra- diction, not only to Scripture, reason, the common sense and custom of the world, but even to parts of her own system, and many of her own assertions.?
1Letters / from / The Mountain: / Being / The Real Correspondence / of / A Lady, / Between the Years 1773 and 1807. / ‘ Memory swells / With many a proof of recol- lected Love.’ / Thomson. / In Two Volumes. / Vol. I. [IJ.] / First American / From the third London Edition. / Boston: / Printed by Greenough and Stebbins, / Suffolk- Buildings, Congress-Street. / 1809. (The original London edition first appeared in 1806.) 217 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS During the year 1792 appeared the earliest metrical: reference to Mary that have found. It appearedina _ volume bearing this title: Poems. By G. Dyer, B.A., late of Emanuel College, Cambridge. London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72 St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1792. (Price Three Shillings.)
Dyer was the whimsical friend of Charles Lamb, and the poem with which we are concerned, together with its accompanying footnotes, is as follows: x # * ODE VIL. ON LIBERTY.
ee Hart! more refulgent than the morning star, Gay queen of bliss, fair daughter of the sky, I woo thee, Freedom! may I hope from far, To catch the brightness of thy enraptur’d eye? While not unseemly streams thy zoneless vest, Thy wild locks dancing to the frolic wind; And, borne on flying feet, thou scorn’st to rest, Save where meek truth her modest seat may find Hail, radiant form divine, blest Liberty! Where’er thou deign’st to rove, oh! let me rove with thee.
Vill.
Vill.
Or dost thou, sweet enthusiast! choose to warm With more than manly fire the female breast?
And urge thy Wollstonecraft to break the charm, Where beauty lies in durance vile opprest? 2 * Author of the Rights of Woman. I have observed, that the most sensible females, when they turn their attention to political subjects, are more uniformly on the side of 218 MOPO RM ABOUT MARY Then will I from my Jebb’s 3 fair pages prove, That female minds might teach a patriot throng; Or ‘on the Loire’s sweet banks’ with Williams 4 rove; Or hear thee warble in Laetitia’s > song; Or see thee weep in Charlotte’s ® melting page; And from Macaulay 7 learn to scourge a venal age.
liberty than the other sex. This may be accounted for without adopting the sentiments or the language of gallantry. The truth is, that the modes of education and the customs of society are degrading to the female character; and the tyranny of custom is sometimes worse than the tyranny of government. When a sensible woman rises above the tyranny of custom, she feels a generous indigna-. tion; which, when turned against the exclusive claims of the other sex, is favourable to female pretensions; when turned against the tyranny of government, it is commonly favourable to the rights of both sexes. Most governments are partial, and more injurious to women than to men.
3 The widow of the late Dr. Jebb. This lady is known to possess an understanding in political matters exceeded by few. During my writing the above ode, it was my good fortune to read several writings of Mrs. Jebb’s, which appeared in the public prints between 1780 and 1785, on Annual Parliaments, the Right of Universale Suffrage, Mr. Fox’s India Bill, Ship Money, the Liberties of the Irish Nation, and American Independence. When at Cambridge, this lady published a letter to the author of the Observatrix on the Design of establishing Annual Examinations at Cambridge; and in the opinion of the best judges of the controversy, confuted Dr. Powell and his party. For a reason hinted in a former note, as well as from personal esteem, I bring this tribute of respect to female merit.
4Miss Helen Maria Williams, author of Letters from France. In the verse above I allude particularly to a poetical epistle of that ingenious lady’s from Rouen, in answer to a poetical epistle written to her by Dr. Moore.
5 Mrs. Laetitia Barbauld. 6 Mrs. Charlotte Smith, author of Sonnets. 7 Writer of the History of England.
219 SUPPLEMENT TO MEMOIRS According to John Knowleés’s account, already quoted, Mary, ‘on the 8th of December 1792, left London for Paris.’ She had contemplated this trip as early as June, for she wrote Everina from London on the 20th of that month: I have been considering what you say respecting Fliza’s residence in France. For some time past Mr. and Mrs. Fuseli, Mr. Johnson, and myself have talked of a summer excursion to Paris; it is now determined on, and we think of going in about six weeks. I shall be introduced to many people; my book has been translated, and praised in some popular prints, and Mr. Fuseli of course is well known; it is then very probable that I shall hear of some situation for Eliza, and I shall be on the watch. We intend to be absent only six weeks; if then I fix on an eligible situation for her she may avoid the Welsh winter. This journey will not lead me into any extraordinary expense, or I should put it off to a more convenient season, for I am not, as you may suppose, very flush of money, and Charles is wearing out the clothes which were provided for his voyage {to America at her expense]. Still I am glad he has acquired a little practical knowledge of farming.
Charles left for America about the time that Mary finally departed for Paris. She went alone, for the atmosphere at Fuseli’s home had grown too cold to permit the party that had been planned. According to Kegan Paul, she ‘found a home at first in the house of Madame Filliettaz, née Bregantz, in whose school at Putney Mrs. Bishop and Everina Wollstone- craft had both been teachers.’
§ Kegan Paul, William Godwin, i. 206. 220 Met NOP ARTS Mary wrote to Everina soon after her arrival: Paris, Dec. 24,02.
To-morrow I expect to see Aline (Mme. Filliettaz); during her absence the servants endeavoured to render the house—a most excellent one—comfort- able to me; but as 1 wish to acquire the language as fast as I can, I was sorry to be obliged to remain so much alone. I apply so closely to the language, and labour so continually to understand what I hear that I never go to bed without a headache, and my spirits are fatigued with endeavouring to form a just opinion of public affairs. The day after to-morrow I expect to see the king at the bar, and the consequences that will follow I am almost afraid to anticipate.