1787-1790.
Being now determined to enter upon her literary plan, Mary came
immediately from Bristol to the metropolis. Her conduct under this
circumstance was such as to do credit both to her own heart, and that of
Mr. Johnson, her publisher, between whom and herself there now commenced
an intimate friendship. She had seen him upon occasion of publishing
her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, and she addressed two or
three letters to him during her residence in Ireland. Upon her arrival
in London in August 1787, she went immediately to his house, and frankly
explained to him her purpose, at the same time requesting his advice and
assistance as to its execution. After a short conversation, Mr. Johnson
invited her to make his house her home, till she should have suited
herself with a fixed residence. She accordingly resided at this time two
or three weeks under his roof. At the same period she paid a visit or
two of similar duration to some friends, at no great distance from the
metropolis.
At Michaelmas 1787, she entered upon a house in George street, on the
Surry side of Black Friar's Bridge, which Mr. Johnson had provided for
her during her excursion into the country. The three years immediately
ensuing, may be said, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, to have
been the most active period of her life. She brought with her to this
habitation, the novel of Mary, which had not yet been sent to the press,
and the commencement of a sort of oriental tale, entitled, the Cave of
Fancy, which she thought proper afterwards to lay aside unfinished. I am
told that at this period she appeared under great dejection of spirits,
and filled with melancholy regret for the loss of her youthful friend. A
period of two years had elapsed since the death of that friend; but it
was possibly the composition of the fiction of Mary, that renewed her
sorrows in their original force. Soon after entering upon her new
habitation, she produced a little work, entitled, Original Stories from
Real Life, intended for the use of children. At the commencement of her
literary carreer, she is said to have conceived a vehement aversion to
the being regarded, by her ordinary acquaintance, in the character of an
author, and to have employed some precautions to prevent its occurrence.
The employment which the bookseller suggested to her, as the easiest and
most certain source of pecuniary income, of course, was translation.
With this view she improved herself in her French, with which she had
previously but a slight acquaintance, and acquired the Italian and
German languages. The greater part of her literary engagements at this
time, were such as were presented to her by Mr. Johnson. She
new-modelled and abridged a work, translated from the Dutch, entitled,
Young Grandison: she began a translation from the French, of a book,
called, the New Robinson; but in this undertaking, she was, I believe,
anticipated by another translator: and she compiled a series of extracts
in verse and prose, upon the model of Dr. Enfield's Speaker, which bears
the title of the Female Reader; but which, from a cause not worth
mentioning, has hitherto been printed with a different name in the
title-page.
About the middle of the year 1788, Mr. Johnson instituted the Analytical
Review, in which Mary took a considerable share. She also translated
Necker on the Importance of Religious Opinions; made an abridgment of
Lavater's Physiognomy, from the French, which has never been published;
and compressed Salzmann's Elements of Morality, a German production,
into a publication in three volumes duodecimo. The translation of
Salzmann produced a correspondence between Mary and the author; and he
afterwards repaid the obligation to her in kind, by a German translation
of the Rights of Woman. Such were her principal literary occupations,
from the autumn of 1787, to the autumn of 1790.
It perhaps deserves to be remarked that this sort of miscellaneous
literary employment, seems, for the time at least, rather to damp and
contract, than to enlarge and invigorate, the genius. The writer is
accustomed to see his performances answer the mere mercantile purpose of
the day, and confounded with those of persons to whom he is secretly
conscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to
reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the
man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full
vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with
the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced
during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit
themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its
commencement. Among effusions of a nobler cast, I find occasionally
interspersed some of that homily-language, which, to speak from my own
feelings, is calculated to damp the moral courage, it was intended to
awaken. This is probably to be assigned to the causes above described.
I have already said that one of the purposes which Mary had conceived, a
few years before, as necessary to give a relish to the otherwise
insipid, or embittered, draught of human life, was usefulness. On this
side, the period of her existence of which I am now treating, is more
brilliant, than in a literary view. She determined to apply as great a
part as possible of the produce of her present employments, to the
assistance of her friends and of the distressed; and, for this purpose,
laid down to herself rules of the most rigid economy. She began with
endeavouring to promote the interest of her sisters. She conceived that
there was no situation in which she could place them, at once so
respectable and agreeable, as that of governess in private families.
She determined therefore in the first place, to endeavour to qualify
them for such an undertaking. Her younger sister she sent to Paris,
where she remained near two years. The elder she placed in a school near
London, first as a parlour-boarder, and afterwards as a teacher. Her
brother James, who had already been at sea, she first took into her
house, and next sent to Woolwich for instruction, to qualify him for a
respectable situation in the royal navy, where he was shortly after made
a lieutenant. Charles, who was her favourite brother, had been articled
to the eldest, an attorney in the Minories; but, not being satisfied
with his situation, she removed him; and in some time after, having
first placed him with a farmer for instruction, she fitted him out for
America, where his speculations, founded upon the basis she had
provided, are said to have been extremely prosperous. The reason so much
of this parental sort of care fell upon her, was, that her father had by
this time considerably embarrassed his circumstances. His affairs having
grown too complex for himself to disentangle, he had intrusted them to
the management of a near relation; but Mary, not being satisfied with
the conduct of the business, took them into her own hands. The exertions
she made, and the struggle into which she entered however, in this
instance, were ultimately fruitless. To the day of her death her father
was almost wholly supported by funds which she supplied to him. In
addition to her exertions for her own family, she took a young girl of
about seven years of age under her protection and care, the niece of
Mrs. John Hunter, and of the present Mrs. Skeys, for whose mother, then
lately dead, she had entertained a sincere friendship.
The period, from the end of the year 1787 to the end of the year 1790,
though consumed in labours of little eclat, served still further to
establish her in a friendly connection from which she derived many
pleasures. Mr. Johnson, the bookseller, contracted a great personal
regard for her, which resembled in many respects that of a parent. As
she frequented his house, she of course became acquainted with his
guests. Among these may be mentioned as persons possessing her esteem,
Mr. Bonnycastle, the mathematician, the late Mr. George Anderson,
accountant to the board of control, Dr. George Fordyce, and Mr. Fuseli,
the celebrated painter. Between both of the two latter and herself,
there existed sentiments of genuine affection and friendship.