1790-1792.
Hitherto the literary carreer of Mary, had for the most part, been
silent; and had been productive of income to herself, without apparently
leading to the wreath of fame. From this time she was destined to
attract the notice of the public, and perhaps no female writer ever
obtained so great a degree of celebrity throughout Europe.
It cannot be doubted that, while, for three years of literary
employment, she "held the noiseless tenor of her way," her mind was
insensibly advancing towards a vigorous maturity. The uninterrupted
habit of composition gave a freedom and firmness to the expression of
her sentiments. The society she frequented, nourished her understanding,
and enlarged her mind. The French revolution, while it gave a
fundamental shock to the human intellect through every region of the
globe, did not fail to produce a conspicuous effect in the progress of
Mary's reflections. The prejudices of her early years suffered a
vehement concussion. Her respect for establishments was undermined. At
this period occurred a misunderstanding upon public grounds, with one of
her early friends, whose attachment to musty creeds and exploded
absurdities, had been increased, by the operation of those very
circumstances, by which her mind had been rapidly advanced in the race
of independence.
The event, immediately introductory to the rank which from this time she
held in the lids of literature, was the publication of Burke's
Reflections on the Revolution in France. This book, after having been
long promised to the world, finally made its appearance on the first of
November 1790; and Mary, full of sentiments of liberty, and impressed
with a warm interest in the struggle that was now going on, seized her
pen in the first burst of indignation, an emotion of which she was
strongly susceptible. She was in the habit of composing with rapidity,
and her answer, which was the first of the numerous ones that appeared,
obtained extraordinary notice. Marked as it is with the vehemence and
impetuousness of its eloquence, it is certainly chargeable with a too
contemptuous and intemperate treatment of the great man against whom its
attack is directed. But this circumstance was not injurious to the
success of the publication. Burke had been warmly loved by the most
liberal and enlightened friends of freedom, and they were proportionably
inflamed and disgusted by the fury of his assault, upon what they deemed
to be its sacred cause.
Short as was the time in which Mary composed her Answer to Burke's
Reflections, there was one anecdote she told me concerning it, which
seems worth recording in this place. It was sent to the press, as is
the general practice when the early publication of a piece is deemed a
matter of importance, before the composition was finished. When Mary had
arrived at about the middle of her work, she was seized with a temporary
fit of torpor and indolence, and began to repent of her undertaking. In
this state of mind, she called, one evening, as she was in the practice
of doing, upon her publisher, for the purpose of relieving herself by an
hour or two's conversation. Here, the habitual ingenuousness of her
nature, led her to describe what had just past in her thoughts. Mr.
Johnson immediately, in a kind and friendly way, intreated her not to
put any constraint upon her inclination, and to give herself no
uneasiness about the sheets already printed, which he would cheerfully
throw aside, if it would contribute to her happiness. Mary had wanted
stimulus. She had not expected to be encouraged, in what she well knew
to be an unreasonable access of idleness. Her friend's so readily
falling in with her ill-humour, and seeming to expect that she would lay
aside her undertaking, piqued her pride. She immediately went home; and
proceeded to the end of her work, with no other interruptions but what
were absolutely indispensible.
It is probable that the applause which attended her Answer to Burke,
elevated the tone of her mind. She had always felt much confidence in
her own powers; but it cannot be doubted, that the actual perception of
a similar feeling respecting us in a multitude of others, must increase
the confidence, and stimulate the adventure of any human being. Mary
accordingly proceeded, in a short time after, to the composition of her
most celebrated production, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
Never did any author enter into a cause, with a more ardent desire to be
found, not a flourishing and empty declaimer, but an effectual champion.
She considered herself as standing forth in defence of one half of the
human species, labouring under a yoke which, through all the records of
time, had degraded them from the station of rational beings, and almost
sunk them to the level of the brutes. She saw indeed, that they were
often attempted to be held in silken fetters, and bribed into the love
of slavery; but the disguise and the treachery served only the more
fully to confirm her opposition. She regarded her sex, in the language
of Calista, as
"In every state of life the slaves of men:"
the rich as alternately under the despotism of a father, a brother, and
a husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from the
acquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out from
the very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views she
entertained of the subject; and such the feelings with which she warmed
her mind.
The work is certainly a very bold and original production. The strength
and firmness with which the author repels the opinions of Rousseau, Dr.
Gregory, and Dr. James Fordyce, respecting the condition of women,
cannot but make a strong impression upon every ingenuous reader. The
public at large formed very different opinions respecting the character
of the performance. Many of the sentiments are undoubtedly of a rather
masculine description. The spirited and decisive way in which the author
explodes the system of gallantry, and the species of homage with which
the sex is usually treated, shocked the majority. Novelty produced a
sentiment in their mind, which they mistook for a sense of injustice.
The pretty, soft creatures that are so often to be found in the female
sex, and that class of men who believe they could not exist without such
pretty, soft creatures to resort to, were in arms against the author of
so heretical and blasphemous a doctrine. There are also, it must be
confessed, occasional passages of a stern and rugged feature,
incompatible with the true stamina of the writer's character. But, if
they did not belong to her fixed and permanent character, they belonged
to her character _pro tempore_; and what she thought, she scorned to
qualify.
Yet, along with this rigid, and somewhat amazonian temper, which
characterised some parts of the book, it is impossible not to remark a
luxuriance of imagination, and a trembling delicacy of sentiment, which
would have done honour to a poet, bursting with all the visions of an
Armida and a Dido.
The contradiction, to the public apprehension, was equally great, as to
the person of the author, as it was when they considered the temper of
the book. In the champion of her sex, who was described as endeavouring
to invest them with all the rights of man, those whom curiosity prompted
to seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy,
muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when,
instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and, in
the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners.
The Vindication of the Rights of Woman is undoubtedly a very unequal
performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When
tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it
can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of human
productions. But when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and
the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it
will be read as long as the English language endures. The publication of
this book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and Mary
Wollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed more
substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other
writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated in the
behalf of oppressed and injured beauty.
The censure of the liberal critic as to the defects of this performance,
will be changed into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of this
inestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and finished in the state in
which it now appears, in a period of no more than six weeks.
It is necessary here that I should resume the subject of the friendship
that subsisted between Mary and Mr. Fuseli, which proved the source of
the most memorable events in her subsequent history. He is a native of
the republic of Switzerland, but has spent the principal part of his
life in the island of Great-Britain. The eminence of his genius can
scarcely be disputed; it has indeed received the testimony which is the
least to be suspected, that of some of the most considerable of his
contemporary artists. He has one of the most striking characteristics of
genius, a daring, as well as persevering, spirit of adventure. The work
in which he is at present engaged, a series of pictures for the
illustration of Milton, upon a very large scale, and produced solely
upon the incitement of his own mind, is a proof of this, if indeed his
whole life had not sufficiently proved it.
Mr. Fuseli is one of Mr. Johnson's oldest friends, and was at this time
in the habit of visiting him two or three times a week. Mary, one of
whose strongest characteristics was the exquisite sensations of pleasure
she felt from the associations of visible objects, had hitherto never
been acquainted, or never intimately acquainted, with an eminent
painter. The being thus introduced therefore to the society of Mr.
Fuseli, was a high gratification to her; while he found in Mary, a
person perhaps more susceptible of the emotions painting is calculated
to excite, than any other with whom he ever conversed. Painting, and
subjects closely connected with painting, were their almost constant
topics of conversation; and they found them inexhaustible. It cannot be
doubted, but that this was a species of exercise very conducive to the
improvement of Mary's mind.
Nothing human however is unmixed. If Mary derived improvement from Mr.
Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of some
of his faults. In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached to
literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from
keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that
belles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, the
favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with
Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton,
Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. The
nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean
Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a
favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the
opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau's conception
of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness
of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at
improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt
and indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity of
genius. This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands of
the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius
are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no
subsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat
of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search,
in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Mary
came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she
went into it.
But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary,
and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuseli
frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it
was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to
frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned.
Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper
to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius,
without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she
transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this
respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint
in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished
society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent
affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the
acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this
circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of any
difficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible to
the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex,
but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, in
conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct.
There cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state her
principles upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew her
best. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an
opposite sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. It
was her maxim, "that the imagination should awaken the senses, and not
the senses the imagination." In other words, that whatever related to
the gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of a
pure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. She
regarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in that
respect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtue
would prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, and
the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed.--There is
no reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period
of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it
was, she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a
distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of
personal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing
in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself.
In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in
George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store street,
Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the
laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary
career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had
always scrupulously observed a certain degree of elegance, and those
temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound
and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure.
It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writer
of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it
relates. He dined with her at a friend's, together with Mr. Thomas Paine
and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his
object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had
never before conversed.
The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually
displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I had
barely looked into her Answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary
men are apt to be, with a few offences, against grammar and other minute
points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs.
Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine,
in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in
occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks; the conversation lay
principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, very
frequently when I wished to hear Paine.
We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the
characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been
observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of
seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a
plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful. I, on
the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, and
particularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to
incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilated
in this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtained
from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number
have treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at last
provoked to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished
it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We
discussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which her
opinions approached much nearer to the received ones, than mine. As the
conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own
share in it. We touched upon all topics, without treating forcibly and
connectedly upon any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an
account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was
not sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active
and independent thinking. On her side, she did me no part of what
perhaps I considered as justice.
We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made
a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance.
In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she
continued to reside for upwards of two years. One of her principal
inducements to this step, related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had, at
first, considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what I
may be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not,
in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had
originally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much
pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent
imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she
should have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union.
She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender
charities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the
dearest band of human society. General conversation and society could
not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass
of her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best years
of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made
the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of
her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She
conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her
mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and
mingle in different scenes.
It is singular, that during her residence in Store street, which lasted
more than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles in
the Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employed
upon the Sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behind
her a single paper, that can, with any certainty, be assigned to have
had this destination.