I
Of Mary Wollstonecraft's ancestors little is known, except that they were
of Irish descent. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was the son of a
prosperous Spitalfields manufacturer of Irish birth, from whom he
inherited the sum of ten thousand pounds. He married towards the middle of
the eighteenth century Elizabeth Dixon, the daughter of a gentleman in
good position, of Ballyshannon, by whom he had six children: Edward, Mary,
Everina, Eliza, James, and Charles. Mary, the eldest daughter and second
child, was born on April 27, 1759, the birth year of Burns and Schiller,
and the last year of George II.'s reign. She passed her childhood, until
she was five years old, in the neighbourhood of Epping Forest, but it is
doubtful whether she was born there or at Hoxton. Mr. Wollstonecraft
followed no profession in particular, although from time to time he
dabbled in a variety of pursuits when seized with a desire to make money.
He is described as of idle, dissipated habits, and possessed of an
ungovernable temper and a restless spirit that urged him to perpetual
changes of residence. From Hoxton, where he squandered most of his
fortune, he wandered to Essex, and then, among other places, in 1768 to
Beverley, in Yorkshire. Later he took up farming at Laugharne in
Pembrokeshire, but he at length grew tired of this experiment and returned
once more to London. As his fortunes declined, his brutality and
selfishness increased, and Mary was frequently compelled to defend her
mother from his acts of personal violence, sometimes by thrusting herself
bodily between him and his victim. Mrs. Wollstonecraft herself was far
from being an amiable woman; a petty tyrant and a stern but incompetent
ruler of her household, she treated Mary as the scapegoat of the family.
Mary's early years therefore were far from being happy; what little
schooling she had was spasmodic, owing to her father's migratory habits.
In her sixteenth year, when the Wollstonecrafts were once more in London,
Mary formed a friendship with Fanny Blood, a young girl about her own age,
which was destined to be one of the happiest events of her life. There was
a strong bond of sympathy between the two friends, for Fanny contrived by
her work as an artist to be the chief support of her family, as her
father, like Mr. Wollstonecraft, was a lazy, drunken fellow.
Mary's new friend was an intellectual and cultured girl. She loved music,
sang agreeably, was well-read too, for her age, and wrote interesting
letters. It was by comparing Fanny Blood's letters with her own, that Mary
first recognised how defective her education had been. She applied herself
therefore to the task of increasing her slender stock of
knowledge--hoping ultimately to become a governess. At length, at the age
of nineteen, Mary went to Bath as companion to a tiresome and exacting old
lady, a Mrs. Dawson, the widow of a wealthy London tradesman. In spite of
many difficulties, she managed to retain her situation for some two years,
leaving it only to attend the deathbed of her mother.
Mrs. Wollstonecraft's death (in 1780) was followed by the break-up of the
home. Mary went to live temporarily with the Bloods at Walham Green, and
assisted Mrs. Blood, who took in needle-work; Everina became for a short
time housekeeper to her brother Edward, a solicitor; and Eliza married a
Mr. Bishop.
Mr. Kegan Paul has pointed out that "all the Wollstonecraft sisters were
enthusiastic, excitable, and hasty tempered, apt to exaggerate trifles,
sensitive to magnify inattention into slights, and slights into studied
insults. All had bad health of a kind which is especially trying to the
nerves, and Eliza had in excess the family temperament and constitution."
Mrs. Bishop's married life from the first was one of utter misery; they
were an ill-matched pair, and her peculiar temperament evidently
exasperated her husband's worst nature. His outbursts of fury and the
scenes of violence of daily occurrence, for which he was responsible, were
afterwards described with realistic fidelity by Mary in her novel, "The
Wrongs of Women." It was plainly impossible for Mrs. Bishop to continue
to live with such a man, and when, in 1782, she became dangerously ill,
Mary, with her characteristic good nature, went to nurse her, and soon
after assisted her in her flight from her husband.
In the following year (1783) Mary set up a school at Islington with Fanny
Blood, and she was thus in a position to offer a home to her sisters, Mrs.
Bishop and Everina. The school was afterwards moved to Newington Green,
where Mary soon had an establishment with some twenty day scholars. After
a time, emboldened by her success, she took a larger house; but
unfortunately the number of her pupils did not increase in proportion to
her obligations, which were now heavier than she could well meet.
While Mary was living at Newington Green, she was introduced to Dr.
Johnson, who, Godwin says, treated her with particular kindness and
attention, and with whom she had a long conversation. He desired her to
repeat her visit, but she was prevented from seeing him again by his last
illness and death.
In the meantime Fanny Blood had impaired her health by overwork, and signs
of consumption were already evident. A Mr. Hugh Skeys, who was engaged in
business at Lisbon, though somewhat of a weak lover, had long admired
Fanny, and wanted to marry her. It was thought that the climate of
Portugal might help to restore her health, and she consented, perhaps more
on that account than on any other, to become his wife. She left England
in February 1785, but her health continued to grow worse. Mary's anxiety
for her friend's welfare was such that, on hearing of her grave condition,
she at once went off to Lisbon, and arrived after a stormy passage, only
in time to comfort Fanny in her dying moments. Mary was almost
broken-hearted at the loss of her friend, and she made her stay in Lisbon
as short as possible, remaining only as long as was necessary for Mrs.
Skeys's funeral.
She returned to England to find that the school had greatly suffered by
neglect during her absence. In a letter to Mrs. Skeys's brother, George
Blood, she says: "The loss of Fanny was sufficient to have thrown a cloud
over my brightest days: what effect then must it have, when I am bereft of
every other comfort? I have too many debts, the rent is so enormous, and
where to go, without money or friends, who can point out?"
She thus realised that to continue her school was useless. But her
experience as a schoolmistress was to bear fruit in the future. She had
observed some of the defects of the educational methods of her time, and
her earliest published effort was a pamphlet entitled, "Thoughts on the
Education of Daughters," (1787). For this essay she received ten guineas,
a sum that she gave to the parents of her friend, Mr. and Mrs. Blood, who
were desirous of going over to Ireland.
She soon went to Ireland herself, for in the October of 1787 she became
governess to the daughters of Lord Kingsborough at Michaelstown, with a
salary of forty pounds a year. Lady Kingsborough in Mary's opinion was "a
shrewd clever woman, a great talker.... She rouges, and in short is a fine
lady without fancy or sensibility. I am almost tormented to death by
dogs...." Lady Kingsborough was rather selfish and uncultured, and her
chief object was the pursuit of pleasure. She pampered her dogs, much to
the disgust of Mary Wollstonecraft, and neglected her children. What views
she had on education were narrow. She had been accustomed to submission
from her governess, but she learnt before long that Mary was not of a
tractable disposition. The children, at first unruly and defiant,
"literally speaking, wild Irish, unformed and not very pleasing," soon
gave Mary their confidence, and before long their affection. One of her
pupils, Margaret King, afterwards Lady Mountcashel, always retained the
warmest regard for Mary Wollstonecraft. Lady Mountcashel continued her
acquaintance with William Godwin after Mary's death, and later came across
Shelley and his wife in Italy. Mary won from the children the affection
that they withheld from their mother, consequently, in the autumn of 1788,
when she had been with Lady Kingsborough for about a year, she received
her dismissal. She had completed by this time the novel to which she gave
the name of "Mary," which is a tribute to the memory of her friend Fanny
Blood.