which bordered on farce. But we are inclined to infer from some
passages, both in ‘Cecilia’ and ‘Camilla,’ that she might have attained
equal distinction in the pathetic. We have formed this judgment less
from those ambitious scenes of distress which lie near the catastrophe
of each of these novels than from some exquisite strokes of natural
tenderness which take us here and there by surprise.
[Sidenote: Unique position of ‘Evelina.’]
It is not only on account of the intrinsic merit of Madame D’Arblay’s
early works that she is entitled to honorable mention. Her appearance
is an important epoch in our literary history. ‘Evelina’ was the
first tale written by a woman, and purporting to be a picture of life
and manners, that lived or deserved to live. Indeed, most of the
popular novels which preceded ‘Evelina’ were such as no lady would
have written; and many of them were such as no lady could without
confusion own that she had read. Miss Burney did for the English novel
what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama; and she did it in a
better way. She first showed that a tale might be written in which
both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited
with great force, and with broad comic humor, and which yet should
not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality. She took
away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of
composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to an equal share
in a fair and noble province of letters. The fact that she has been
surpassed gives her an additional claim to our respect and gratitude;
for, in truth, we owe to her, not only ‘Evelina,’ ‘Cecilia,’ and
‘Camilla,’ but also ‘Mansfield Park’ and the ‘Absentee.’
LORD MACAULAY: ‘Essay on Mme. D’Arblay.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Plan of work.]
[Sidenote: Her heroes and heroines.]
The very gift that first made Miss Burney’s reputation now stands in
the way of her popularity. She was so completely mistress of the art
of letting her personages reveal their own characters, that she could
afford to dispense to an unusual extent with the showman’s part. She
constructed her personages not from within (as is the modern fashion)
but by means of a thousand minute touches showing their conversation
and behavior in an infinite variety of such small circumstances as make
up the daily round of existence. She positively reveled in descriptive
_minutiæ_ of this sort. Nothing was too trivial for her, nothing too
intricate in the web of petty embarrassments and mortifications and
misunderstandings, that make the sum of a vast majority of human
lives, and a tremendous factor of the remainder. Thanks to unusually
buoyant spirits and a never-flagging sense of the ridiculous, she
was constantly amused where others are only bored; and according to
the infallible rule that, given the necessary powers of expression,
authors never bore till they are bored themselves, she was able to make
amusing to others the commonplace things that afforded entertainment to
herself. Moreover, her success in her own day was quite as much due to
the fact that her material was commonplace as to the keen perception
of character, and the racy humor she displayed in working it up. Only
the chosen few might appreciate her literary skill, but it needed no
special gifts of culture to enter into the agitations of Evelina’s
first ball. However, it is necessary to understand a situation or a
character before we can be amused by it. And as nothing in life changes
so fast as its surface, the author who gives most pains to the finish
of this, is also the first to become obsolete. Fashions in manner and
dress and speech are proverbially ephemeral, and except for those in
whom the antiquarian taste has been somehow developed, they lose charm
and even meaning in passing out of date. Heroes and heroines, whose
coats and gowns, and courtesies and bows, are all behind the time,
of whom the colloquial talk is a forgotten jargon, and the ceremony
as strange as the ritual of a foreign religion, stand no chance in
competition with the crowd of ladies and gentlemen who are daily turned
out by contemporary novelists, wearing costumes and talking a language
of which every fold and every phrase makes a claim upon the reader’s
sympathy, and an item in the general index to the author’s meaning.
Miss Burney’s personages, once so fashionable and so familiar, have
grown strange now that a century has passed over their heads; and
though underneath the disguise of their Old World costumes they are
still fresh and human, this is a secret only to be discovered at the
cost of more careful reading than the modern world is apt to give to
novels.
MARY ELIZABETH CHRISTIE: ‘Miss Burney’s Novels.’
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (GODWIN).
1759-1797.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (GODWIN).
Mary Wollstonecraft was born, it is supposed, in Epping Forest, on the
27th of April, 1759. The unhappy circumstances of her childhood and
youth are sufficiently sketched in the following extracts. In 1778
she obtained a position as companion to a widow in Bath, where she
continued for two years. In 1780, while the family were residing in
Enfield, her mother died, leaving six children: Edward, Mary, Everina,
Eliza, James and Charles. The younger ones were all, at some period of
their lives, indebted to Mary for sisterly encouragement and pecuniary
aid, for which they do not appear to have been duly grateful.
After her mother’s death Mary lived for a short time at the home
of her friend, Fanny Blood, at Walham Green, supporting herself by
needle-work, but was soon called to the care of her sister Eliza, (then
Mrs. Bishop), who was temporarily insane. On Mrs. Bishop’s recovery
she left her husband, and the two sisters went to Islington, where
they endeavored to live by teaching. In a few months Mary removed to
Newington Green, where she was successful in setting up a school. In
the autumn of 1785, however, she was summoned to Fanny Blood (then Mrs.
Skeys), who was ill in Lisbon; and on her return, after Fanny’s death,
she found that it was impossible to regain her pupils. At this time she
wrote a small pamphlet called _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_,
for which Mr. Johnson, a bookseller in Fleet Street, gave her ten
guineas. She applied the money to the relief of Fanny Blood’s parents.
A situation as governess being offered her, she went to Ireland, where
she remained until the autumn of 1788; she then came to London to earn
her living by her pen. At this period she wrote _Mary_, a tale drawn
from her own friendship with Fanny Blood, and not now to be found;
_Original Stories from Real Life_, a book for children, published
with cuts by William Blake; translated for Mr. Johnson ‘Necker on
Religious Opinions,’ Salzman’s ‘Elements of Morality,’ and Lavater’s
‘Physiognomy,’ and contributed to the Analytical Review. In 1791 she
put forth an answer to Burke’s ‘Reflections on the French Revolution,’
entitled _A Vindication of the Rights of Man_; this was followed by her
_magnum opus_, A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.
In December, 1792, she went to Paris; was detained there by the state
of public affairs; and in 1793 became, says Mr. C. Kegan Paul, “the
wife” of Gilbert Imlay. Her modern biographer and defender has chosen
thus to mark unmistakably his fine reverence for her purity of motive;
but more than half the significance of the tragedy that followed is
lost by regarding Mary as Imlay’s wife. Their daughter, Fanny Imlay,
was born in the spring of 1794. Imlay gradually disengaged himself from
Mary; and on her return to London from a voyage to Norway and Sweden,
undertaken to assist him in business affairs, she had poignant proof
of his unfaithfulness and his intention to desert her. She attempted
to drown herself in the Thames. She was rescued, took up the burden of
life again for Fanny’s sake, and lived to marry William Godwin, the
author of ‘Caleb Williams’ and ‘Political Justice.’ On the 30th of
August, 1797, was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, afterwards the wife
of Shelley; and on the 10th of September the mother died.
Mary had previously published (1794) the first volume of _An Historical
and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution_,
and _Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and
Denmark_. After her death Godwin published _Posthumous Works by the
Author of A Vindication, etc._, comprising a horrible unfinished novel
called _Maria; or, the Wrongs of Woman_, her LETTERS TO IMLAY, and to
her friend, Mr. Johnson, an incomplete tale called _The Cave of Fancy_,
an _Essay on Poetry_, a series of _Lessons in Spelling and Reading_,
and a few fragmentary _Hints_ on various subjects.
Mary Wollstonecraft has a three-fold claim on our attention. She
was “the first of the new genus” of professional literary women, in
contradistinction to the old race of “blue-stockings.” She was the
author of the VINDICATION, which, despite its faults, is “remarkable
as the herald of the demand not even yet wholly conceded by all, that
woman should be the equal and friend, not the slave and toy of man.”
Lastly, as the writer of the heart-breaking LETTERS TO IMLAY, which,
notwithstanding her own views, form, as Lowell has said of her life,
“the most powerful argument possible against the doctrine of the
‘Elective Affinities’,”--Mary Wollstonecraft can never be forgotten.
Our mosaic portrait is doubtless far from perfect; yet who shall
paint her as she was, without distortion, without idealization? This
beautiful woman, with her “Titianesque” coloring, her careless dress,
and habits frugal that she might be generous--with her quick temper,
sensitiveness, pride, inconsistency, deep personal tenderness; with her
melancholy, and her misunderstood religious enthusiasm; this daughter
of the Revolution, her strong head crowded with theories--some of them,
one would think, to be beaten out of it by all the waves and billows
that went over her. But not so; the circumstances of her marriage with
Godwin, the tendency of the work done during the brief remainder of
her life, show us that we must add tenacity to her characteristics.
This creature, now coarse, now fine, now harsh, and now all pity,--who
shall explore her strength and weakness, her deeps and shallows? It is
natural that in an age better calculated to understand her motives than
that in which she lived, a vindicator should have arisen to call up
out of the past, by the name of Mary Wollstonecraft, a spirit radiant
and purified, like the soul of Ianthe in ‘Queen Mab,’ from every stain
of earthliness. But to make the woman herself live before us, as she
lived in Paris, in London, in those strange days of the close of the
eighteenth century--that would be a task for a pen that has dealt with
character under somewhat similar conditions--the pen of Ivan Turgenef.
Like Charlotte Brontë, she at last knew happiness before she died. But
thinking of Godwin, “with his great head full of cold brains,” one
cannot but wish that the gleam of sunshine at the close of her stormy
life had been less “winterly.”
* * * * *
With her very first years Mary Wollstonecraft began a bitter training
in the school of experience, which was in no small degree instrumental
in developing her character and forming her philosophy. There are few
details of her childhood, and no anecdotes indicating a precocious
genius. But enough is known of her early life to make us understand
what were the principal influences to which she was exposed. Her
strength sprang from the very uncongeniality of her home and her
successful struggles against the poverty and vice which surrounded her.
[Sidenote: Her parents.]
Her father was a selfish, hot-tempered despot, whose natural bad
qualities were aggravated by his dissipated habits. His chief
characteristic was his instability. He could persevere in nothing.
Apparently brought up to no special profession, he was by turns
a gentleman of leisure, a farmer, a man of business. It seems to
have been sufficient for him to settle in any one place to almost
immediately wish to depart from it. The history of the first fifteen
or twenty years of his married life is that of one long series of
migrations.
Mrs. Wollstonecraft was her husband’s most abject slave, but was in
turn somewhat of a tyrant herself. She approved of stern discipline for
the young. She was too indolent to give much attention to the education
of her children, and devoted what little energy she possessed to
enforcing their unquestioning obedience in trifles, and to making them
as afraid of her displeasure as they were of their father’s anger.
[Sidenote: Sad childhood.]
Mary was one of those children whose sad fate it is to weep “in the
play-time of the others.” Not even to the David Copperfields and Paul
Dombeys of fiction has there fallen a lot so hard to bear and so sad
to record, as that of the little Mary Wollstonecraft.... Overflowing
with tenderness, she dared not lavish it on the mother who should have
been so ready to receive it. Instead of the confidence which should
exist between mother and daughter, there was in their case nothing
but cold formality. Nor was there for her much compensation in the
occasional caresses of her father. Sensitive to a fault, she could not
forgive his blows and unkindness so quickly as to be able to enjoy his
smiles and favors. Moreover, she had little chance of finding, without,
the devotion and gentle care which were denied to her within her own
family. Mr. Wollstonecraft remained so short a time in each locality in
which he made his home that his wife saw but little of her relations
and old acquaintances; while no sooner had his children made new
friends, than they were separated from them.
[Sidenote: Friendship with Fanny Blood.]
Mary’s existence up to 1775 had been, save when disturbed by family
storms, quiet, lonely, and uneventful. As yet no special incident had
occurred in it, nor had she been awakened to intellectual activity. But
in Hoxton she contracted a friendship which, though it was with a girl
of her own age, was always esteemed by her as the chief and leading
event in her existence. This it was which first aroused her love of
study and of independence, and opened a channel for the outpouring of
her too long suppressed affections. Her love for Fanny Blood was the
spark which kindled the latent fire of her genius.... From the moment
they met until they were separated by poor Fanny’s untimely death,
Mary never wavered in her devotion and its active expression, nor could
the vicissitudes and joys of her later life destroy her loving loyalty
to the memory of her first and dearest friend. “When a warm heart has
strong impressions,” she wrote in a letter long years afterward, “they
are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and the imagination
renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them.
I cannot without a thrill of delight recollect views I have seen, which
are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve, which
I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the
friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft
voice warbling as I stray over the heath.”
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’ (Famous Women
Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1884.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Unfortunate experience.]
It is singularly unfortunate that Mary Wollstonecraft was fated, as it
were, to see the unattractive side of almost all the great institutions
of society with which she was brought into contact: marriage,
education, particularly religious education as administered at Eton,
and aristocratic life. Her views on all these subjects were colored by
her own personal experiences. She generalized from particulars, and
never suspected that such a one-sided view must be partially unfair.
C. KEGAN PAUL: _Prefatory Memoir_ to Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘Letters to
Imlay.’ London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Impressions of married life.]
[The family life of the Blood household, of which Mary was for a
time, after her mother’s death, an inmate, was as utterly unhappy as
that of the Wollstonecrafts: Mr. Blood being “a ne’er-do-well and a
drunkard.” Mary was “an immediate witness” of similar and still more
painful scenes in the home of her sister Eliza, who had married a Mr.
Bishop, a man described by one of his own friends as “either a lion or
a spaniel--” fawning abroad, tyrannical at home. I subjoin extracts
from two of Mary’s letters to her other sister, Everina, which seem to
me to illustrate her experience more forcibly than the narrative of her
biographers.]
December, 1783.
Poor Eliza’s situation almost turns my brain. I can’t stay and see this
continual misery, and to leave her to bear it by herself without anyone
to comfort her, is still more distressing.... Nothing can be done till
she leaves the house. I have been some time deliberating on this, for I
can’t help pitying B., but misery must be his portion at any rate till
he alters himself, and that would be a miracle.... I tell you she will
soon be deprived of reason.
January, 1784.
Here we are, Everina; but my trembling hand will scarce let me tell you
so. Bess is much more composed than I expected her to be; but ... I
was afraid in the coach she was going to have one of her flights, for
she bit her wedding-ring to pieces.... My heart beats time with every
carriage that rolls by, and a knocking at the door almost throws me
into a fit. I hope B. will not discover us, for I could sooner face a
lion.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letters_, in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and
Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul. Boston: Roberts Bros., 1876.
* * * * *
[Mary spent some time at Eton as the guest of Mr. Prior, Assistant
Master, through whom she subsequently obtained a situation as governess
in the family of Lord Kingsborough.]
ETON, Oct., 1787.
[Sidenote: Impressions of Eton.]
I could not live the life they lead at Eton; nothing but dress and
ridicule going forward.... Witlings abound and puns fly about like
crackers, though you would scarcely guess they had any meaning in them,
if you did not hear the noise they create. So much company without any
sociability would be to me an insupportable fatigue.... Vanity in one
shape or other reigns triumphant.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to her sister_, in ‘William Godwin, His
Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.
* * * * *
In great schools, what can be more prejudicial to the moral character
than the system of tyranny and abject slavery which is established
among the boys, to say nothing of the slavery to forms, which makes
religion worse than a farce? For what good can be expected from
the youth who receives the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to avoid
forfeiting a guinea, which he probably afterward spends in some sensual
manner?
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.’ London:
Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72 St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1792.
* * * * *
[The following letter was written in Ireland, while Mary was governess
to the daughters of Lord Kingsborough, at a salary of £40 a year.]
MITCHELSTOWN, Nov., 1787.
[Sidenote: Impressions of aristocratic society.]
Confined to the society of a set of silly females, I have no social
converse, and their boisterous spirits and unmeaning laughter exhaust
me, not forgetting hourly domestic bickerings. The topics of matrimony
and dress take their turn, not in a very sentimental style--alas, poor
sentiment! it has no residence here.... Lady K.’s passion for animals
fills up the hours which are not spent in dressing. All her children
have been ill--very disagreeable fevers. Her ladyship visited them in
a formal way, though their situation called forth my tenderness, and
I endeavored to amuse them, while she lavished awkward fondness on
her dogs. I think now I hear her infantine lisps. She rouges--and, in
short, is a fine lady, without fancy or sensibility,
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to her sister_, in ‘William Godwin, His
Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Adopts literature as a profession.]
Mr. Johnson [the publisher], whose uncommon kindness, I believe, has
saved me from despair and vexation I shrink back from, and fear to
encounter, assures me that if I exert my talents in writing, I may
support myself in a comfortable way. I am then going to be the first of
a new genus. I tremble at the attempt; yet if I fail _I_ only suffer;
and should I succeed, my dear girls [her sisters Eliza and Everina]
will ever in sickness have a home and a refuge, where for a few months
in the year they may forget the cares that disturb the rest.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to her sister_, 1788, in ‘William Godwin,
His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Dress, etc., at this period.]
Fuseli found in her a philosophical sloven: her usual dress being a
habit of coarse cloth, black worsted stockings, and a beaver hat, with
her hair hanging lank about her shoulders.
When the Prince Talleyrand was in this country, in a low condition with
regard to his pecuniary affairs, and visited her, they drank their tea,
and the little wine they took, indiscriminately from tea-cups.[4]
JOHN KNOWLES: ‘The Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli.’ London: Henry
Colburn & Richard Bentley, 1831.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Account of ‘A Vindication,’ etc.]
“The main argument” of the work “is built on this simple principle,
that if woman be not prepared by education to become the companion of
man, she will stop the progress of knowledge, for truth must be common
to all, or it will be inefficacious with respect to its influence on
general practice. And how can woman be expected to co-operate, unless
she know why she ought to be virtuous?--unless freedom strengthen
her reason till she comprehend her duty, and see in what manner it
is connected with her real good. If children are to be educated to
understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be
a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of
virtues springs, can only be produced by considering the moral and
civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of woman at
present shuts her out from such investigations.”
In the carrying out of this argument the most noticeable fact is the
extraordinary plainness of speech, and this it was which caused all
or nearly all the outcry. For Mary Wollstonecraft did not, as has
been supposed, attack the institution of marriage, she did not assail
orthodox religion, she did not directly claim much which at the present
day is claimed for women by those whose arguments obtain respectful
hearing. The book was really a plea for equality of education, a
protest against being deemed only the plaything of man, an assertion
that the intellectual intercourse was that which should chiefly be
desired in marriage, and which made its lasting happiness.... It may,
however, be admitted that her frankness on some subjects is little less
than astounding.
C. KEGAN PAUL: ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Plainness of speech.]
A plainness of speech, amounting in some places to coarseness, and a
deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious
features of the book. A century ago men and women were much more
straightforward in their speech than we are to-day. They were not
squeamish. Therefore, when it came to serious discussions for moral
purposes, there was little reason for writers to be timid.... Hers is
the plain speaking of the Jewish law-giver, who has for end the good
of man; and not that of an Aretino, who rejoices in it for its own sake.