If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of
patriotism, their mother should 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 the race.
Woman should be prepared by education to become the companion of
man, or 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 practise.
--_Mary Wollstonecraft_
[Illustration: WILLIAM GODWIN]
Others may trace the love-tales of milkmaids and farmhands; I deal with
the people who have made their mark upon the times; people who have
tinted the world's thought-fabric and to whose genius we are all heirs.
And the reason the story of their love is vital to us is because their
love was vital to them. Thought is born of parents, and literature is
the child of married minds. So this, then, is the love-story of William
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.
History and literature are very closely related. If one sets down the
chief events in political history, and over against these writes the
names of the radical authors and orators of the time, he can not but be
convinced that literature leads, and soldiers and politicians are
puppets tossed on the tide of time. A thought, well expressed, is a bomb
that explodes indefinitely.
Two men, Rousseau and Voltaire, lighted the fuse that created the
explosion known as the French Revolution. Luther's books and sermons
brought about the Reformation.
Thomas Paine's little book, "The Crisis," of which half a million copies
were printed and distributed from Virginia to Maine, stirred the
Colonists to the sticking-point; and George Washington, who was neither
a writer nor an orator, paid "Letters and Truth" the tribute of saying,
"Without the pamphlets of Thomas Paine the hearts and minds of the
people would never have been prepared to respond to our call for
troops." No one disputes now that it was a book written by a woman, of
which a million copies were sold in the North, that prepared the way for
Lincoln's call for volunteers.
Literature and oratory are arsenals that supply the people their
armament of reasons. And through the use and exercise of these borrowed
reasons, we learn to create new ones for ourselves. Thinkers prepare the
way for thinkers, and every John the Baptist uttering his cry in the
wilderness is heard.
And the fate of John the Baptist, and the fate of the Man whom he
preceded, are typical of the fate of all who are bold enough to carry
the standard of revolt into the camp of the entrenched enemy. The Cross
is a mighty privilege; and only the sublimely great are able to pay the
price at which hemlock is held.
Buddha said that the finest word in any language is "Equanimity." This
is a paradox, and like every paradox implies that the reverse is equally
true. Equanimity in the face of opposition, steadfastness in time of
stress, and wise and useful purpose, are truly godlike.
And there is only one thing worth fighting for, talking for, or writing
for; and all literature and all oratory have this for their central
theme--Freedom. It was only Freedom that could lure Cincinnatus from his
plow or Lincoln from his law-office.
And so Mary Wollstonecraft's book, "The Rights of Woman," was the first
strong, earnest, ringing word on the subject. She summed up the theme
once and for all, just as an essay by Herbert Spencer anticipates and
answers every objection, exhausting the theme. And that the author had a
whimsical touch of humor in her composition is shown in that she
dedicates the book to that Prince of Woman-Haters, "Talleyrand, Late
Bishop of Autun."
"Political Justice," by William Godwin, was published in Seventeen
Hundred Ninety-three. The work, on its first appearance, created a
profound impression among English thinking people, although orthodoxy
has almost succeeded in smothering it in silence since John Stuart Mill
declared that this book created an epoch and deserved to rank with
Milton's "Speech for Unlicensed Printing," Locke's "Essay on Human
Understanding" or Jean Jacques' "Emile." That it was a positive force in
Mill's own life he always admitted.
However, it is only within our own time--only, in fact, since Eighteen
Hundred Seventy-six--that the views of Godwin as expressed in "Political
Justice" have been adopted by the spirit of Christendom. Godwin believed
in the perfectibility of the race, and proved that man's career has
been a constant movement forward. That is, there never was a "Fall of
Man." Man has always fallen upward, and when he has kicked the ball it
has always been toward the goal. Godwin believed that it was well to
scan the faults of our fellows closely, in order to see, forsooth,
whether they are not their virtues. The belief that mankind should by
nature tend to evil, he considered absurd and unscientific, for the
strongest instinct in all creation is self-preservation; and that
certain men should love darkness rather than light was mainly because
governments and religions have warped man's nature through oppression
and coercion until it no longer acts normally. "Normal man seeks the
light, just as the flowers do. Man, if not too much interfered with,
will make for himself the best possible environment and create for his
children right conditions because the instinct for peace and liberty is
deeply rooted in his nature. Control by another has led to revolt, and
revolt has led to oppression, and oppression occasions grief and
deadness: hence bruises and distortion follow. When we view humanity, we
behold not the true and natural man, but a deformed and pitiable
product, undone by the vices of those who have sought to improve on
Nature by shaping his life to feed the vanity of a few and minister to
their wantonness. In our plans for social betterment, let us hold in
mind the healthy and unfettered man, and not the cripple that
interference and restraint have made."
Godwin, like Robert Ingersoll, was the son of a clergyman, which reminds
me that liberal thought is under great obligations to the clergy, since
their sons, taught by antithesis, are often shining lights of
radicalism. Godwin was a non-resistant, philosophic anarchist. He was
the true predecessor of George Eliot, Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau and
Leo Tolstoy, and the best that is now being expressed from advanced
Christian pulpits harks back to him. All that the foremost of our
contemporary thinkers have written and said was suggested and touched
upon by William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, with like conclusions.
* * * * *
Carnegie is credited with this: "There is only one generation between
shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves." Now, the grandfather of Mary
Wollstonecraft was an employing-weaver who did his work so well that his
wares commanded a price.
He grew rich, and when he died he left a fortune of some thirty thousand
pounds, not being able to take it with him. This fortune descended to
his eldest son.
Samuel Johnson thought the law of primogeniture a most excellent thing,
since it insured there being only one fool in the family. The
Wollstonecraft boys who had no money went to work, and in taking care of
themselves became strong, sturdy and prosperous men. The one who
succeeded to the patrimony was at first a gentleman, then a
shabby-genteel, and at forty his time was taken up with schemes to dodge
the debtors' prison, and with plans to pay off the National Debt; for it
seems that men who can not manage their own affairs are not deterred
thereby from volunteering to look after those of the nation.
It appears, also, that Mr. Wollstonecraft wrote a book entitled, "How to
Command Success," and by its sale hoped to retrieve the fortune now
lost--but alas! he ran in debt to the printer and finally sold the
copyright to that worthy for five shillings, and on the proceeds got
plain drunk.
The family moved as often as landlords demanded, which was about every
three months. There were three girls in the family--Mary, Everina and
Eliza--all above the average in intelligence. Whether there is any such
thing in Nature as justice for the individual is a question, but cosmic
justice is beyond cavil. The stupidity of a parent is often a very
precious factor in the evolution of his children. He teaches them by
antithesis. So if a man can not be useful and strong, all is not lost:
he can still serve humanity as a horrible example--like the honest hobo
who volunteered to pay the farmer for his dinner by acting as a
scarecrow. Children of drunkards make temperance fanatics; and those who
have a shiftless father stand a better chance of developing into
financiers than if they had a parent who would set them up in business,
stand between them and danger, and meet the deficit.
Women married to punk husbands need not be discouraged, nor should
husbands with nagging wives be cast down, for was it not Emerson who
said, "It is better to be a nettle in the side of your friend than his
echo?"
Thus do all things work together for good, whether you love the Lord or
not.
The Wollstonecraft family traversed London with their handcart, from
Chelsea to East End; they also roamed through Essex, Yorkshire and Kent.
When matters became strained they fell back on London, paid one month's
rent in advance and then stayed three, when their goods and chattels
were gently landed on the curb, and the handcart came in handy.
As the girls grew up they worked at weaving, served as house-girls and
nurses, and finally Mary became a governess in the family of Lord
Kingsborough, an Irish nobleman. This gave her access to her employer's
library, and she went at it as a hungry colt enters a clover-field. Not
knowing how long her good fortune would last, she eagerly improved her
time. She wrote frequent letters to her sisters, telling what she was
doing and what she was reading. She was eminently superior to any of the
females in the family, and acknowledged it. A tutor in the house taught
her French; and whether the nobleman's children learned much or not, we
do not know, but Mary soon equaled her teacher.
Knowledge is a matter of desire.
The next year the Wollstonecraft girls opened a private school, a kind
of "Young Ladies' Establishment," quite on the Mrs. Nickleby order. And
indeed, if a Micawber had been wanting, Mary knew where to look for him.
About this time Mary met Ursa Major, who may have treated men very
rudely, but not your petite, animated and clever women.
Doctor Johnson quite liked little Mary Wollstonecraft. She matched her
wit against his and put him on his mettle, and when Mary once expressed
a desire to become an authoress he encouraged her by saying, "Yes, my
dear, you should write, for that is the way to learn; and no matter how
badly you write, you can always be encouraged by finding men who write
worse." And another time he said, "Women have quite as much interest in
life as men, and see things just as clearly, and why they should not
write the last word as well as speak it, I do not know."
That settled it with Mary: She gave up her part in the school; and very
soon after, the sisters gave up theirs; one of them wedding a
ne'er-do-well scion of nobility, and the other marrying an orthodox
curate with a harelip. Through the help of Doctor Johnson, Mary got a
position as proofreader with a publisher. Here her knowledge of French
was valuable, and she assisted in translations. Then she became literary
adviser and reader for different publishers. She was making money, and
had accumulated a little fortune of near a hundred pounds by the sweat
of her brain. Her close acquaintanceship with printers and publishers
thus placed her where she became acquainted with several statesmen who
had speeches to make, and for these she constructed arguments and also
helped them out of dire difficulties by rounding out their periods, and
by introducing flights of fancy for men whose fancies were wingless.
On her own account she had written various stories and essays. She had
met the wits and thinkers of London and had learned to take care of
herself. She was an honest, industrious, and highly intelligent woman,
and commanded the respect of those who knew her best. "To know her,"
says Godwin in his Memoirs, "was to love her, and those who did not love
her, did not know her."
Of course, she was an exceptional person, for have I not intimated that
she was a thinker? This was over a hundred years ago, and thinkers were
as scarce then as now, for even so-called educated folk, for the most
part, only think that they think. Frederic Harrison did not stray far
a-field when he referred to Charlotte Perkins Gilman as a reincarnation
of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Mary Wollstonecraft had translated Rousseau's "Emile" into English, and
had read Voltaire closely and with appreciation.
The momentous times of Seventeen Hundred Ninety-two were on in Paris.
That mob of women, ragged and draggled, had tramped out to Versailles,
and Marie Antoinette, a foolish girl who rattled around in a place that
should have been occupied by a Queen, had looked out of the window and
propounded her immortal question, "What do they want?"
"Bread!" was the answer.
"Why don't they eat cake?" asked Her Chatterbox.
Mary Wollstonecraft was a revolutionary by nature. Looking about her she
saw London seething with swarms of humanity just one day's rations
removed from starvation. A few miles away she saw acres upon
acres--thousands of acres--kept and guarded for private parks and
game-preserves. Then it was that she supplied Henry George that fine
phrase, "Man is a land animal." And she fully comprehended that the
question of human rights will never be ended until we settle the land
question. She said: "Man is a land animal, and to deprive the many of
the right to till the soil is like depriving fishes of the right to swim
in the sea. You force fish into a net, and they cease to thrive; you
entrap men, through economic necessity, in cities, and allow a few to
control the land, and you perpetuate ignorance and crime. And eventually
you breed a race of beings who take no joy in Nature, never having
gotten acquainted with her. The problem is not one of religion, but of
commonsense in economics. Back to the land!" Of course a writing woman
who could think like this was deeply interested in the unrest across the
Channel.
And so Mary packed up and went over to Paris, lured by three things: a
curiosity concerning the great social experiment being there worked out;
an ambition to perfect herself in the French language by speaking only
French; a writer's natural thirst for good copy.
In all these things the sojourn of Mary Wollstonecraft in Paris was an
eminent success, but tragedy was lurking and lying in wait for her. And
it came to her as it has come for women ever since time began--through
that awful handicap, her nature's crying need for affection.
* * * * *
In Paris martial law reigned supreme; in the streets the death-tumbrel
rattled, and through a crack in the closed casement Mary Wollstonecraft
peered cautiously out and saw Louis the Sixteenth riding calmly to his
death. The fact that she was an Englishwoman brought Mary Wollstonecraft
under suspicion, for the English sympathized with royalty. When men with
bloody hands come to your door, and question you concerning your
business and motives, the mind is not ripe for literature!
The letters Mary Wollstonecraft had written for English journals she now
destroyed, since she could not mail them, and to keep them was to run
the risk of having them misinterpreted. The air was full of fear and
fever.
No one was allowed to leave the city unless positively necessary, and to
ask permission to go was to place one's self under surveillance.
It was at this time that Mary Wollstonecraft met Gilbert Imlay, an
American, who had fought with Lafayette and Washington. He was a man of
some means, alert, active and of good address. On account of his
relationship with Lafayette, he stood well with the revolutionaries of
Paris. He was stopping at the same hotel where Mary lodged, and very
naturally, speaking the same language, they became acquainted. She
allowed herself to be placed under his protection, and their simple
friendship soon ripened into a warmer feeling. Love is largely a matter
of propinquity.
It was a time when all formal rites were in abeyance; and in England any
marriage-contract made in France, and not sanctified by the clergy, was
not regarded as legal. Mary Wollstonecraft became Mrs. Mary Imlay, and
that she regarded herself as much the wife of Imlay as God and right
could command, there is no doubt.
In a few months the tempest and tumult subsided so they got away from
Paris to Havre, where Imlay was interested in a shipping-office. At
Havre their daughter Fanny was born.
Imlay had made investments in timber-lands in Norway, and was shipping
lumber to France. Some of these ventures turned out well, and Imlay
extended his investments on borrowed capital. The man was a nomad by
nature--generous, extravagant and kind--but he lacked the patience and
application required to succeed as a businessman. He could not wait--he
wanted quick returns.
The wife had insight and intellect, and could follow a reason to its
lair. Imlay skimmed the surface.
Leaving his wife and babe at Havre, he went across to London. Mary once
made a trip to Norway for him, with the power of attorney, to act as she
thought best in his interests. In Norway she found that much of the land
that Imlay had bought was worthless, being already stripped of its
timber. However, she improved the time by writing letters for London
papers, and these eventually found form in her book entitled, "Letters
From Norway."
Arriving at Havre she found that Imlay had dismantled their home, and
for a time she did not know his whereabouts. Later they met in London.
When the time of separation came, however, she was sufficiently
disillusioned to make the actual parting without pain. When Imlay saw
she would no longer consent to be his wife, he proposed to provide for
her, but she declined the offer, fearing it would give him some claim
upon her and upon their child. And so Gilbert Imlay sailed away to
America and out of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft. Exit Imlay.
[Illustration: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT]
* * * * *
In London the position of Mary Wollstonecraft was most trying.
Penniless, deserted by Imlay, her husband, with a hungry babe at her
breast, she was looked at askance by most of her old acquaintances.
There were not wanting good folks who gathered their skirts about them,
sneezed as she passed, and said, "I told you so."
Her brother Charles--a degenerate, pettifogging barrister, with all his
father's faults and none of his grandfather's virtues--for whom Mary had
advanced money so that he could go to college, came to her in her dire
extremity and proffered help. But it was on condition that she should
give up her babe and allow him to place it in a foundlings' home. This
being done, the virtuous Charles would get Mary a position as weaver in
a woolen-mill, under an assumed name, and the past would be as if it
never had been. This in the face of the assertion of Pliny, who said,
eighteen hundred years before, that one of the things even God could not
do, was to obliterate the past; and of Omar's words, "Nor all your tears
shall blot a line of it."
The mental processes of Charles are shown in his suggestion of a
pleasant plan whereby Imlay could be lured back to England, arrested,
and with the assistance of a bumbailiff, marriage forced upon him. His
scheme was rejected by the obdurate Mary, who held that the very essence
of marriage was freedom.
The tragic humor of the action of Charles turns on his assumption that
his sister was "a fallen woman," and must be saved from disgrace. This
opinion was shared by various other shady respectables, who kept the
matter secret by lifting a soprano wail of woe from the housetops,
declaring that Mary had smirched their good names and those of their
friends by her outrageous conduct. These people also busied themselves
in spreading a report that Mary had gone into "French ways," it being
strongly held, then as now, by the rank and file of burly English
beef-eaters, male and female, that morality in France is an iridescent
dream--only that is not the exact expression they use.
Hope sank in the heart of the lone woman, and for a few weeks it
appeared that suicide was the only way out. As for parting with her
child, or with her brother Charles and his kin, Mary would stand by her
child. It is related that on one occasion her sister Everina came to
visit her, and Mary made bold to minister to her babe in the beautiful
maternal way sanctified by time, before bottle-babies became the vogue
and Nature was voted vulgar. The sight proved too much for Everina's
nerves, and she fainted, first loudly calling for the camphor.
The family din evidently caused Mary to go a step further than she
otherwise might, and she dropped the name Imlay and called herself plain
Mary Wollstonecraft, thus glorifying the disgrace. This increased
fortitude had come about by discovering that she could still work and
earn enough money to live on by proofreading and translations; and it
seemed that she had a head full of ideas. There in her lonely lodgings
at Blackfriars, in the third story back, she was writing "The Rights of
Woman." The book in places shows heat and haste, and its fault is not
that it leads people in the wrong direction, but that it leads them too
far in the right direction--that is, further than a sin-stained and
hypocritical world can follow.
When men deserve the ideal, it will be here. If mankind were honest and
unselfish, then every proposition held out by Mary Wollstonecraft would
hold true. Her book is a vindication, in one sense, of her own
position--for at the last, all literature is a confession. But Mary
Wollstonecraft's book is also a plea for faith in the Divinity that
shapes humanity and "leads us on amid the encircling gloom."
It is moreover a protest against the theological idea that woman is the
instrument of the Devil, who tempted man to his ruin. Very frank is the
entire expression, all written by a Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a pure
woman whom Fate had freed from the conventional, and who, wanting little
and having nothing to lose, not even a reputation, was placed in a
position where she could speak the truth.
Parts of the book seem trite enough to us at this day, since many of the
things advocated have come about, and we accept them as if they always
were. For instance, there is an argument in favor of women being
employed as schoolteachers; then there is the plea for public schools
and for co-education.
* * * * *
William and Mary first met in February, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six. In
this matter dates are authentic, for Godwin kept a diary for forty-eight
years, in which he set down his acts, gave the titles of books he read,
and named the distinguished people he met. This diary is nearly as
valuable as that of Samuel Pepys, save that unfortunately it does not
record the inconsequential and amplify the irrelevant, for it is the
seemingly trivial that pictures character. Godwin's diary forms a
continuous history of literary and artistic London.
William was not favorably impressed with Mary, the first time they met
each other. Tom Paine was present, and Godwin wanted to hear him talk
about America, and instead Mary insisted upon talking about Paris, and
Tom preferred to listen to her rather than to talk himself.
"The drawing-room was not big enough for this precious pair," says
Godwin, and passes on to minor themes, not realizing that destiny was
waiting for him around the corner.
The next time they met, William liked Mary better, for he did most of
the talking, and she listened. When we are pleased with ourselves we are
pleased with others. "She has wondrous eyes, and they welled with tears
as we conversed. She surely has suffered, for her soul is all alive,"
wrote Godwin.
The third time they met, she asked permission to quote from his book,
"Political Justice," in her own book, "The Rights of Woman," upon which
she was hard at work. They were getting quite well acquainted, and he
was so impressed with her personality that he ceased to mention her in
his diary.
Godwin's book had placed him upon the topmost turret of contemporary
literary fame. Since the publication of the work he was fairly
prosperous, although his temperament was of that gently procrastinating
and gracious kind that buys peace with a faith in men and things. Mary
had an eager, alert and enthusiastic way of approaching things that grew
on the easy-going Godwin. Her animation was contagious.
The bold stand Mary had taken on the subject of marriage; her frankness
and absolute honesty; her perfect willingness at all times to abide by
the consequences of her mistakes, all pleased Godwin beyond words.
He told Coleridge that she was the greatest woman in England, and
Coleridge looked her over with a philosopher's eye, and reported her
favorably to Southey. In a letter to Cottle, Robert Southey says: "Of
all the lions or literati I have seen here, Mary Imlay's countenance is
the best, infinitely the best; the only fault in it is an expression
somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke display--an
expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not sarcasm, in Mary
Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and
although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they
are the most meaning I ever saw. As for Godwin himself, he has large,
noble eyes, and a nose--oh, a most abominable nose! Language is not
vituperatious enough to describe the effect of its downward elongation."
In mentioning the matter of Godwin's nose, it is perhaps well to
remember that Southey merely gave a pretty good description of his own.
In August, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, Godwin borrowed fifty pounds
from Thomas Wedgwood, son of Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria, which money was
to tide Mary over a financial stress, and afford her the necessary
leisure to complete "The Rights of Woman." The experience that Mary
Wollstonecraft had in the publishing business, now enabled her to make
favorable arrangements for the issue of her book. The radicalism of
America and France had leavened England until there was quite a market
for progressive literature. Twenty years later, the work would have been
ignored in silence or censored out of existence, so zigzag is the path
of progress.
As it was, the work sold so that in six months from the time it was put
on sale, Mary had received upwards of two hundred pounds in royalties.
Recognition and success are hygienic. Mrs. Blood, an erstwhile friend,
saw Mary about this time, and wrote to an acquaintance: "I declare if
she isn't getting handsome and knows it. She has well turned thirty and
has a sprinkling of gray hair and a few wrinkles, but she is doing her
best to retrieve her youth."
Mary had now quit Blackfriars for better quarters near Hyde Park. Her
health was fully restored, and she moved in her own old circle of
writers and thinkers.
At this time William and Mary were both well out of the kindergarten. He
was forty and she was thirty-seven. Several years before, William had
issued a sort of proclamation to the public, and a warning to women of
the quest that bachelordom was his by choice, and that he was wedded to
philosophy. Very young people are given to this habit of declaration, "I
intend never to wed," and it seems that older heads are just as absurd
as young ones. It is well to refrain from mentioning what we intend to
do, or intend not to do, since we are all sailing under sealed orders
and nothing is so apt to occur as the unexpected.
Towards the last of the year Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, William was
introducing Mary as his wife, and congratulations were in order. To
them, mutual love constituted marriage, and when love died, marriage was
at an end.
A sharp rebuke was printed about this time by Mary, evidently prompted
by that pestiferous class of law-breakers who do not recognize that the
opposites of things are alike, and that there is a difference between
those who rise above law and those who burst through it. Said Mary,
"Freedom without a sense of responsibility, is license, and license is
a ship at sea without rudder or sail." That the careless, mentally
slipshod, restless, and morally unsound should look upon her as one of
them caused Mary more pain than the criticisms of the unco guid. It was
this persistent pointing out by the crowd, as well as regard for the
unborn, that caused William and Mary to go quietly in the month of
March, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-seven, to Saint Pancras Church and be
married all according to the laws of England.
Godwin wrote of the mating thus: "The partiality we conceived for each
other was in that mode which I have always considered as the purest and
most refined quality of love. It grew with equal advances in the minds
of each. It would have been impossible for the most minute observer to
have said who was before and who was after. One sex did not take the
priority which long-established custom had awarded it, nor the other
overstep that delicacy which is so severely imposed. I am not conscious
that either part can assume to have been the principal agent in the
affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there was
nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other. There
was no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale.
It was friendship melting into love."
Mary was now happier than she had ever been before in her life. She
wrote to a friend: "My bark has at last glided out upon the smooth
waters. Married to a man whom I respect, revere and love, who
understands my highest flights of fancy, and with whom complete
companionship exists, my literary success assured, and the bugaboo of
poverty at last removed, you can imagine how serene is my happiness."
But this time of joy was to be short.
She died three months later, September Tenth, Seventeen Hundred
Ninety-seven, leaving behind her a baby girl eleven days old.
This girl, grown to womanhood, was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and without whom the name of Shelley would be to
us unknown.
In writing of the mother who died in giving her birth, Mary Shelley
says: "Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those rare beings who appear once,
perhaps, in a generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no
difference of opinion nor chance of circumstance can cloud. Her genius
was undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and
having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and oppressed, an
earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows.
"Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility and eager
sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed
them with a tender charm that enchants while it enlightens. Many years
have passed since that beating heart has been laid in the cold, still
grave, but no one who has ever seen her speaks of her without
enthusiastic love and veneration. Was there discord among friends or
relatives, she stood by the weaker party, and by her earnest appeals and
kindliness awoke latent affection, and healed all wounds. Open as day to
melting charity, with a heart brimming with generous affection, yearning
for sympathy, helpful, hopeful and self-reliant, such was Mary
Wollstonecraft." And here let us leave her.