“These confessions should only be uttered—you know where, when the curtains are up—and all the world shut out. You are a tender, affectionate creature, and I feel it thrilling through my frame giving, and promising pleasure—Ah me!”
Mrs. B felt her heart thump behind her bosom. This was not who she was, nor how her life had been. When she was a new-married woman, unable to produce a child of her own, she’d determined to wake each day with a short prayer and to count three blessings, then go along her business, whatever it was. She ended each day the same, on her knees, worshipping Him, whom she relied on to make sense of whatever suffering she didn’t know how to hold. She gave succor where she could, and counted that she saw far more good births than bad. Happiness, love, desire—these were never hers, or hers to judge. And yet, here they were, flooding her with feeling.
* * *
“Yes, I guess you must go,” said Mary, when Mrs. B appeared with her satchel at the ready, her cape fastened at her neck, rubicund cheeks, like she’d sat too close to a fire. “There’s someone who needs you more than we do, I’m sure. You must go to them, and do what you’ve done for us.”
“I’ve done nothing but let Nature—”
“I know what you’ve done, Mrs. B. I’ve seen it.” Mary was sitting on the edge of her bed, radiant. The baby was laid on a pillow, mewing and stretching her limbs, already filling out her own outline, cheeks right and full. “I am sad to see you go. But I suppose your leaving is a good sign, a return to life, new life, where I will do almost everything for myself and my little bird.”
Mary looked down at her newborn, who seemed to look back, enthralled by her mother’s face.
“I don’t think we’ll need that coffin after all, Mrs. B.”
“I should think not,” she said. “Why, you might even give her a name.”
“A name,” Mary said.
Mrs. B wanted to confess about the baptism. It would sit hard on her conscience if she didn’t. But she wasn’t sure how to say it, and what offense it might give. She didn’t want anything wrong between them for the leaving.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve called her ‘Mary,’ to myself, of course. You’ll call her whatever you like, but I did wish her most fiercely to have a name.”
Mary looked at her little girl, and drew the shape of her face with the light touch of a finger. “Is that who you are, little bird?” Then she turned to the midwife with a quizzing look. “Have you children, Mrs. B?”
“Wasn’t blessed, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Wasn’t God’s plan for me. He gave me a calling to get others into the world.”
“But married?”
Mrs. B shifted her satchel and looked Mary straight in the eye. “Forty years.”
“Forty years! That’s nearly as old as I am.”
“Feels like the blink of an eye, just now.”
“Yes, well, I know not all years can be happy ones, but I hope you’ve had your share.”
“Passing years,” she said, and then hesitated, wanting to speak something for him, now that he was gone. “A good man.”
“I’ve a good man too.”
“Yes. He is.”
“I once believed that happiness was not to be mine,” said Mary. “And that everything denied to me—that I denied myself—would be rewarded in the next life.” She looked back at her new baby. “But here I am, Mrs. Blenkinsop, twice-blessed, and happily married. In this very life.”
She stood from the bed and took Mrs. B’s free hand in both of hers. “Would you do me the kindest favor, and drop a note to Mr. Godwin? He has writing rooms twenty doors down. He’ll get you a carriage from there. Unless you’re dead on your feet.”
Mrs. B knew the surge of energy in certain women who’d just given birth, as if they’d climbed to the peak of a mountain, and, surprised by their own strength, were eager to go again. Confinement for women like that was foolish. On this she and Mary agreed.
“A walk would do me good,” said Mrs. B.
Mary scooped up the child and walked into the study, put her gently down in the cradle, and sat at her writing desk. Mrs. B followed her to the threshold. She had tried to right the stack of letters as she’d found them.
“Hope I’ve left things in good order.”
Mary surveyed her desktop. “Never mind, Mrs. B,” she said, taking out a clean sheet. “I’ve been rereading our letters to each other, Godwin and I. It is, in a way, an epistolary history of our struggle.”
Mrs. B didn’t know what to say in return. This place, and these people, showed no signs of struggle, not a one that Mrs. B could name.
“I don’t remember, in all our years,” Mrs. B said, “ever quarreling, not really.”
“I don’t know if I mean quarreling,” said Mary. She looked at the midwife thoughtfully. “I have spent my whole life fighting for all women to be equal to all men. But I’ve found that for one woman to be equal to one man, and for him to be equal to her, that is another thing. At least for us.”
Mrs. B had a fleeting thought that she ought to have struggled more in her own marriage, though for what she didn’t know. Never mind. It was too late now.
“Do you know the strangest thing, Mrs. B? Mr. Godwin and I recently discovered that we were in Hoxton at the same time, years ago. I was sixteen, dreadfully unhappy. He was a student at the academy, only a half a mile away.” She gazed out the window. “To think that our shoulders might have brushed in the street.”
“I s’pose the good Lord didn’t think it your time to meet.”
Mary laughed, and began to write her note. “Well, when ‘the good Lord’ ordained that we should, Mr. Godwin detested me, and I him,” she said. “He thought me domineering and difficult. I found him full of his own ideas and fixed in his ways. But time softened our harder edges, and when we met again, we found each other changed. We still agreed, wholeheartedly, that marriage is a disaster for men and women both.” She turned her gaze to her little girl. “But when the creature announced itself, it was I who insisted. Having suffered one child out of wedlock, I was not eager to do it again.”
“People can be awfully cruel.”
“And yet the cruelest experience didn’t eradicate my own foolish tendency to cherish, even expect, romantic tenderness, above all else.”
“Well, then,” said Mrs. B, “I’m glad you and Mr. Godwin found each other when you did, and a way to end your struggle.” Mrs. B couldn’t think what else to say, unaccustomed as she was to this sort of talk.
Mary signed and folded the note, no seal at all, stood, and handed it to Mrs. B. “Oh no,” she said with twinkling eyes. “Our struggle has only just begun.”
“Seventeen Evesham Buildings.” Mrs. B gripped the letter in her hand, finding it hard to take her leave. “I’ll see he gets it.”
Mary W
There were mostly two opinions on the future of our school: one, that it had none, and two, that it would fail before we opened our doors. True, we didn’t have any doors, not even a town that we knew would welcome our venture. But we had a sense of urgency, Fanny and I, and the vigor of our beliefs. It would be our mission to teach girls to cultivate their minds and bodies so they could become independent, thereby helping to create a world in which wives could defend themselves against the tyranny of husbands, or if they didn’t wish to marry, live their lives on their own terms. Eliza missed her child terribly, but began slowly to recover her mental and physical strength. She would join the effort. Everina too. But our zeal was not enough. We needed money, backers, a building, and I had no idea how to get them. I had three guineas in my pocket and no experience at all.
The thoughtful Clares, when they got wind of my plan, offered to introduce me to Hannah Burgh, the wealthy widow of a Reverend James Burgh, himself a prolific writer and schoolmaster on Newington Green. Until his death some years before, Burgh had advocated for free speech, universal suffrage, and educational reform, all things that gave me hope. There wa
s little I could glean about his widow in advance, except that her current mission in life, according to Reverend Clare, which she believed had been bestowed on her by God, was to educate young women to be good Christians and useful citizens. Reverend Clare loaned me a copy of her dead husband’s treatise—Thoughts on Education—but I was alarmed to find in its pages everything I was against. To his thinking, radical reform extended only as far as the world of boys, for whom he believed education should block any tenderness as a form of weakness. A girl, according to Reverend Burgh, should know only enough arithmetic to do household accounts, and whatever geography would allow her to converse with her husband and his friends. She was to ask questions more than answer them, being incapable of novel thought.
I prepared for the worst.
When a servant ushered me into the rather grim parlor with its heavy curtains, Mrs. Burgh was already parked in what looked like an uncomfortable chair, in what looked like an uncomfortable dress, widow wear, though her husband had been dead nearly ten years. She had hooded eyes that were hard to read, and greeted me without a smile. After a few pleasantries, which weren’t pleasant at all, tea was brought in. She wasted no time in beginning to quiz me, as she poured steaming hot tea into plain porcelain cups. I could see she had a slight tremor.
“Tell me something of your qualifications,” the widow said, taking a bold sip from her own cup that I was sure burned her lips.
I had no qualifications, of course, and paused to concoct an answer that was at least somewhat true.
“French?” she interjected.
“Not to speak of.”
“Fancy needlework?”
“No.”
“What about skills in music and drawing?”
Here was my chance. “As for my part, no, but I’ve a friend, a colleague, Miss Blood, who makes her living in botanical drawings, and I must say, she is first-rate.”
“That’s fine, but I’m asking about you, Miss Wollstonecraft. What do you bring to an endeavor of such scope?”
I picked up my teacup, trying to still my hand. “I suppose I bring my own thoughts on education. The education of daughters, that is.”
“Ah, then you’ve read my husband’s book?”
“I have. Twice.”
“As have a parade of potential headmistresses who have sat just where you are sitting now,” she said. “But let us take your measure, shall we?”
I took my own sip of burning tea, trying to think of something safe to say. “I believe young girls ought to live more meaningful, more virtuous lives.”
“I quite agree,” she said. “But what is meaning? What, virtue?”
“I would have them cultivate their minds … and their bodies,” I said.
“Their bodies?” said the widow, blowing into the black ruffled neck that came all the way to her triple chin. “Do you mean dance steps?”
I set down my cup. “I mean running, Mrs. Burgh. Jumping. Climbing trees. Feeling the grass between their naked toes.”
“Naked toes?”
“For how can one know the natural world, or one’s place in it, one’s true self, without seeing it from on high and up close?”
The windows rattled just then. I glanced outside at the gust and whoosh in the treetops.
“Does the wind frighten you, Miss Wollstonecraft?”
When I turned back, she looked dismayed. “No. I draw strength from it.”
“I can see that you are fine-tuned,” she said. “And, I suppose, a devotee of the current ‘culture of sensibility.’ It is the fashion.”
“It is not fashion with me, Mrs. Burgh, but nature.”
“A Rousseau follower, then? My husband abhorred Rousseau.”
“With me it’s not all nature, but it comes close. I am fine-tuned, but only as it exhilarates my sense and exalts my sensibility. I don’t want girls to be artificial beings, the sum of custom and manners, without reason or feeling, when they ought to have both. If only I could give them the education I wish I’d had—”
“Go on,” she said, her spine stiffer.
“You see, in my relatively brief experience of a girl’s education, I found not much to recommend the tinkling on a harpsichord, spouting a few well-placed words of French, and parading around in unnatural protuberances, hoops and corsets and such, that have no relation whatsoever to the shape of the female body.” Widow Burgh furrowed her brow, but I moved closer to the edge of the settee. “I believe young women have minds that are the equal of any man, yet they’re taught to develop the merest aspect that would attract a husband, and nothing more, lest they scare said husband away.”
“Are you against marriage, then?” she cut in.
“For myself, yes.” I sat up straighter. “I should like to see marriage not the only hope of securing a woman’s future, but a choice she might make if she could find the right partner, though I doubt he exists, and lead a more meaningful life than being just a wife. Meaning being itself a virtue.”
“Say more,” she commanded, “about how one teaches that.”
“The child’s mind must be left to itself. I might nurture it, that’s all. Feed their bodies with nourishing, healthy food, allow them the freedom to explore. Teach them to think for themselves, not memorize what other people say they ought to. Quite frankly, I’m sick of hearing about the sublimity of Milton, the elegance and harmony of Pope, the original, untaught genius of Shakespeare.”
“You don’t think Shakespeare a genius?”
I leaned toward her. “I do, of course. But they must find their own genius. Not read from primers but compose their own stories, in their own words, for there’s nothing as true as the genuine emotions of the heart, before they’ve learned not to feel them, not to think their own thoughts—I want them to follow the path of their own minds, even if it leads them off the beaten track. To make their own way.”
The widow drained her cup, revealing nothing. But I was unbridled and couldn’t stop.
“Integrity, creativity, self-discipline. If they could learn to value their own minds, not the minds of others, of men, they might refuse trivialities in favor of depth, and true human purpose, a new society, made by them, reflected in them. That, I believe, is the highest virtue.”
The widow poured a long, thin trail of tea into her cup, and then mine until it nearly overflowed, her tremor more pronounced. “And you believe my husband would approve?”
Here it was, the question I dreaded most. I cleared my throat. “No, Mrs. Burgh. I feel sure he would most decidedly disapprove.”
Widow Burgh inclined toward the back of her chair. She studied her tea while I waited, terrified. Finally she clapped her eyes on me. They were clear as a bell, and blue. “Then we quite agree,” she said.
“That he would disapprove?”
“Quite,” she said, setting her cup onto its saucer with a punctuating clink. “But Reverend Burgh is dead, and has been for some years. And I am the one with the money now, Miss Wollstonecraft. And have been waiting for you for a very long time.”
My lungs expanded, as if taking my first breath in a new world, little bird.
“And I’ve been waiting for you, Mrs. Burgh. For even longer.”
We quickly came to agreement on the particulars. The widow found us an enormous empty house in her own village, Newington Green, north of London, and a handful of families who would send their daughters, ages seven to sixteen, including two families who would board them, which would pay for our extra expenses. I prepared to leave London, taking Eliza and Everina with me, sure that Fanny was set to join us. I could see in her face that she wanted to, desperately so, but her lungs had taken a turn for the worse over the winter, the tuberculosis lodging inside her.
“I don’t know what I’ll do here without you, Mary. You are the weft and warp of my life.”
“And you mine,” I said, brushing a stray lock from her face. “You’ll join us when you feel stronger, promise me you will.” I pressed my forehead to hers.
“I pro
mise. When I’m stronger.”
When we sisters arrived at Newington Green, we found a second paradise, after Beverley. It had the feel of a rural hamlet, but with handsome Georgian houses lining the old Roman road, circling a shady green with steepled churches and pretty gardens. Our house was cavernous, without a stick of furniture. That first day we skittered up and down the stairs, let our laughter bounce against the walls. Fanny had taught us her favorite Scotch song, “There’s Nae Luck about the House,” and we sang it, full lungs, at least four times, like an incantation to bring her there. I had enough money from Mrs. Burgh to buy furniture, desks, books, hire a cook and two maids, and begin to prepare for our first girls (and even a couple of boys). I was twenty-five years old, living, for the first time, a life of my own choosing, my own direction, my dreams.
By the end of summer Fanny felt some surge of strength and joined us. She would help teach where she could, especially botany and drawing. Mrs. Burgh approved of her almost to senselessness. They talked like young girls; Fanny was disarming in that way. She could make an old widowed woman, almost without realizing, confess that hers had been an affectionless marriage, her husband believing that “supporting the species” was the sole aim of marital relations, which should be curtailed otherwise. She told Fanny that she’d been beautiful once, many men had thought so—her dance card was the first to fill—but that Reverend Burgh thought beauty “a mass of flesh, blood, humors, and filth covered over with skin.”
“How awful,” Fanny said. “For you.”
We were walking on the Green, but they thought I was farther behind them and couldn’t hear.
“Yes, well, I suppose I hoped his passion would overcome his prejudice. But he believed that to admire me was to deny that possibility. He called his thoughts ‘filthy,’ and believed it his prime duty to eradicate them. And so eradicate them he did.”
“Without supporting the species?”
“I’m afraid, yes,” she said, making clear that it was a sadness to her. “And so I must do so much more to advance the cause now.”
Love and Fury Page 10