Vindication

  As the frenzies gave way to more settled disturbance, Mary asked what she should do in urgent letters to Everina (still living in her brother’s house and therefore best placed to plead their sister’s case). ‘In this case,’ Mary wrote, ‘something desperate must be determined on–do you think Edward [Ned] will receive her–do speak to him–or if you imagine I should have more influence on his mind I will contrive to see you…To be with Edward is not desirable but of the two evils she must chuse the least.’

  That could have been a respectable solution: Bess could have appeared to be making a family visit, and would have been able to take her baby with her. For whatever reason, Ned failed to come up with an offer of temporary refuge. Any different refuge meant open defiance, and it would compound the defiance to take the baby who legally belonged to her father. Though Mary is usually pictured acting alone, in fact the three sisters faced the problem together. On the one hand, there was Bess deteriorating to the brink of madness, there was her sisters’ fear of permanent damage, and daily evidence of her husband’s intractability. On the other hand, there was the law of the land that bound wife to husband as property. The law allowed a husband to lock his wife at home for life. Given the degree of mental illness, Mr Bishop might obtain a doctor’s order to shut his wife in a lunatic asylum. The historian of marriage Lawrence Stone sets out this possibility: ‘One of the most terrible fates that could be inflicted on a wife by a husband was to be confined…in a private madhouse…where she might linger for months, or even years. The mere threat of such confinement, which was frequently used by angry husbands in the eighteenth century, was enough to strike terror. In eighteenth-century England, this fear hung over every wife…’

  At twenty-four, Mary was under this pressure ‘to snatch Bess from extreme wretchedness’. The time had come to act, not talk. If Bishop got wind of it he would dismiss Mary and forbid her further contact with his wife. If they got away, he was likely to pursue them. The law allowed him to kidnap his wife against her will. Discreetly, Mary questioned a man called Wood, a friend of Bishop, about his responses: he was either a ‘lion, or a spannial’ was the answer. News of the lion was disquieting, but did not deter Mary and Everina from planning their sister’s escape.

  Late in December Mary sent a message to Everina asking her to be secret and warning Ned not to ‘expostulate’ on Bess’s behalf in case Bishop scent the level resistance to him had reached. While Bishop took to bed with a passing fever, almost all his wife’s clothes were smuggled out of the house with assistance from Everina and Ned’s wife. Fanny was invited to stay for a few days in Bermondsey: as a guest going about her own affairs, she conveyed parcels to a brush-maker called Lear in the Strand; there, Everina would collect them. She found a place to store the bundles–not, presumably, Ned’s house. Its location was not written down, for obvious reasons. Mary also had the forethought to have some ‘shirts’ made–washable undergarments–since fresh things would be beyond their means once Bess was on her own. As the plan advanced Mary noted that Bess grew better ‘and of course more sad–’.

  Their plan, set for mid-January 1784, was to switch coaches so as to throw Mr Bishop off their trail as they made for Hackney, a village to the north of London, beyond Hoxton–an area known to Mary from earlier days. In the eighteenth century Hackney was a centre for market gardening, with a nursery for ferns, camellias and roses. Coaches rolled along the narrow curve of Church Street and stopped at the Mermaid, pre-eminent amongst the hostelries, and scene of political and parish meetings or the annual feasts of London tradesmen. The Mermaid itself was too public for runaways. Mary had chosen a lodging-house opposite, looking out on rural quiet at the back. In the dimness of swaying coaches as the sisters crossed the river and rumbled north, Bess’s knuckles were in her mouth. Mary feared she would go into ‘one of her flights, for she bit her wedding ring to pieces’. She sighed over her baby, five months old, in a way that filled Mary with love and pity.

  ‘The poor brat it had got a little hold on my affections,’ Mary granted, ‘some time or other I hope we shall get it.’

  Leaving Bishop was less questionable than leaving the child behind. It’s thought Mary never mentioned this episode to Godwin out of shame for her actions; more likely Godwin himself suppressed the facts in view of the illegality of the escape. Nor must we forget that when Godwin wrote his memoir, Elizabeth Bishop was still in her mid-thirties, needing as a teacher to preserve an impeccable reputation and therefore opposed to any memoir at all. As for the baby, we must remember, too, that according to law a wife who abandoned a marriage would have to relinquish her offspring. This tied most mothers to marriage, however disastrous. Another consideration was that when Mary and Bess left the Bishop house in January 1784, they had but £3 between them. Bess was not the only loving mother who convinced herself her child was better off with a wealthy father to provide for her.

  Their hideaway was the house of a Mrs Dodd, who looked forbiddingly ‘wild’ when she opened her door.

  ‘Heaven protect us,’ Mary thought.

  She introduced herself as Miss Johnson. Bess, less alert to danger, quietened down once the journey was over, while Mary’s heart ‘beat time’ with every carriage that rolled by, and a knock at the door threw her ‘into a fit’.

  ‘I hope B[ishop] will not discover us,’ she wrote immediately in a shaky hand to Everina, ‘for I could sooner face a Lion.’ Whenever the door opened she expected to feel his panting breath. ‘Ask Ned how we are to behave if he should find us out[,] for Bess is determined not to return[–]can he force her–but I’ll not suppose it–yet I can think of nothing else–She is sleepy and going to bed[;]my agitated mind will not permit me–Don’t tell Charles or any creature–Oh!–let me entreat you to be careful–for Bess does not dread him now as much as I do–.’

  Oddly, it was Bess who was composed. She wrote a ‘proper’ letter to her husband, sent via Everina, their intermediary in matters great and small from the problem of clean linen to the question of whether Mr Bishop could be induced to agree to a separation.

  In the meantime, they stayed in hiding. The day after the escape they lay about drained–nursing assorted aches, Mary joked, like languid ladies. She joked, too, that in her fear she had almost wished for a husband to protect her. At night, she was hot with a fever caught from Bishop; Bess too, though increasingly rational, was suffering from headaches which Mary put down to lack of exercise. They did not dare go out, but took heart from small mercies: their room was comfortable, and Mrs Dodd turned civil, reassured by lodgers with genteel aches and languor who directed letters to their attorney at a respectable address in Town.

  The sisters continued to keep their heads down as the news spread. Mr Bishop reacted with angry ‘malice’, according to Mary; had he been hurt or repentant, she could have felt for him, but as it was, he relieved her of compassion. Reports reached Mary that people blamed her as ‘the shameful incendiary in this shocking affair of a woman’s leaving her bed-fellow–they “thought the strong affection of a sister might apologize for my conduct, but that the scheme was by no means a good one”–In short ’tis contrary to all the rules of conduct…for the benefit of new married Ladies.’ One Mrs Brook let it be known that ‘with grief of heart’ she gave up Mary’s friendship.

  They were not entirely bereft of sympathy. Good Mrs Clare came in the rain from Hoxton as soon as she heard, offered a loan and cautious advice–she was too responsible not to raise the question of reconciliation–and, returning home, sent the runaways a pie and some wine. Fanny entered into Bess’s grief at leaving her child, and sent a note to John Skeys, through her brother George, begging Skeys to find out how the child did. Bishop was making the baby the centre of his outrage, and Mary had to concede this point. He sent Bess no word of the child, and his answer, through Skeys, was cool and unsatisfactory, with no perception of his own part in his wife’s breakdown. The message was that ‘poor’, ill-done-by Bishop was puzzling his head as to how to effect a reconc
iliation, and hoped, if so, to make his wife happy.

  Bess refused to return. Her voice sounds through Mary’s reports with a force–frenzied, determined–of her own. Since Mary was blamed, then and since, for her ‘monstrous intervention’, it’s important to note that it’s Bess who willed this end to her marriage, not Mary, who at times was unsure what to believe or do. Mary’s part was to carry through her sister’s decision, glad to see a Bess no longer in Bishop’s power. For the look of ‘extreme wretchedness’ hanging over her sister’s face started to clear within days of leaving her husband. Her recovery vindicates this decision; so does the fact that Bess never regrets it–however vehemently she complains of everything else. The alternative would have been to compel her to bear with Bishop, a man so forceful, Mary remarked, that he would make even Ned ‘flinch’.

  The next question was what two destitute young women were to do for their support. Their concerned doctor, Saunders, had given the sisters ten guineas to tide them over their crisis but could not undertake to support them further. Mr Blood invited them to live in his house, and this, of course, they could not accept.

  A more appealing suggestion came from Fanny: she, Bess and Mary could live together and earn their living from painting and needlework. Mary seized on this plan with dreams of helping Fanny with her commissions. Such amateur enthusiasm stopped Fanny short: Mary had no conception of the professionalism required. Fanny explained this to Everina with a firmness that shows her to have been different from the weak figure who has come down to us. Fanny had her feet on the ground (apart from indulging Mary’s tendency to hypochondria). Her letter documents the economic plight of young middle-class women who had self-respect and consideration for one another, but no money or means of support:

  Walham Green

  Feb 7, 8th 1784

  My dear Everina,

  The situation of our two poor girls grows more and more-desperate–My mind is tortured about them, because I cannot see any possible resource they have for a maintenance, now that Dr S[aunders] begins to waver from his friendly professions. The letter I last night received from Mary disturbed me so much that I never since closed my eyes, and my head is this morning almost distracted.–I find she wrote to her brother informing him that it was our intention to live all together, and earn our bread by painting and needle-work, which gives me great uneasiness, as I am convinced that he will be displeased at his sisters being connected[?] with me; and their forfeiting his favour at this time is of the utmost consequence.–I believe it was I that first proposed the plan–and in my eagerness to enjoy the society of two so dear to me, I did not give myself time to consider that it is utterly impracticable. The very utmost I could earn, one week with another, supposing I had uninterrupted health, is half a guinea a week, which would just pay for furnished lodgings for three persons to pig together. As for needle-work, it is utterly impossible they could earn more than half a guinea a week between them, supposing they had constant employment, which is of all things most uncertain. This I can assert from experience, for my mother used to sit at work, in summer, from four in the morning ’till she could not see at night, which with the assistance of one of her daughters did not bring her more than half a guinea a week, and often not quite that; and she was generally at least one third of the year without work, tho’ her friends in that line were numerous. Mary’s sight and health are so bad that I am sure she never could endure such drudgery; and you may recollect that she was almost blinded and sick to death after a job we did for Mrs Blensley when you were there. As for what assistance they could give me at the prints, we might be ruined before they could arrive at any proficiency in the art.–I own, with sincere sorrow, that I was greatly to blame for ever mentioning such a plan before I had maturely considered it; but as those who know me will give me credit for a good intention, I trust they will pardon my folly, and inconsideration. As I believe you will readily perceive that Mary and Eliza can never prudently embark in the above-mentioned plan, I will venture to mention to you one plan Mrs Clare lately proposed, which, if practicable, might provide a refuge from poverty, provided B[ishop] cannot be brought to allow his wife a separate maintenance. You will probably be shocked when I tell you this plan is no other than keeping a little shop of haberdashery and perfumery, in the neighbourhood of Hoxton, where they may be certain of meeting encouragement. Such a shop may be entirely furnished for fifty pounds, a sum which I should suppose might be raised for them, if it was mentioned to your brother…

  I beseech you to let me hear from you as soon as possible–for I am impatient to know whether there is the least prospect of comfort for our dear girls.–Believe me to be, dear Everina

  Yours sincerely

  F. Blood

  This was an indirect plea to Ned on his sisters’ behalf. It failed to produce any help for a shop, though it’s likely Ned did exert himself to bring about a legal separation for Bess. Divorce was out of the question: only four women had succeeded in the last two hundred years. It required an Act of Parliament costing seven to eight hundred pounds and proof of incest, sodomy, bigamy or the invalidity of the marriage. When Milton had argued for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, he had seen it as a man’s problem: there was no conception that a woman might suffer in the same way. Mr Bishop declined to maintain an absentee wife. So again the runaways faced the question–how were virtuous single women to survive?

  3

  NEW LIFE AT NEWINGTON

  Rescue arrived at the neediest moment in the shape of a widow called Mrs Burgh–an aged and unknown fairy godmother who suddenly appears on the scene, bearing out the truth that half the good in the world is done by those who lie in unvisited tombs. How Mrs Burgh came upon the runaways is not recorded, possibly through Mrs Clare, but in the course of 1784 she turned two homeless young women, without capital or experience, into owners of a school. She brought this off despite the fact that Mary could offer none of the usual accomplishments of genteel education: no French, no skills in music and drawing, and no fancy needlework. ‘I shall ever have the most grateful sense of this good old woman’s kindness to me,’ Mary said afterwards.

  At first, she and Bess took lodgings in the north London village of Islington with ‘expectations’ of establishing a school. It was not to be, though encouraged by Mrs Burgh’s nephew Mr Church–‘Friendly Church,’ Mary called him–a ‘humane’ businessman who lived in the village. They soon discovered the number of competing schools in the area.

  Mrs Burgh then stepped in and persuaded Mary to start a school further out, two miles north of London where she herself lived at Newington Green, a community of merchants and Nonconformists. The sole record comes from Everina who recalled that ‘there through her exertions they in the course of two or three weeks obtained near twenty scholars’. If each pupil paid the current rate of £1 a quarter, it meant they would get about £20 for thirteen weeks. Since there were two of them, this was still below the minimum for survival, the half-guinea a week that, in Fanny’s experience, was the most a professional woman could expect. It’s likely that Mrs Burgh helped them with more than advice.

  A school in a healthy spot, beyond the range of the city’s noxious air, soon attracted lodgers as well: Mrs Campbell who enrolled three children in the school, Mrs Morphy, and Mrs Disney who enrolled two sons. Though Mrs Disney came from a prominent Dissenting family, she ‘daubed’ her face, Mary noticed disapprovingly. As the school expanded, Mary rented a larger house; she was also able to provide a post (and home) for Everina, and take on an assistant, Miss Mason. Mary sometimes referred to her as ‘poor Mason’, as though some misfortune were common knowledge–in most such cases the parents had lost their fortune, so that instead of fulfilling her destiny as a marriagable ‘lady’ the daughter was compelled to work as teacher or governess. Given her own past, Mary was sympathetic to the drop in status for a girl who must work. The sturdy ‘Mason’ (as the Wollstonecrafts called her) had a ‘clearness of judgement’ not overburdened with sensibility
. Her bluntness was wholesome, not wounding. The Wollstonecraft sisters talked of Mason long after she left the school in July 1785, but when Mary remembered her in after years it was not as an intellectual companion.

  It had always been Mary’s dearest plan to live with Fanny; she had invited Fanny to join them in Islington. This may have been when Fanny confided her longing to be released from her dependent family; and Mary, who promptly found and readied a new home, was then put out when Fanny had scruples about abandoning her parents. Mary recalled this episode with an edginess that might seem excessive if it weren’t for the unnoted fact that, at about this time, the Bloods moved from the southern outskirts of London to Islington. Their motive can only have been to join Fanny, which meant that they joined Mary as a drain on her new life before it could secure itself. This would explain her fret. She loved the Bloods like a daughter, but for a young woman about to start a school it was not a moment to take on the perennially unemployed Mr Blood, his troublesome daughter Caroline, and son George who was prone to skip from one job to another in a train of mishaps. The moves of Fanny and her family in 1784 look like a chessboard chase. If this is so, then one reason for leaving Islington would have been to shake off the Bloods who stayed on there when Fanny moved, once more, to join Mary in Newington Green.

  It was a place of substantial Georgian houses along the Roman road that led north from London. The houses were not in the usual ribbon formation; they encircled a well on a green where sheep grazed, fenced by a low rail with scattered elms at different stages of growth. A forest with ferns and flowers divided this village from its neighbour Stoke Newington, where Mary found a friend in James (later, Sir James) Sowerby, who, like Fanny, was a botanical artist. He specialised in fungi, and provided models for the British Museum. This bachelor was Fanny’s exact contemporary and two years older than Mary. She mentions his visits to her in the summer of 1785, his financial help in 1786, and a long letter from him in 1787. Many other accomplished people had gravitated to the area, amongst them Daniel Defoe a century earlier, the Jewish writer Isaac D’Israeli, and the family of Anne Stent who married James Stephen, an early activist in the fight to abolish slavery. The misty chilliness of Newington Green, its gnarled trees and fragrant shrubbery were later recalled by Edgar Allan Poe who went to school there.