Vindication

  only ‘Miss King’s governess’: Memoirs, ch. 4.

  MW’s manners and conversation: Gentleman’s Magazine (Oct. 1797).

  received registers of…pronunciation: Roy Foster tells me that a Cockney accent would have jarred in Dublin society, but that it would not have recognised much difference between middle- and upper-class accents. Aristocratic accents in England were often regional until about the 1920s, as evidenced by Victoria Sackville-West’s The Edwardians. (In conversation, Oxford, 28 Sept. 2000.)

  He urged her: This letter has not survived, but its content can be deduced from MW’s reply, quoted in full here. MWL, 148; MWletters, 118–19.

  Mary’s ingratitude: To suggest too strongly that MW was behaving badly implies that she should have known her place. As for the bleakness of a governess’s position, we have only to read Jane Austen on the just fears of Jane Fairfax (in Emma) or Charlotte Brontë on Jane Eyre. Ch. 17 below relates the wretched experiences of CC as a gifted and spirited governess in the Wollstonecraft mode.

  St Werburgh’s Church: I’m grateful to the Revd Canon David Pierpont, Vicar of the Christ Church group of parishes, for opening the church on Saturday 9 Sept. 2000, and providing helpful information. That day, there was another visitor from County Wexford, to see the tomb (beneath the church) of his hero Lord Edward Fitzgerald, one of the leaders of the 1798 Rising.

  Handel in St Werburgh’s: Handel may have played on the original organ, as he lived in the area for eight years. He brought the half-finished Messiah with him to Dublin, but his programme at the church did not include that work, which had its first public performance in 1742 in a hall only fifty yards away in Fishamble Street. (It could not take place in a church because Protestants thought it improper to put the Word to music.)

  Caroline Stuart Dawson: Known as Lady Portarlington. She was an artist as well as a singer.

  In London she had ridiculed: Education, 46–7.

  Calista: In Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent.

  ‘really great merit’; events of 23–25 Mar. 1787: MW to EW (25 Mar. [1787]), MWL, 146–8; MWletters, 116–9.

  ‘Is it not…Alas!!!!!!!!’: The final PS of a letter to EW, written late at night after her evening with the Ogles (24 Mar. [1787]), MWL, 145; MWletters, 116. She alludes to Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air’; and to Hamlet, II, ii, 97f.: ‘That he is mad, ’tis true ’tis pity/ And pity ’tis ’tis true.’

  Solitary reading for women: Todd, Wollstonecraft, 416, interestingly, compares rabbis’ disapproval of reading the Torah alone, canto 5 of Dante’s Inferno, and Dutch paintings of women reading love-letters which can be associated with the libidinal dangers of novel-reading.

  Émile and the new status of the child: I’m indebted to an illuminating lecture on this subject by Angelica Goodden (Fellow in French at St Hilda’s College, Oxford), given at the university on 3 Nov. 2000.

  ‘I long to go to sleep’: MW to George Blood (c . Jan 1787), MWL, 134; MWletters, 100.

  ‘to make any great advance…’: To EW, MWL, 140; MWletters, 109.

  ‘adventitious’ rights: Paley, Principles, in a chapter on ‘The Division of Rights’, 75–6.

  ‘Nature may have made’: Ibid., 279.

  biographic basis of the novel Mary: The form may provide a missing link between Dr Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (completed in 1781) and the autobiographical schema of Wordsworth’s Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind (1805). Earlier fictions like Tom Jones or Tristram Shandy do include scenes from childhood, but these are more snippets of anecdote than measured biography.

  ‘carefully attended’: Mary, ch. 1.

  the fictional Ann: Ibid., ch. 11. It’s suggested that MW demeaned Fanny by having a fashionable English family in Lisbon call Ann a ‘beggar’. It hardly needs to be said that, far from endorsing this, MW is making a point about the worldly.

  ‘neither marrying’: Matthew 22: 30: ‘For in the resurrection, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in heaven’. Repeated RW, ch. 2.

  restless–with no institutional habitation: As such, ‘Mary’ is a precursor to Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights.

  ‘darted into futurity’: Mary, ch. 4.

  answer to Sophie: Taylor, ‘Wild Wish’, 216.

  flash of contempt: Mary, ch. 3.

  ‘knowledge of physic’; ‘medicine of life’: Ibid., ch. 23. ‘Mary’ also studies ‘physic’ in chs 6 and 17.

  ‘men past the meridian’: Ibid., ch. 8.

  the nature of ‘Mary’s’ mind: Ibid., chs 10 and 23.

  the novel Mary indebted to Dr Price: Gary Kelly, Notes to Mary, 211. MW asks after ‘LeSage’ in a letter to EW (24 Mar. 1787).

  ‘witching time’: Hamlet, III, ii, 406.

  ‘I think and think’: To EW (24 Mar. [1787]), MWL, 144; MWletters, 113.

  ‘Still does my panting soul…’: Mary, ch. 20.

  ‘lost in stupidity’: MWL, 156; MWletters, 130.

  ‘the only Rt Honourable…’: MW to BW (27 June [1787]), MWL, 155; MWletters, 129.

  governess was away: There is no evidence of where MW went, but it seems likely she would have paid a visit to her father at Laugharne on the south coast of Wales, not far from Bristol but not close enough for a day-trip.

  7 VINDICATION

  eighteenth-century drawing of the north side of St Paul’s Churchyard: Etching by T. Horner in the British Library, reproduced in MWL, 180.

  ‘Bufo’: ‘Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot’, line 233.

  Vathek as a private cult: Noel Annan’s recollections of The Dons, largely at Trinity and King’s in Cambridge during the early years of the twentieth century, tell us that the Fellows sometimes chose students and colleagues on the basis of their responses to questions about their taste for Vathek. Before homosexuality was legalised in the 1960s the novel served as a private code.

  early Wordsworth and Coleridge: Wordsworth’s Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk, and Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight.

  JJ’s ‘ tenderness’: BW to EW (7 July 1794). Abinger: Dep. b. 210.

  JJ’s sympathies: Tomalin, Woof and Hebron, Hyenas, 4.

  compassionate conduct: Godwin’s obituary for JJ (1809).

  new ‘plan of life’: To JJ (13 Sept. [1787]), MWL, 159; MWletters, 134.

  ‘The Cave of Fancy’: MWCW, i, 191-206

  ‘determined’: (13 Sept. [1787]), MWL, 159; MWletters, 134. WG heard that MW was depressed in this transition period, and ascribes it to renewed grief for Fanny in the wake of writing Mary. This must have been hearsay. I don’t see evidence of depression in the letters of this period.

  ‘new systems’: To JJ (13 Sept. [1787]), MWL, 159; MWletters, 133.

  writing Real Life in the autumn of 1787: What appears a speedy production depended on material gathered slowly and tested in practice over a substantial preceding period. Her Education, written over the summer of 1786, drew on two years’ experience in her own school at Newington Green; Mary, written in the summer of 1787, drew on the long years of Fanny’s decline, the voyage to Lisbon in 1785, and Mary’s growing conviction of her own ‘genius’ in the course of 1787; and then Real Life drew on her outdoor curriculum at Mitchelstown Castle, designed to awaken the conscience of privileged adolescent girls like Margaret and Caroline King before it was too late.

  ‘painful emotions’: MW to JJ (20 Sept. [1787]), MWL, 162; MWletters, 137.

  a situation nearer her: MW reporting to EW, MWL, 165–6; MWletters, 140–1.

  the organ and her resolves: Ibid.

  ‘Without your humane and delicate assistance’: To JJ, MWL, 186; MWletters, 159. Todd dates this undated letter to early 1789; Wardle dates it to late 1789 or early 1790 because MW asks JJ for a German grammar at a time; Wardle assumes, she would have been working on her German translation. But there are three reasons for dating this letter as early as the autumn of 1787: the letter makes it clear that s
he’s only beginning to ‘attempt to learn that language’ as a preparatory act–there’s no translation as yet at hand. Second, she signs herself ‘Mary W.’, indicating an earlier stage in the relationship, for by late 1787 or early 1788 she was using her Christian name alone. Third, the assessment of JJ as ‘delicate’ echoes the wording of a letter to Everina in mid-Nov. 1787.

  ‘how warmly and delicately’: To EW [c. mid-Nov. 1787], MWL, 166; MWletters, 159.

  Blackfriars Bridge: Begun in 1760, the bridge was initially called after the Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder. In 1791 the mill burnt down. The spot is now Rennie Garden.

  panoramic view: The word ‘panorama’ entered the language in 1796 soon after a panorama of London was drawn from this vantage point.

  ‘whim’: MWL, 166; MWletters, 141.

  ‘vehement’: Memoirs, ch. 5.

  ‘You can conceive…’: MWL, 164–5; MWletters, 139–40.

  often the sole woman: Mrs Barbauld (Anna Laetitia Aikin) and later the novelist Mary Hays sometimes attended JJ’s dinners.

  ‘I often visit…’: To George Blood, MWL, 171; MWletters, 149.

  better health: MWL, 170; MWletters, 146.

  ‘past tumultuous scenes of woe’: To George Blood, MWL, 176; MWletters, 156.

  Hewlett’s sermon for MW: MWL, 171; MWletters, 149.

  ‘MrsSis sunk…’: MWL, 172; MWletters, 149–50.

  Cowper: The Task (1785).

  Bonnycastle: Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries (London: 1828), ii, 34.

  George Fordyce: Son of the author of an advice book for girls (see above, ch. 4).

  MW’s movements after dinner: Apt question from Elizabeth Crawford (author of The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide and biographer of the pioneering women in the Garrett family) on a rainy Sunday, 30 April 2000, as we followed MW’s footsteps from St Paul’s to her home across the river.

  ‘lank’; ‘a philosophical sloven’: Knowles, Life of Fuseli, i, 164. Pope similarly slandered Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as dirty, and the mud stuck till Isobel Grundy’s scrupulous biography in 1995. Fuseli’s slander has stuck too, repeated into the twenty-first century.

  Henry Adams to his wife: Patsy Vigderman of Cambridge, Mass., supplied this anecdote.

  ‘an excellent preservative of health’: MW used this quote from the Spectator, no. 15, for her Female Reader.

  Hays on MW: ‘Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft’, 460.

  Fuseli helped: Weinglass, ‘Letter of Enquiry’, 144–6.

  spent…£200 on her family: JJ, ‘A few facts’.

  gain £200: MWL 174; MWletters, 154.

  the obscure, the rude…: MW is in line with the tendency of the age, represented by the rude forefathers of the hamlet who sleep in the churchyard of Gray’s Elegy. Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries, 17, shows parallels in music: in Gluck’s ‘noble simplicity’ and condemnation of superfluous ornament in his dedication of his opera Alceste, and in Haydn’s attraction to the folk-dances of Eastern Europe.

  ‘I cannot bear…’: MWL, 167; MWletters, 143.

  ‘deeply immersed’…MWL, 173; MWletters, 152.

  Necker: MW remained unconvinced by his combination of finance with spirituality.

  ‘what does this mean?’: MWL, 177; MWletters, 158.

  ‘almost rewrote’ Young Grandison: JJ, ‘A few facts’.

  The Female Reader: Her model was William Enfield’s The Speaker; or, Miscellaneous Pieces, the popular anthology published by JJ for use in schools.

  ‘Negro woman’: From hymn VIII, Hymns, repr. in The Female Reader, MWCW, iv, 189.

  as yet no schoolbooks for girls: Gillian Avery, author of The Best Type of Girl, in conversation (Feb. 2001).

  Most girls…protected…from serious books: Carol Shields, Jane Austen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001).

  Mr Cresswick: He gave public readings, and died in 1792, the year he published an imitation volume: The lady’s preceptor; or, a series of instructive and pleasing exercises in reading; for the particular use of females; consisting of a selection of moral essays, … It’s hard to see why a jingle that appeared in it entitled ‘On Breaking a China Quart Mug Belonging to the Society of Lincoln College, Oxford’ could be appropriate. Mr Cresswick opts for undemanding compositions close to ‘easy and elegant conversation, upon topics interesting the Fair Sex’ which would fill their minds with harmless and pleasing thoughts. He does, though, include ‘Observations on Reading by Miss Wollstonecraft and other writers’.

  the first anthology for and about women, and in part, too, by women: I owe this information to Elizabeth Crawford.

  contents of The Female Reader: In 2001 Elizabeth Crawford discovered a Dublin edition of The Female Reader, published the same year as the first English edition (1789) but with an additional 198 pages consisting of ‘A Complete System of Geography Not in the London Edition’. It remains to be verified whether the addition was by MW or from some other source (such as her schoolteacher friends, John Hewlett, the Revd Mr Gabell, Jane Arden, or a Dublin teacher). There is no indication that it is by another hand. The British Library has a copy of the Dublin version, republished in 1791. It is not listed in the general catalogue.

  ‘Dying Friends’: The Complaint, iii, as published in The Female Reader, MWCW, iv, 183.

  ‘During her stay…’: JJ, ‘A few facts’.

  ‘intimate’; ‘crimes’: MWL, 178; MWletters, 166.

  ‘how often I teazed you…’: MWL, 221; MWletters, 206.

  ‘trash’; ‘I seemed…’: MWL, 178–9; MWletters, 156–7.

  short-notice professional reviewing: Waters, ‘Literary Critic’, 415–34.

  reviewed her own translation: AR (Jan. 1789).

  ‘Address to the Bastille’: Cowper, The Task, book v.

  Enclosure Acts: Porter, English Society, 208–13.

  implications of the Enclosure Acts: Joan Smith, Moralities, 87.

  the Revolution debate initiated by Price and Burke: I am indebted to Prof. David Wormesley’s Oxford lecture on this subject (1 May 2003), stressing contested historical narratives.

  ‘Behold…’: Price, Political Writings, 195–6.

  ‘an addition of nondescripts…’: The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, viii, ‘The French Revolution’ (1790–4), ed. Paul Langford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 63. Dr Paddy Bullard drew attention to this passage in his Oxford lecture on Burke (15 May 2003).

  ‘Upon that…stock of inheritance’: Burke, Revolution in France, 117.

  ‘Man will not be brought up…’: Paine, Rights of Man, 230.

  MW stopped writing: WG mistook this as a fit of ‘indolence’, Memoirs, 230.

  perfectly judged: Memoirs, 300, Holmes’s notes.

  ‘coming warm from the heart…’: MW writing of Dr Price to George Blood (17 Jan. [1788]), MWL, 170; MWletters, 147.

  publication of RM: A second edition expanded by nine pages appeared on 14 Dec. with Mary Wollstonecraft’s name. (Crawford, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’, 14–19.

  MW’s exchange with Catharine Macaulay: MW’s letter to Macaulay was first published in 1995, repr. in SC, ix, 1–2.

  Price to MW: Abinger: Dep. c. 514.

  the title of RW: MW’s switch from the plural (Men) to the singular (Woman) in her title of the sequel may be influenced by the success of Paine who used the singular form to effect in his Rights of Man, published in March 1791 between MW’s two Vindications.

  to meet Paine: In March, WG had helped to bring out the first part of Paine’s more famous Rights of Man, against a threat of banning and prosecution.

  ‘I had little curiosity…’: Memoirs, ch. 6.

  Woolf spoofed: In Three Guineas.

  the woman as preacher: Dinah Morris in Adam Bede, ch. 2 (‘The Preaching’). I’m grateful to Dr Isobel Rivers of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, for alluding to this after Taylor’s lecture, cited next.

  MW and the Scottish Enlightenment: Deftly summarised by Taylor in ‘Mary Wollstonecraf
t and the Enlightenment’.

  ‘my book…’: To EW (23 Feb. [1792]), MWL, 210; MWletters, 198.

  Joan Smith: Moralities, ch. 5.

  the new marriage laws as property laws: Ibid., 86–7.

  the law’s sanction of beating and rape in marriage: Ibid., 93.

  ‘From the respect paid to property…’: RW, ch. 9.

  The Ladies Dispensatory: Vivien Jones, ‘Sex Education’, cites the extract.

  Mrs Mason linked with model of womanhood in RW: Moore, Mary Wollstonecraft, 42.

  debate on surrendering sexual pleasure for friendship in marriage: Ibid. Well-judged summary by Jane Moore, who reads RW ‘as an early attempt to bridge the sexual chasm’ between men and women.

  sex-based subordination based on educational disabilities: In the twenty-first century, there remain vast numbers of women who may be equal citizens yet remain victims. One-third of girls in South Africa–despite an advanced constitution–are raped in school, in the main by teachers and headmasters, and though in 2002 the Minister for Education Kadar Asmal commissioned a book from social scientist Anne-Marie Wolpe, addressing teachers in very tactful terms (the book takes account of a culture of entitlement amongst school authorities and compliance traditionally expected from girls), the Department of Education neglected to distribute it. The press exposed an undiminished level of school-hours rape in 2004.

  domestic affections cut across distinctions of gender: Moore, Mary Wollstonecraft, 39.

  ‘ridiculous falsities’: RW, ch. 7 (on modesty).

  Preface to Elements of Morality: ‘Address to Parents’. A ‘new and improved’ edition in 1821 eliminated sex education together with the opening ‘Advertisement’, which had carried MW’s name in the 2nd edn, 1792.

  no precedent for naming the sex organs: Vivien Jones, ‘Sex Education’. Dr Jones led the way in shedding an accretion of prejudice about MW’s supposed prudery, in order to demonstrate what was innovative.