Vindication

by Lyndall Gordon

  Aristotle’s Complete Master-Piece: Ibid.

  ‘Children very early see…’: RW, ch. 7.

  ‘not only to enable [women] to take proper care…’: Ibid., ch. 12, on national education.

  hard fact in copious footnotes: Marilyn Butler, comments after Dr Jones’s lecture, ‘Sex Education’.

  change institutions…change human nature itself: Schama, Citizens, denies any advantage resulting from the French Revolution, despite this psychological effect (described memorably in the American context by Henry Adams in his chapter on ‘American Ideals’ in his History of the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison). In France the psychological consequence is overlaid by violence, but had its impact on the mind of MW, which in turn is having its impact now in the transformation of women’s agency.

  Talleyrand on girls’ education; ‘the will of nature’: Girls were to be allowed to attend primary schools up to the age of eight, where they would learn handiwork ‘suitable to their sex’. (Tallyrand, Rapport sur l’instruction publique.)

  ‘the natural emotions…’; ‘pretty superlatives’: RW, Introduction to the 1st edn.

  ‘a premature unnatural manner’: Ibid.

  ‘a road open…’: Ibid., ch. 9.

  Catharine Macaulay: Comments on women’s education in letter 4, Letters, 46–50. Reviewed by MW in AR (1790). She expressed her admiration in RW, ch. 5, when Macaulay (Mrs Graham) had recently died.

  ‘Brutal force…’: RW, ch. 2.

  ‘Man accustomed to bow down to power…’: Ibid., ch. 3.

  ‘It would puzzle a keen casuist’: Ibid., ch. 9.

  ‘moral agents’: Ibid., end ch. 12.

  ‘It is time to effect a revolution…’: Ibid., ch. 3.

  mainstream of British and American politics: I’ve taken this wording from Barbara Taylor’s innovative study of the impact of MW on Owenite feminism in the first half of the nineteenth century, a period in which MW is still often taken to have been in eclipse (Eve and the New Jerusalem, 1). Owen’s meeting with MW’s elder daughter in 1816 will figure in ch. 17.

  debated by women in the British provinces: Hufton, History of Women, i, 450.

  Mrs Grant’s response to RW: Noted by Elizabeth Crawford, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft: “the first of a new genus”’.

  Catherine, or the Bower: The Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, ed. Frances Beer (Penguin Classics, 1986), 136–77. The connection between Aunt Philadelphia and the fictional orphan Miss Wynne, forced to sell herself to an unattractive man twice her age, was made originally by Chapman, and is sensitively developed in Tomalin, Jane Austen, 80. Catherine was written a few months after Aunt Phila’s death. Later, in Mansfield Park, a slave-owner, Sir Thomas Bertram, tries to force his niece Fanny into a lucrative marriage to a faithless flirt–again a demand that a dependant should prostitute her person for ‘a maintenance’. Kathryn Sutherland’s introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Mansfield Park suggests that ‘in the intensity and even violence of her feelings, Fanny can seem the heir of a Romantic revolutionary feminine tradition, of heroines like Wollstonecraft’s Maria [in WW]’.

  ‘Upon my word…’: Pride and Prejudice, ch. 29.

  ‘Her manners…’: Ibid., ch. 8.

  Fanny Price as legatee of RW: Hufton, i, 450.

  Anne Elliot: Persuasion, ch. 23.

  ‘remember the Laidies’: Adams Family Correspondence, i, 329, 370: ‘That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute…Why then not put it out of the power of the vicious and lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity. Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as vassals of your sex.’ ‘I desire you would remember the Laidies, and be more favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands.’

  Adams replied (382): ‘ I cannot but laugh’, noting complaints that American freedoms had fomented disobedience amongst ‘Indians’ and ‘Negroes’. ‘But your letter was the first intimation that another tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest were grown discontented … Depend on it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems.’

  Abigail Adams and RW: Adams MS correspondence: John Adams in Philadelphia to Abigail Adams in Quincy, Massachusetts (22 Jan. 1794); Abigail Adams to John Adams (2 February 1794); and on women rulers (26 Feb. 1794). Elements of this exchange cited in Akers, Abigail Adams, and Paul C. Nagel, The Adams Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 57.

  Aaron Burr’s response to RW: To Mrs Burr (16 Feb. 1793), Memoirs of Aaron Burr, i (New York: Harper, 1855), 363; extract in SC, i, 328.

  Hannah More to Walpole: 18 Aug. 1792, Walpole, Correspondence, xxxi, 370.

  the gentry…‘shocked’; effigy of Paine; ‘immortalizing Miss Wollstonecraft’: BW to EW (20 Jan., 10–20 June 1793). Abinger: Dep. b. 210. BW was a governess in Pembroke at this time.

  William Roscoe applauded MW: ‘Life, Death and Wonderful Achievements of Edmund Burke’ (quoted Chandler, Roscoe, 390). Roscoe (1753–1831), elected MP for Liverpool in 1806, backed the bill to abolish the slave trade which became law in 1807.

  Roscoe commissioned a portrait: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Painted in Oct. 1791. The artist is unknown, but a possible clue may be in an unpublished letter (20 Aug. 1834) from WG to his second wife (Abinger: Dep. c. 523). He is pestered for money, he says, by William Perry, who did a portrait of JJ ‘& another of first mamma’ (as MW was called after WG remarried).

  ‘ a book’: MWL, 202–3; MWletters, 190.

  8 RIVAL LIVES

  MW’s letters to George Blood and her sisters between Nov. 1787 and early Dec. 1792 are in MWL, 163–223; MWletters, 138–213.

  ‘a dreadful situation’: 1 Jan. [1788].

  ‘I wish when I transact…’: 15 Sept. [1789].

  Mrs Bregantz’s ‘snarling’…: BW to EW (Apr. 1791). She writes to George Street, where EW was staying with MW after her return from Paris.

  Tasker and Rees: I’m dependent here on Todd, Wollstonecraft, 170–1, having myself not come to satisfactory conclusions. BW’s rage is so pervasive that she doesn’t make the exact nature of the relationships sufficiently clear.

  ‘It is happy…’: BW to EW (29 Mar. 1792).

  ‘Mrs Wollstonecraft is grown quite handsome’: BW to EW (3 July 1792).

  ‘while the sad hours of life…’: BW to EW (10 Feb. 1793).

  ‘threw some money away’: MW to Roscoe, MWL, 203; MWletters, 191.

  James Wollstonecraft’s future: According to JJ, ‘A few facts’, James afterwards served ‘on board Lord Hood’s fleet as a midshipman, where he was presently made a lieutenant’. This doesn’t take account of the shadier aspect of his history, which includes a spell in a French prison; money borrowed from his sister’s friend, John Barlow, and not returned, to JB’s outspoken fury; and four subsequent letters to WG with excuses for not repaying a debt.

  MW and Ann: Unclear whether this was always to be a temporary arrangement. It seems that Ann was later returned to Mrs Skeys.

  Mrs Skeys none too kind: EW to BW (n.d. but post-1798, because the letter refers to the publication of WW). Abinger: Dep. b. 210/5.

  JB’s revisionist view of ‘nature’: Beinecke: Za Barlow folder 5: MS ch. 6, headed ‘Means of Subsistence’, of an unidentified work.

  MW meets Mrs Leavenworth: Stiles, Diary, iii, 502–3.

  ‘the easy…behaviour’ of American women: MW’s review of J. Brissot, Nouveau Voyage dans les États-Unis de L’Amérique, AR (Sept. 1791). MWCW, vii, 391. This issue came out one month after RB’s arrival in London in Aug. 1791, which makes it just possible for MW to have met her through JJ.

  ‘What I feel, I say’: RB to JB (Jan. 1796). Houghton: bMS Am 1448 (539).

  RB’s concern with private integrity: J.B. Cutting to JB (19 May 1810). Beinecke: Pequot M 969.

  ‘could never contrive to make any boys…’: MW to EW (23 Feb. [1792]).

  ‘heavy expence’: MW to EW (2
0 June [17]92).

  ‘snap’: MWL, 208; MWletters, 196.

  ‘Mrs. B….’: 20 June [17]92.

  resemblance of GI and JB: Seelye, Beautiful Machine, 117.

  JB’s family: The son of Samuel and Esther Hull Barlow, JB was a descendant of farmers who had settled in Connecticut in the 1650s.

  JB’s war record: He fought in the battle of Long Island and was chaplain to the 4th Massachusetts Brigade.

  ‘the tenderest…of Lovers’: From Hartford (13 Aug. 1781). Houghton, bMS Am 1448 (537).

  ‘the Hartford Wits’: Timothy Dwight, John Trumbull, Lemuel Hopkins, and David Humphreys who reappears later in JB’s correspondence as one of Washington’s spies in Europe. See below, ch. 14. During these early years in Connecticut, Barlow tried law–with little success–and then was employed to revise Isaac Watts’s version of the Psalms for the Congregational Church.

  JB’s epic: In its foretelling the triumph of liberalism, a forerunner of Constantin Volney’s Ruins (1791) and Shelley’s Queen Mab (1813).

  Scioto Land Company: On 1 Mar. 1784 Jefferson proposed a plan for the government of the entire West which led to the Northwest Ordinance of 13 July 1787, providing for government of the territory north-west of the Ohio River. Under the direction of the Revd Manasseh Cutler, a group of Revolutionary War veterans from New England organised the Ohio Company. The group signed a contract on 27 Oct. 1787 for 1, 500, 000 acres on the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers.

  JB’s first visit to London: Diary: Houghton, bMS Am 1448 (9). See also JB in London to Hazard (27 Aug. 1788), Beinecke: MS Vault Pequot M886–M937.

  JB to Sargent: Winthrop Sargent Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

  ‘I thot you were dead…’: JB to RB (9 Mar. 1790). Houghton, bMS Am 1448 (181).

  RB’s voyage: RB to Mary Dwight (3 Oct. 1790) from Paris. Houghton.

  JB enamoured of Mrs Blackden: Morris, Diary (May 1789).

  ‘I have not slept with any body but God…’: JB to Mrs Blackden (11 July 1790). Houghton.

  Scioto scheme: Trans. of the Paris agreement in is Beinecke: Za Barlow, folder 8.

  JB and a Virginia merchant: JB to Mr Fitzgerald of Alexandria, Va, from 162, rue Neuve des Petits Champs, Paris (17 Jan. 1790). (Scioto Land Co. Papers, MSS Division, New York Public Library.) This letter exhibits the high-toned graces Barlow could command. On the Internet site accompanying this book.

  agreement with Hallet: Trans. in JB’s hand (14 Aug. 1790). (MSS Division, New York Public Library: Ohio box, Scioto Land folder.) JB’s address is the Hôtel de la Grande Bretagne, rue Jacob, Paris. Agreement dated 28 June 1790, between JB and M. Hallet, by which Hallet entered the employ of the Scioto Co. for two years at an annual salary of 1500 livres.

  ‘taken infinite pains’: He goes on: ‘If the first 100 people find themselves happy, the stream of emigration will be irresistible, they may be followed by a million of European settlers into the western country. This will greatly increase the value of all those lands, & enable Congress to sink the national debt by the sale of lands.’

  ‘the period of our deepest difficulties’: JB’s reflective will-letter to RB from Algiers during the plague of 1796. See below, ch. 14. Draft of letter in Beinecke, Za Barlow folder 13.

  JB to Baldwin: On 3 May 1791 he promised Baldwin that if the Scioto schemers started up again, ‘I shall have nothing to do with them.’ Houghton, bMS Am 1448 (65).

  JB’s new role: To Baldwin, again. Ibid.

  JB invited MW to tea: WG’s diary: ‘Tea at Barlow’s with Jardine, Stuart, Wollstencraft [sic], and Holcroft.’ Abinger: Dep. e. 201.

  JB’s Advice burnt: Reports contradict.

  Jefferson to JB: 20 June 1792. Houghton *56M–52.

  ‘The visit to the king…’: JB to RB from Paris (25 June 1792). Houghton, 1448 (195).

  ‘fondness for tracing…’: MWL, 162; MWletters, 137.

  ‘pent up’: RB to Mary Dwight (3 Oct. 1790). Houghton, bMS Am 1448 (650).

  coveted by Lady Hamilton: JB described the house in detail to Lady Hamilton. Letterbooks, Houghton.

  ‘will be handed you by Mr Wollstoncraft’: 1 Oct. 1792. Beinecke: Za Barlow folder 29.

  ‘The exertions…’: Memoirs, 228.

  correspondence with MM: MWL, 167, 172, 176; MWletters, 143, 150, 156.

  ‘From the time she left me…’: SC, viii, 909–11.

  Mrs Mason takes leave: Real Life, ch. 25, MWCW, 449–50.

  ‘do not suppose’: c. mid-1788. MWL, 177.

  planned to visit Paris: In June, JB sent word to RB that he had found lodgings for MW in Paris. Houghton.

  ‘the world…married me…’: To Roscoe (12 Nov. [17]92), MWL, 218; MWletters, 208.

  Adam and Eve: Paradise Lost, iv, 411–504.

  Lavater: MW was translating Lavater. HF’s translation ousted hers. See ch. 7.

  ‘grandeur of soul’ and ‘…comprehension’: MW’s letters to HF, quoted by Knowles, Life of Fuseli, i, 163.

  ‘brimful’: BW to EW (4 Oct. [1791]). Abinger: Dep. b. 210.

  ‘palsied’: JJ, ‘A few facts’. MW managed only a few reviews.

  ‘grotesque mixture’: Haydon, Autobiography (1853).

  WG on HF: Letter to Knowles (28 Sept. 1826), cited in Knowles, Life of Fuseli.

  Opie’s portrait of HF: National Portrait Gallery, London. At one time it hung opposite Opie’s 1797 portrait of MW.

  exchange at JJ’s dinner: ‘Memoir of HF’ in 18 Pamphlets on British Art 1797–1934, Bodleian.

  HF and JJ: In 1979 JJ’s biographer, Tyson, contested Claire Tomalin’s plausible 1974 suggestion that JJ could have been homosexual. Tyson, Joseph Johnson, xvii, argues (rather unconvincingly) that a lot of London shopkeepers never married because of economic insecurity, and that HF had a lot of single friends who are assumed to be heterosexual. Since it can’t be proved either way I have left the matter open.

  HF as pornographer: Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

  ‘women have no character…’: Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle II. HF agrees in his Remarks on Rousseau (1767), which MW almost certainly would have read.

  HF on women: Fuseli, Aphorisms (1788–1818), 225–7. Selections in Fuseli, Mind of Henry Fuseli.

  HF’s address: Information from Elizabeth Crawford. HF was still there in 1794.

  home visits of HF and MW: Memoirs, ch. 6.

  ‘loved the man’: To George Blood [c. 1791].

  ‘Like Milton…’: MW to Roscoe, MWL, 206; MWletters, 194.

  ‘fugitive’ and ‘intangible’: Fuseli, Aphorisms.

  ‘I hate…’: Knowles, Life of Fuseli, i, 363, quotes this snippet from MW’s letters to HF. Knowles put it about that MW’s letters were too ardent for their own good. This one seems decidedly unardent.

  not to be trusted: MW to JJ [c. spring 1790], MWL, 189; MWletters, 170.

  Sophia as model: Knowles, Life of Fuseli, presents a more respectable image: Sophia, he says, was visiting an aunt in London when she met HF. In fact, HF often drew and painted her as something of a dressy courtesan–probably a fantasy.

  needy of paternal protection: Did MW’s fixation on HF have to do with her father? Looking at HF’s Nightmare, as MW did every week at JJ’s dinners, the viewer is put in the position of voyeur of a woman in danger, with no protector. This repeats MW’s position as a child watching her father abuse her mother. Could MW have been drawn to HF’s awareness of a woman’s vulnerability? Judith Herman, Trauma, 111, has done a convincing study of the after-effects of domestic violence (aligning it with military trauma). For all that, we must take care not to impose on this distinctive woman a pattern of neurosis in place of the caricature of lust.

  snips: MWletters, 205, a speculative assemblage of a few separate and questionable snippets selected to fit the prevailing slander and quoted out of context by Knowles, Life of Fuseli, i, 162. Richard Holmes, in notes to Memoirs, 301, calls MW’s involvement with HF ‘something of a puzzle’ and suggests, I think rightly, the inno
cence of her proposal as another experiment in living. JJ recalls her ‘love’ in a note to HF on the day of MW’s death (see ch. 15 below), but I suspect that JJ’s view was coloured by what HF reported to him. Kegan Paul, in his prefatory memoir, Letters to Imlay, rebuts slander. ‘The slander stuck sufficiently to make even Godwin surmise that had Fuseli been free, Mary might have been in love with him. But in fact Godwin knew extremely little of his wife’s earlier life.’ Kegan Paul finds the strongest indication against Knowles in the fact that MW remained friends and corresponded with Mrs Fuseli for the rest of her life. No one questions the plan of the young stage-struck Hannah More to live as a permanent guest with Garrick and his wife.

  acquired elegant furniture and better clothes: Knowles, Life of Fuseli, i, 166.

  apologised to HF: Ibid., i, 168.

  winterly smile; ‘fool’s cap’: MWL, 221; MWletters, 205–6.

  ‘the temerity…’: Knowles, Life of Fuseli, i, 167–8. More myth of MW, 162–3.

  MW–HF letters have vanished: Knowles was Fuseli’s executor, and MW’s letters to HF passed into his hands. Fearing unkind use, Roscoe requested them but Knowles refused declaring them ‘chiefly but not entirely amatory…for the sake of all parties [they] had better be consigned to oblivion’. All the same, he quoted from them (against Godwin’s plea) in Life of Fuseli. In 1870 his heir, a nephew called the Revd E.H. Knowles, announced that the letters were in his possession. In 1884 they were bought by MW’s grandson Sir Percy Florence Shelley, who refused Elizabeth Robins Pennell permission to use them in her biography of MW in 1885. It’s thought that the Shelleys destroyed them. See Richard Garnett, Letters about Shelley (London: Hodder, 1917). Transmission and the slanderous consequences are discussed further in ch. 15.

  ran away to Paris: An anonymous ‘friend’ who published a supposed ‘Defence of the Character and Conduct of the late Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin’ in 1803 propagates this gossip: she made ‘a sacrifice’ of her private desires and ‘prudently resolved to retire to another country, far remote from the object who had unintentionally excited the tender passion in her breast’. KP, i, 207, who had seen MW’s harmless letters to HF before they vanished, tried in vain to dispel this myth. He said that the story elaborated by Knowles ‘is supposed to be confirmed by extracts from her letters which are given. But … Mr Knowles is so extremely inaccurate in regard to all else that he says of her, that his testimony may be wholly set aside.’