Mary Wollstonecraft. Elizabeth Robins Pennell
was the victim of his violence, she interposed boldly between them, determined that if his blows fell upon any one, it should be upon herself. There were occasions when she so feared the results of his drunken rage that she would not even go to bed at night, but, throwing herself upon the floor outside her room, would wait there, on the alert, to meet whatever horrors darkness might bring forth. Could there be a picture more tragical than this of the young girl, a weary woman before her time, protecting the mother who should have protected her, fighting against the vices of a father who should have shielded her from knowledge of them! Already before she had left her home there must have come into her eyes that strangely sad expression, which Kegan Paul, in speaking of her portrait by Opie, says reminds him of nothing unless it be of the agonized sorrow in the face of Guido’s Beatrice Cenci. No one can wonder that she doubted if marriage can be the highest possible relationship between the sexes, when it is remembered that for years she had constantly before her, proofs of the power man possesses, by sheer physical strength and simple brutality, to destroy the happiness of an entire household.
It was fortunate for her that she spent these wretched years in or very near the country. She could wear off the effects of the stifling home atmosphere by races over neighboring heaths, or by walks through lanes and woods. Constant exercise in the open air is the best of stimulants. It helped her to escape the many ills which childish flesh is heir to; it lessened the morbid tendency of her nature; and it developed an energy of character which proved her greatest safeguard against her sensitive and excitable temperament. Besides this, she seems to have taken real delight in her out-of-doors life. If at a later age she loved to sit in solitude and listen to the singing of a robin and the falling of the leaves, she must, as a child, have possessed much of that imaginative power which transforms all nature into fairyland. If, in the bitter consciousness that she was a betrayed and much-sinned-against woman, she could still find moments of exquisite pleasure in wandering through woods and over rocks, such haunts must have been as dear to her when she sought in them escape from her young misery. It is probable that she refers to herself when she makes her heroine, Maria, say, “An enthusiastic fondness for the varying charms of nature is the first sentiment I recollect.”
Mary’s existence up to 1775 had been, save when disturbed by family storms, quiet, lonely, and uneventful. As yet no special incident had occurred in it, nor had she been awakened to intellectual activity. But in Hoxton she contracted a friendship which, though it was with a girl of her own age, was always esteemed by her as the chief and leading event in her existence. This it was which first aroused her love of study and of independence, and opened a channel for the outpouring of her too-long suppressed affections. Her love for Fanny Blood was the spark which kindled the latent fire of her genius. Her arrival in Hoxton, therefore, marks the first important era in her life.
She owed this new pleasure to Mr. Clare, a clergyman, and his wife, who lived next to the Wollstonecrafts in Hoxton. The acquaintanceship formed with their neighbors ripened in Mary’s case into intimacy. Mr. Clare was deformed and delicate, and, because of his great physical weakness, led the existence of a hermit. He rarely, if ever, went out, and his habits were so essentially sedentary that a pair of shoes lasted him for fourteen years. It is hardly necessary to add that he was eccentric. But he was a man of a certain amount of culture. He had read largely, his opportunity for so doing being great. He was attracted by Mary, whom he soon discovered to be no ordinary girl, and he interested himself in forming and training her mind. She, in return, liked him. His deformity alone would have appealed to her, but she found him a congenial companion, and, as she proved herself a willing pupil, he was glad to have her much with him. She was a friend of Mrs. Clare as well; indeed, the latter remained true to her through later storms which wrecked many other less sincere friendships. Mary sometimes spent days and even weeks in the house of these good people; and it was on one of these occasions, probably, that Mrs. Clare took her to Newington Butts, then a village at the extreme southern end of London, and there introduced her to Frances Blood.
The first meeting between them, Godwin says, “bore a resemblance to the first interview of Werter with Charlotte.” The Bloods lived in a small, but scrupulously well-kept house, and when its door was first opened for Mary, Fanny, a bright-looking girl about her own age, was busy, like another Lotte, in superintending the meal of her younger brothers and sisters. It was a scene well calculated to excite Mary’s interest. She, better than any one else, could understand its full worth. It revealed to her at a glance the skeleton in the family closet—the inefficiency of the parents to care for the children whom they had brought into the world, and the poverty which prevented their hiring others to do their work for them. And at the same time it showed her the noble unselfishness of the daughter, who not only took upon herself the burden so easily shifted by the parents, but who accepted her fate cheerfully. Cheerfulness is a virtue but too lightly prized. When maintained in the face of difficulties and unhappiness it becomes the finest heroism. The recognition of this heroic side of Fanny’s nature commanded the instant admiration and respect of her visitor. Mary then and there vowed in her heart eternal friendship for her new acquaintance, and the vow was never broken.
Balzac, in his “Cousine Bette,” says that there is no stronger passion than the love of one woman for another. Mary Wollstonecraft’s affection for Frances Blood is a striking illustration of the truth of his statement. It was strong as that of a Sappho for an Erinna; tender and constant as that of a mother for her child. From the moment they met until they were separated by poor Fanny’s untimely death, Mary never wavered in her devotion and its active expression, nor could the vicissitudes and joys of her later life destroy her loving loyalty to the memory of her first and dearest friend. “When a warm heart has strong impressions,” she wrote in a letter long years afterwards, “they are not to be effaced. Emotions become sentiments; and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them. I cannot without a thrill of delight recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over the heath.”
There was much to draw the two friends together. They had many miseries and many tastes and interests in common. Fanny’s parents were poor, and her father, like Mr. Wollstonecraft, was idle and dissipated. There were young children to be reared, and an incompetent mother to do it. Fanny was only two years older than Mary, but was, at that time, far more advanced mentally. Her education had been more complete. She was in a small way both musician and artist, was fond of reading, and had even tried her powers at writing. But her drawing had proved her most profitable accomplishment, and by it she supported her entire family. Mary as yet had perfected herself in nothing, and was helpless where money-making was concerned. Her true intellectual education had but just begun under Mr. Clare’s direction. She had previously read voluminously, but, having done so for mere immediate gratification, had derived but little profit therefrom. As she lived in Hoxton, and Fanny in Newington Butts, they could not see each other very often, and so in the intervals between their visits they corresponded. Mary found that her letters were far inferior to those of her friend. She could not spell so well; she had none of Fanny’s ease in shaping her thoughts into words. Her pride was hurt and her ambition stirred. She determined to make herself at least Fanny’s intellectual equal. It was humiliating to know herself powerless to improve her own condition, when her friend was already earning an income large enough not only to meet her own wants but those of others depending upon her. To prepare herself for a like struggle with the world, a struggle which in all likelihood she would be obliged to make single-handed, she studied earnestly. Books acquired new value in her eyes. She read no longer for passing amusement, but to strengthen and cultivate her mind for future work. It cannot be doubted that under any circumstances she would, in the course of a few years, have become conscious of her power and the necessity to exercise it. But to Fanny Blood belongs the honor of having given the first incentive to her intellectual energy. This brave, heavily burdened young English girl, accepting toils and tribulations with stout heart, would, with many another silent heroine or hero, have been forgotten, had it not been for the stimulus her love and example were to an even stronger sister-sufferer. The larger field of interests thus opened for Mary was like the bright dawn after a long and dark night. For the first time she was happy.
There was therefore much in