A Great Englishwoman
Memoirs of Mary Wolistonecraft. By William Godwin. Newly Edited with a Preface and Supplement by W. Clerk Durant. (Limited Edition. Constable. 3 l s. od.) MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT is a name that still stirs the heart with images of nobility. She stands as a monument of pure feeling and candour. Rich-hearted and impulsive, she flashes on the sober stream of Godwin's personality like a sunset fire along a smooth river. His pride never afterwards had quite the same integrity and self-continence.
She was born at Horton in 1759, of an Irish mother and a drunkard father. Her childhood, with that of her sisters, was one of misery. She saw all the womenkizal in her small world the slaves of an irresolute male despot. She saw her mother beaten by him. The shame and the injustice rankled in the girl's heart, and woke her to an early realization of purpose. Her mother died when she was twenty-one, and on her father's second marriage she left home with her two sisters, all intending to earn their own living---a sign of abnormal independence in those days. Her next acquaintance with male humanity was through her sister Eliza, who made a disastrous marriage. The legal separation which followed this resulted in the sisters setting up a school, with Fanny Blood, Mary's intimate friend, and a girl of much culture. Godwin records that during this period of school-manning she met the great Dr. .Johnson, who encouraged her by his kindness. Nor Boswell, nor Fanny Burney, nor Mrs. Thrale, however, so much as mention her name. Meanwhile Fanny Blood, who had been a guide and solace to the lon:iy girl, married a merchant and went away to Lisbon. This loss was followed by further trouble for Mary. The school failed and her health broke down. Fanny Blood then invites" her out to Lisbon, to act as nurse during the coming confinement. This event only plunged Mary into further grief, for her friend died in child-birth.
About this time she made her first essay in authors-hip, with a pamphlet on Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. She followed this with hackwork for a city bookseller, which enabled her to keep her head above water while she was writing the book which made her famous : the Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
All that she demanded for women was that they should be regarded seriously, educated equally with men as responsible Members of society, and given opportunity to justify that equality by competing with men in the buiiness and pro- fessional world. She also pleaded for equality in marriage, and custody of children, and for a paternal responsibility in the maintenance of illegitimate children.
All of these emancipation have arrived ; but Mary %Vollstonecraft was the pioneer who codified them and drew up the ideal charter of woman's freedom. It has taken us century and a half to fulfil her vision.
Following her success,. and burning with the fire of her expressed ideas, she went to France in 1792 to watch the birth of freedom there. Alas ! she herself fell into slavery, betrayed by her own spiritual generosity. The year following her arrival in Paris she met the American, Gilbert Imlay, and fell deeply in love with him. He responded by utilizing her for his pleasure and his business. She became his lover and his commercial traveller. As he grew tired of her in the former rale she became relegated more and more to the latter. The result was a cruel immolation of herself. She tried again and again to win him back, and for a short time after the birth of her child she succeeded. The happiness did not last long, for she soon discovered that even while they were living as Man and wife he was unfaithful to her. It all ended by her attempting to drown herself in the river at Putney. This frantic deed seemed to act as a cathartic for the unhappy passion which for over two years had wasted her. She then settled in London with her baby, who was named after the dead Fanny.
There followed a short period of real happiness, for in 1796 she met Godwin. Their acquaintance was ripened by Mutual respect into a deep friendship that rmally swept aside all their shared theories as to the contemptibility of marriage. In March, 1797, they married secretly and each kept a separate Menage as a sort of sop to their principles. Godwin, however, crumbled fast ; for passion, this new thing in his life, took tighter and tighter hold, heart and brain. The fact that he was to have. a child by ,thiS wonderful flame-haired woman filled him_ with a bewildering excitement. He wrote to her as often as four times a day. Mary, however, wiser by her past experiences, held herself in check, especially against the somewhat overbearing logical masculinity of her husband, On a point of order, as it were, we find her resentful that he expected her, during some domestic need, to negotiate with a plumber, regarding his delegation to her of this mundane matter as a hint of her intellectual inferiority. Godwin, on the other hand, became emotionally expansive and even took to little Fanny, and for the rest of her life treated he as his own child.
At last Mary's time came. On August 30th, 1797, she gave birth to another daughter, Mary. Within a few hours dangerous complications set in, and after tell days of agony for herself and her husband, she died, leaving the new-born infant and the little girl of three in the hands of the middle. aged and bachelor-minded rationalist.
Here is a most welcome addition to " Constable's Classics," for in this one well-mannered volume is a most appropriate trinity, each unit of which is a worthy tribute to Mary Wollstonecraft by a true admirer of her rare nobility.
First, we have her husband's Memoir, which he published shortly after her death in 1797. Godwin was a complicated and, to many people, a repellent character. Whatever doubts we may have of him, however, we cannot deny his sincere and unselfish devotion to Mary. Here it is expressed in a beautiful and original form, the most human of all his works.
Mr. Durant claims to be a life-long lover of Mary Wollstonecraft, and he has spent four years in collecting material for this edition, which contains Godwin's text framed in a preface, a long and exhaustive biographical supplement, and a bibliographical note. It is a work of thorough and sympathetic scholarship. Finally, Mr. Durant has added a series of Blake's drawings, which were made as illustrations to the first edition of Mary's Original Stories from Real Life.
RICJL1RD CHURCH.
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