Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman
to invest them with all the rights of man, those whom curiosity prompted
to seek the occasion of beholding her, expected to find a sturdy,
muscular, raw-boned virago; and they were not a little surprised, when,
instead of all this, they found a woman, lovely in her person, and, in
the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners.
The Vindication of the Rights of Woman is undoubtedly a very unequal
performance, and eminently deficient in method and arrangement. When
tried by the hoary and long-established laws of literary composition, it
can scarcely maintain its claim to be placed in the first class of human
productions. But when we consider the importance of its doctrines, and
the eminence of genius it displays, it seems not very improbable that it
will be read as long as the English language endures. The publication of
this book forms an epocha in the subject to which it belongs; and Mary
Wollstonecraft will perhaps hereafter be found to have performed more
substantial service for the cause of her sex, than all the other
writers, male or female, that ever felt themselves animated in the
behalf of oppressed and injured beauty.
The censure of the liberal critic as to the defects of this performance,
will be changed into astonishment, when I tell him, that a work of this
inestimable moment, was begun, carried on, and finished in the state in
which it now appears, in a period of no more than six weeks.
It is necessary here that I should resume the subject of the friendship
that subsisted between Mary and Mr. Fuseli, which proved the source of
the most memorable events in her subsequent history. He is a native of
the republic of Switzerland, but has spent the principal part of his
life in the island of Great-Britain. The eminence of his genius can
scarcely be disputed; it has indeed received the testimony which is the
least to be suspected, that of some of the most considerable of his
contemporary artists. He has one of the most striking characteristics of
genius, a daring, as well as persevering, spirit of adventure. The work
in which he is at present engaged, a series of pictures for the
illustration of Milton, upon a very large scale, and produced solely
upon the incitement of his own mind, is a proof of this, if indeed his
whole life had not sufficiently proved it.
Mr. Fuseli is one of Mr. Johnson's oldest friends, and was at this time
in the habit of visiting him two or three times a week. Mary, one of
whose strongest characteristics was the exquisite sensations of pleasure
she felt from the associations of visible objects, had hitherto never
been acquainted, or never intimately acquainted, with an eminent
painter. The being thus introduced therefore to the society of Mr.
Fuseli, was a high gratification to her; while he found in Mary, a
person perhaps more susceptible of the emotions painting is calculated
to excite, than any other with whom he ever conversed. Painting, and
subjects closely connected with painting, were their almost constant
topics of conversation; and they found them inexhaustible. It cannot be
doubted, but that this was a species of exercise very conducive to the
improvement of Mary's mind.
Nothing human however is unmixed. If Mary derived improvement from Mr.
Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of some
of his faults. In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached to
literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from
keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that
belles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, the
favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with
Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton,
Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. The
nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean
Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a
favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the
opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau's conception
of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness
of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at
improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt
and indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity of
genius. This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands of
the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius
are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no
subsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat
of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search,
in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Mary
came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she
went into it.
But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary,
and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuseli
frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it
was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to
frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned.
Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper
to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius,
without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she
transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this
respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint
in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished
society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent
affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the
acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this
circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of any
difficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible to
the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex,
but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, in
conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct.
There cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state her
principles upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew her
best. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an
opposite sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. It
was her maxim, "that the imagination should awaken the senses, and not
the senses the imagination." In other words, that whatever related to
the gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of a
pure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. She
regarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in that
respect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtue
would prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, and
the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed.--There is
no reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period
of their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it
was, she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a
distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of
personal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing
in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself.
In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in
George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store street,
Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the
laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary
career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had
always scrupulously observed a certain degree of elegance, and those
temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound
and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure.
It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writer
of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it
relates. He dined with her at a friend's, together with Mr. Thomas Paine
and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his
object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had
never before conversed.
The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually
displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I had
barely looked into her Answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary
men are apt to be, with a few offences, against grammar and other minute
points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs.
Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine,
in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in
occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks; the conversation lay
principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, very
frequently when I wished to hear Paine.
We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the
characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been
observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of
seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a
plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful. I, on
the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, and
particularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to
incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilated
in this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtained
from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number
have treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at last
provoked to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished
it, could do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We
discussed some questions on the subject of religion, in which her
opinions approached much nearer to the received ones, than mine. As the
conversation proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own
share in it. We touched upon all topics, without treating forcibly and
connectedly upon any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an
account of the conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was
not sparing of my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active
and independent thinking. On her side, she did me no part of what
perhaps I considered as justice.
We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made
a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance.
In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she
continued to reside for upwards of two years. One of her principal
inducements to this step, related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had, at
first, considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what I
may be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not,
in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had
originally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much
pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent
imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she
should have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union.
She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender
charities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the
dearest band of human society. General conversation and society could
not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass
of her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best years
of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made