Letters on Sweden, Norway and Denmark | Page 4

was prosperous. Her mother was a rigorous
Irishwoman, of the Dixons of Ballyshannon. Edward John
Wollstonecraft--of whose children, besides Mary, the second child,
three sons and two daughters lived to be men and women--in course of

the got rid of about ten thousand pounds, which had been left him by
his father. He began to get rid of it by farming. Mary Wollstonecraft's
first-remembered home was in a farm at Epping. When she was five
years old the family moved to another farm, by the Chelmsford Road.
When she was between six and seven years old they moved again, to
the neighbourhood of Barking. There they remained three years before
the next move, which was to a farm near Beverley, in Yorkshire. In
Yorkshire they remained six years, and Mary Wollstonecraft had there
what education fell to her lot between the ages of ten and sixteen.
Edward John Wollstonecraft then gave up farming to venture upon a
commercial speculation. This caused him to live for a year and a half at
Queen's Row, Hoxton. His daughter Mary was then sixteen; and while
at Hoxton she had her education advanced by the friendly care of a
deformed clergyman--a Mr. Clare-- who lived next door, and stayed so
much at home that his one pair of shoes had lasted him for fourteen
years.
But Mary Wollstonecraft's chief friend at this time was an
accomplished girl only two years older than herself, who maintained
her father, mother, and family by skill in drawing. Her name was
Frances Blood, and she especially, by her example and direct
instruction, drew out her young friend's powers. In 1776, Mary
Wollstonecraft's father, a rolling stone, rolled into Wales. Again he was
a farmer. Next year again he was a Londoner; and Mary had influence
enough to persuade him to choose a house at Walworth, where she
would be near to her friend Fanny. Then, however, the conditions of
her home life caused her to be often on the point of going away to earn
a living for herself. In 1778, when she was nineteen, Mary
Wollstonecraft did leave home, to take a situation as companion with a
rich tradesman's widow at Bath, of whom it was said that none of her
companions could stay with her. Mary Wollstonecraft, nevertheless,
stayed two years with the difficult widow, and made herself respected.
Her mother's failing health then caused Mary to return to her. The
father was then living at Enfield, and trying to save the small remainder
of his means by not venturing upon any business at all. The mother
died after long suffering, wholly dependent on her daughter Mary's
constant care. The mother's last words were often quoted by Mary
Wollstonecraft in her own last years of distress--"A little patience, and

all will be over."
After the mother's death, Mary Wollstonecraft left home again, to live
with her friend, Fanny Blood, who was at Walham Green. In 1782 she
went to nurse a married sister through a dangerous illness. The father's
need of support next pressed upon her. He had spent not only his own
money, but also the little that had been specially reserved for his
children. It is said to be the privilege of a passionate man that he
always gets what he wants; he gets to be avoided, and they never find a
convenient corner of their own who shut themselves out from the
kindly fellowship of life.
In 1783 Mary Wollstonecraft--aged twenty-four--with two of her sisters,
joined Fanny Blood in setting up a day school at Islington, which was
removed in a few months to Newington Green. Early in 1785 Fanny
Blood, far gone in consumption, sailed for Lisbon to marry an Irish
surgeon who was settled there. After her marriage it was evident that
she had but a few months to live; Mary Wollstonecraft, deaf to all
opposing counsel, then left her school, and, with help of money from a
friendly woman, she went out to nurse her, and was by her when she
died. Mary Wollstonecraft remembered her loss ten years afterwards in
these "Letters from Sweden and Norway," when she wrote: "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."
Mary Wollstonecraft left Lisbon for England late in December, 1785.
When she came back she found Fanny's poor parents anxious to go
back to Ireland; and as she had been often told that she could earn by
writing, she wrote a pamphlet of 162 small pages--"Thoughts on the
Education of Daughters"--and got ten pounds for it. This she gave to
her friend's parents to enable them to go back to their kindred. In all she
did there is clear evidence