Mary Wollstonecraft | Page 3

talents will atone for the well government of
society and the happiness of mankind."
This opinion of the "European Magazine" was the one most generally
adopted. It was re-echoed almost invariably when Mary
Wollstonecraft's name was mentioned in print. A Mrs. West, who, in
1801, published a series of "Letters to a Young Man," full of goodly
discourse and moral exhortation, found occasion to warn him against
Mary's works, which she did with as much energy as if the latter had
been the Scarlet Woman of Babylon in the flesh. "This unfortunate
woman," she says in conclusion, "has terribly terminated her guilty
career; terribly, I say, because the account of her last moments, though
intentionally panegyrical, proves that she died as she lived; and her
posthumous writings show that her soul was in the most unfit state to
meet her pure and holy judge."
A writer in the "Beauties of England and Wales," though animated by
the same spirit, saw no reason to caution his readers against Mary's
pernicious influence, because of his certainty that in another generation
she would be forgotten. "Few writers have attained a larger share of
temporary celebrity," he admits. "This was the triumph of wit and
eloquence of style. To the age next succeeding it is probable that her
name will be nearly unknown; for the calamities of her life so
miserably prove the impropriety of her doctrines that it becomes a point
of charity to close the volume treating of the Rights of Women with
mingled wonder and pity."
But probably the article which was most influential in perpetuating the
ill-repute in which she stood with her contemporaries, is the sketch of
her life given in Chalmers's "Biographical Dictionary." The papers and
many books of the day soon passed out of sight, but the Dictionary was
long used as a standard work of reference. In this particular article
every action of Mary's life is construed unfavorably, and her character

shamefully vilified. Judging from Godwin's Memoir, it decides that
Mary "appears to have been a woman of strong intellect, which might
have elevated her to the highest ranks of English female writers, had
not her genius run wild for want of cultivation. Her passions were
consequently ungovernable, and she accustomed herself to yield to
them without scruple, treating female honor and delicacy as vulgar
prejudices. She was therefore a voluptuary and sensualist, without that
refinement for which she seemed to contend on other subjects. Her
history, indeed, forms entirely a warning, and in no part an example.
Singular she was, it must be allowed, for it is not easily to be conceived
that such another heroine will ever appear, unless in a novel, where a
latitude is given to that extravagance of character which she attempted
to bring into real life." Beloe, in the "Sexagenarian," borrowed the
scurrilous abuse of the "Biographical Dictionary," which was
furthermore accepted by almost every history of English literature and
encyclopædia as the correct estimate of Mary's character and teachings.
It is, therefore, no wonder that the immorality of her doctrines and
unwomanliness of her conduct came to be believed in implicitly by the
too credulous public.
That she fully deserved this disapprobation and contempt seemed to
many confirmed by the fact that her daughter, Mary Godwin, consented
to live with Shelley before their union could be legalized. The
independence of mother and daughter excited private as well as public
animosity. There is in the British Museum a book containing a
collection of drawings, newspaper slips, and written notes, illustrative
of the history and topography of the parish of Saint Pancras. As Mary
Wollstonecraft was buried in the graveyard of Saint Pancras Church,
mention is made of her. A copy of the painting{1} by Opie, which was
supposed until very recently to be her portrait, is pasted on one of the
pages of this book, and opposite to it is the following note, written on a
slip of paper, and dated 1821: "Mary Wollstonecraft, a disgrace to
modesty, an eminent instance of a perverted strong mind, the defender
of the 'Rights of Women,' but an ill example to them, soon terminated
her life of error, and her remains were laid in the cemetery of Saint
Pancras, amidst the believers of the papal creed.

{1} It was engraved and published in the "Monthly Mirror," with
Mary's name attached to it, during her lifetime. When Mr. Kegan Paul
published the "Letters to Imlay," in 1879, there seemed no doubt of its
authenticity. But since then it has been proved to be the portrait of the
wife of an artist who lived in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
"There is a monument placed over her remains, being a square pillar."
(The inscription here follows.) "A willow was planted on each side of
the