Mary Wollstonecraft | Page 8

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,