Mrs Shelley | Page 2

the mother whose loving care she never
knew, whose sad experiences and advice she never heard, would be
read and re-read. We can imagine how these writings, and the
discourses she doubtless frequently heard, as a child, between her
father and his friends, must have impressed Mary more forcibly than
the respectable precepts laid down in a weak way for her guidance;
how all this prepared her to admire what was noble and advanced in
idea, without giving her the ballast needful for acting in the fittest way
when a time of temptation came, when Shelley appeared. He appeared

as the devoted admirer of her father and his philosophy, and as such
was admitted into the family intimacy of three inexperienced girls.
Picture these four young imaginative beings together; Shelley,
half-crazed between youthful imagination and vague ideas of
regenerating mankind, and ready at any incentive to feel himself freed
from his part in the marriage ceremony. What prudent parents would
have countenanced such a visitor? And need there be much surprise at
the subsequent occurrences, and much discussion as to the right or
wrong in the case? How the actors in this drama played their
subsequent part on the stage of life; whether they did work which fitted
them to be considered worthy human beings remains to be examined.
* * * * *
As no story or life begins with itself, so, more especially with this of
our heroine, we must recall the past, and at least know something of her
parents.
Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most remarkable and misunderstood
women of even her remarkable day, was born in April 1759, in or near
London, of parents of whose ancestors little is known. Her father, son
of a Spitalfields manufacturer, possessed an adequate fortune for his
position; her mother was of Irish family. They had six children, of
whom Mary was the second. Family misery, in her case as in many,
seems to have been the fountainhead of her genius. Her father, a
hot-tempered, dissipated man, unable to settle anywhere or to anything,
naturally proved a domestic tyrant. Her mother seems little to have
understood her daughter's disposition, and to have been extremely
harsh, harassed no doubt by the behaviour of her husband, who
frequently used personal violence on her as well as on his children; this,
doubtless, under the influence of drink.
Such being the childhood of Mary Wollstonecraft, it can be understood
how she early learnt to feel fierce indignation at the injustice to, and the
wrongs of women, for whom there was little protection against such
domestic tyranny. Picture her sheltering her little sisters and brother
from the brutal wrath of a man whom no law restricted, and can her
repugnance to the laws made by men on these subjects be wondered at?
Only too rarely do the victims of such treatment rise to be eloquent of
their wrongs.
The frequent removals of her family left little chance of forming

friendships for the sad little Mary; but she can scarcely have been
exactly lonely with her small sisters and brothers, possibly a little more
positive loneliness or quiet would have been desirable. As she grew
older her father's passions increased, and often did she boldly interpose
to shield her mother from his drunken wrath, or waited outside her
room for the morning to break. So her childhood passed into girlhood,
her senses numbed by misery, till she had the good fortune to make the
acquaintance of a Mr. and Mrs. Clare, a clergyman and his wife, who
were kind to the friendless girl and soon found her to have undeveloped
good qualities. She spent much time with them, and it was they who
introduced her to Fanny Blood, whose friendship henceforth proved
one of the chief influences of her life; this it was that first roused her
intellectual faculty, and, with the gratitude of a fine nature, she never
after forgot where she first tasted the delight of the fountain which
transmutes even misery into the source of work and poetry.
Here, again, Mary found the story of a home that might have been
ruined by a dissipated father, had it not been for the cheerful devotion
of this daughter Fanny, who kept the family chiefly by her work,
painting, and brought up her young brothers and sisters with care. A
bright and happy example at this moment to stimulate Mary, and raise
her from the absorbing and hopeless contemplation of her own troubles;
she then, at sixteen, resolved to work so as to educate herself to
undertake all that might and would fall on her as the stay of her family.
Fresh wanderings of the restless father ensued, and finally she decided
to accept a situation as lady's companion; this her hard previous life
made a