Mary Wollstonecraft was born on the 27th of April, 1759. Her
father - a quick-tempered and unsettled man, capable of beating wife,
or child, or dog - was the son of a manufacturer who made money in
Spitalfields, when Spitalfields 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 of an ardent, generous,
impulsive nature. One day her friend Fanny Blood had repined at the
unhappy surroundings in the home she was maintaining for her father
and mother, and longed for a little home of her own to do her work
in. Her friend quietly found rooms, got furniture together, and
told her that her little home was ready; she had only to walk into
it. Then it seemed strange to Mary Wollstonecraft that Fanny Blood
was withheld by thoughts that had not been uppermost in the mood of
complaint. She thought her friend irresolute, where she had herself
been generously rash. Her end would have been happier had she been
helped, as many are, by that calm influence of home in which some
knowledge of the world passes from father and mother to son and
daughter, without visible teaching and preaching, in easiest
companionship of young and old from day to day.
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