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.
The little payment for her pamphlet on the "Education of Daughters"
caused Mary Wollstonecraft to think more seriously of earning by her
pen. The pamphlet seems also to have advanced her credit as a
teacher.
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