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.
