f CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THIS BOOK IS ONE OF A COLLECTION MADE BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-^919 AND BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library 3 1924 031 228 699 olin.anx drV /3 10 'I The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031228699 Heroines of Freethought. HEROINES FREETHOUGHT. SARA A. UNDERWOOD. " To Ti'ji-ct consecrated opinions needs a consecrated mind. The iiwinng impulse to such rejection is faith ; faith in reason^ faitk in the inind^s ability to obtain truth.^^—- O. B. Frothingham. NEW YORK; CHARLES P. SOMERBY, ijg Eighth Street. 1876. Copyrighted. 1876. C. P. Somerlty, Printer and Elcdrotypcr, ijg Eighth Street, Ne-iu York. CONTENTS. PAGE Preface c Madame Roland (Marie Jeanne Phlipon) . . ii Mary Wollstonecraki- Godwin . . . .51 Mary W. Godwin Shei.ley 89 George Sand (A. L. Aurore Dudevant) . .117 Harriet Martineau 153 Frances Wright D'Arusmont igg Emma Martin 231 Margaret Reynolds CHArpEixsMiTH . . . 243 Ernestine L. Rose 255 Frances Power Cobue 285 George Eliot (Marian Evans Lewes) . . . 297 PREFACE. THE word Freethinker in times past has implied a censure of the person so designated, and especially if the one so called chanced to be a woman. But, in spite of this fact, here and there in the history of Freethought has appeared a woman strong enough of heart and brain to understand and accept Liberal truths, and brave enough to avow publicly her faith in the "belief of the unbelievers." Among these courageous souls we find the names of some of the most brilliant lights of femi- nine literature. The Orthodox world could not well afford to reject their valuable con- tributions to the pleasure and well-being of society, but in accepting them did so with an ungracious protest against the religious conclusions of these daring Thinkers. VI PREFACE. To-day we stand at the opening of a grand vista of civil and religious liberty. Science has sealed as the truth many of the hitherto vague questionings of those who, in honest search of the truth, had long ago come to doubt creeds and dogmas. In time to come they who first dared to pioneer the way to perfect freedom of thought will be looked upon as the benefactors of those whom at first they only shocked. Among these bene- factors must be counted the isolated women whose life-sketches make up this little volume. In selecting the subjects for these sketches, regard was had only to the thor- ough Radicalism of the views they held. There are many noble women of Liberal tendencies of thought, whose names are well known, who have done good and effective work for Freethought so far as they under- stood it ; but the most of these have only succeeded in throwing aside creeds and all sectarianism, as belittling and cramping to the human mind, while still clinging to all the essential points of Christian belief PREFACE. VU Many of these women have already found, as they deserve, faithful and loving chron- iclers. To introduce their names here would only serve to swell this volume far beyond its present modest dimensions, and would render it useless as a record of the most daring heroines of Freethought ; so I have contented myself with sketching these few central female figures in the history of Radical Religion. And my only hope in grouping them thus together is to win for them, from those to whom they are com- paratively unknown, save as names only, a little of the admiration and respect which I myself have ever felt for them because of the dignity and moral heroism of their lives. June, 1876. S. A. U. MADAME ROLAND. Heroines of Freethought. D MADAME ROLAND. IVINITY! Supreme Being! Spirit of the Universe ! Great Principle of all I feel great or good or immortal within myself — whose existence I believe in because I must have emanated from something supe- rior to that by which I am surrounded — I am about to reunite myself to thy essence." Such was the invocation which Mad- ame Roland addressed to the Deity she worshiped, at a time when, death by vio- lence seeming unavoidable, she contemplat- ed defeating the cruel guillotine by suicide. There is in it, as in all the acts of her life, the undaunted tone of the truly brave in spirit. Conscious of her own nobility of soul, there is in it no mock humility, no I 2 MADAAfE ROLAND. cowardly trusting to the blood of an inno- cent person to save her from the conse- quences of her own acts, no weak doubts expressed as to her own merit ; only a sublime confidence in the infinite tenderness and love of the God she worshiped — the God who grew to her more all - pervad- ing, more all-absorbent, and more grandly just and wise, as she herself grew broader in intellect and larger in heart. Marie Jeanne Phlipon, daughter of the drunken engraver, child of the people, wife of the just and conscientious philosopher Roland — in thee we find our ideal woman, as Christendom finds in Jesus its ideal man ! Virtuous, loving, lovely, intellectual, self- sacrificing woman, could any Christ live an holier life, or die more nobly than thou didst ? As he was put to death by a rude rabble because of his brave utterance of pure principles, so also wast thou. If his crucifixion was a more protracted bodily anguish, the horrible outlines of the blood- begrimed guillotine were no Ijss terrible to MADAME ROLAND. \ 3 thee ; while death for him severed no such near and dear human ties as for thee, whqse love for husband and child was deep and strong as thine own nature. His tears of anguish in the garden of Gethsemane were not more bitter than thine in the secrecy of thy gloomy prison cell ; nor didst thou weakly ask watchers to share those hours of anguished renunciation. Pathetic as his " Father, forgive them!" is thy sorrowful "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name !" The coming woman — our ideal — can never come in nobler guise than that of Madame Roland. Uplifted by the force of her pure moral character even above the sanguinary waves of that "Reign of Terror'' — waves which left their defacing stain upon many of the fairest names that flashed meteor-like across that dismal panorama — the worst which even her Christian biographers have found to say of her is, that she was morally brave enough to avow herself a Deist. Philip and Grace Wharton, in their " Queens of Soci- 14 MADAME ROLAND. ety," while confessing that " from Cartesian, Madame Roland became Stoic, from Stoic Deist, and from that she never returned," are candid enough to add that " her life was morally faultless. " Another Christian writer says of her, " the only God she invoked was the future. A species of abstract and stoical duty, itself its own judge and reward, sup- plied the place with her of hope, consolation, or piety. " Here, then, in the person of a pure, conscientious, liberty-loving, and historical woman, we find the refutation of the prev- alent idea, that perfection of moral char- acter is dependent on a belief in Chris- tianity. Nor was she one to accept any belief unadvisedly. Sincere and earnest in her convictions, she did not, however, trust solely to those convictions without thor- ough investigation. Loving truth, as her life testified, more than she loved life it- self, hers was a character which with less intellectual vigor had been that of a fanat- ical religious devotee. In early youth, when MADAME ROLAND. j 5 conscience obeyed to the extreme the dic- tates of education, she was indeed that ; but later her reason and intellect grew strong enough to grapple with and over- come the mysteries of credulity : she could not and cared not to stifle the voice of her intellectual convictions, and- bravely avowed them to the world. She who bore for her husband the heaviest burden of the cares of State ; who instigated, urged, and upheld him in his most daring measures ; who rose equal to all the strange and tragic emergencies which her daring leadership of the purest party of that troubled time thrust upon her ; who kept herself and her good name pure and unblemished in the midst of a revolutionary whirl of corruption and general laxity of morals — this woman was not surely one to be either frightened or cajoled into acceptance of the bugbears of a popular belief Marie Jeanne Phlipon, born in Paris some- time in 1754, was the only living child of seven, and was therefore the object of much 1 6 MADAME ROLAND. love and care to her parents. Her father, Gratien Phlipon, by trade an engraver, was an ambitious, frivolous, and discontented man. Her mother, a pure - minded, large - hearted woman, possessing rare worth and intelli- gence, early instilled into the mind of her child those principles of conscientious virtue which afterward added such lustre to the genius of that child — which made her strong and brave in the face of a terrible death, and which made hers the purest public character developed by the Revolution of '93. Although the little " Manon " (a pet name for Marie) was from earliest childhood extremely fond of study, and anxious to devote most of her time to her books, yet Madame Phlipon, with a discretion rare in the mother of an only and idolized child, did not allow these to engross her mind to the exclusion of household duties and moral lessons. She was also taught by her father, at a very early age, the art of engraving, and was encouraged to exhibit her pro- ficiency therein by preparing with her own MADAME ROLAND. i y hand small engravings as birthday gifts to her friends. Still, in spite of these cautious restraints upon her inordinate thirst for know- ledge, she was at eighteen well versed in many things not generally included in the education of her sex — history, philosophy, chemistry, the languages, and mathematics, in addition to the graceful accomplishments usually taught her sex. As a child she was ardent, enthusiastic, devout, and studious, with a firm will, and vivid imagination. History was her favorite reading, and to her perusal of Plutarch's " Lives,'' at nine years of age, she ascribes her first admiration and adoption of repub- lican principles. But these principles would more likely be awakened in the mind of a proud, sensitive, and thoughtful nature, like hers, by the social inequalities and injustices which at that time existed in France, than by the perusal of any book, though the book might help define the unformed thought. The writings of Rousseau were already dis- cussed with freedom by all classes in France, J 3 MADAME ROLAND. and his republican views accepted by many as the true theory of government. That personal feeling had something to do with her admiration of a free government the fol- lowing incident will show : When about twelve years old she ac- companied her mother on a visit to a relative who occupied some menial position in the palace at Versailles. After a day or two there, Manon was asked by her mother if she enjoyed being in a palace. Stung with a feeling of humiliation, which the distinc- tion of rank exhibited there caused her, she replied with passionate vehemence, " I like it, if it be soon ended, for, else, in a few more days, I shall so much detest all the persons I see, that I should not know what to do with my hatred ! " "Why, what harm have they done you.'" inquired , her mother in surprise. "They have made me feel injustice and look upon absurdity," was her reply. A thoughtful, conscientious child, she began at a very early age to give much MADAME ROLAND. jg attention to matters of religion, and when only eleven years of age was sent to a convent at her own urgent desire, where for several years she remained as a pupil. Here her mind applied itself with all its intense ardor to the study of the Catholic religion. She read with great delight the " Lives of the Saints," and entertained se- rious thoughts of taking the veil. To this devout frame of mind at that time may probably be ascribed the clearness with which at a riper age she was enabled to detect the shams and frauds of that same faith. Lamartine describes her as possessing, at the age of eighteen, " a tall and sup- ple figure, a modest and becoming de- meanor ; black and soft hair ; blue eyes, which appeared brown in the depths of their reflection ; the nose of a Grecian statue ; a rather large mouth, with splendid teeth ; a skin marbled with the animation of life, and veined by blood which the least im- pression sent mounting to her cheeks ; a 20 MADAAfE ROLAND. tone of voice which borrowed its vibrations from the deepest fibers of her heart." With such charms of person, added to the expectation of a not inconsiderable for- tune, it was not strange that Mademoiselle Phlipon was soon surrounded with appli- cants for her hand ; but among them all she failed to perceive the ideal hero-husband of her imagination, and she dismissed them one after the other, even the most eligible, with a nonclialancc which nearly drove her father to despair, for he was anxious to sec her settled in life, the wife of some wealthy tradesman. But Manon, with a good home, many friends, her boc^ks, and a free heart, was in no hurry to marry, and her life went on happily and joyously until in 1775 her first real sorrow came to her in the death of her tender, loving mother, to whom she was passionately devoted, and her grief at the death of this dear friend was such as to prostrate her on a bed of sickness and for a Avhile threatened to destroy her reason or MADAME KOI.AXD. ^ j her life. But her youth and strength con- quered this violent grief in the end, and she recovered. It was soon after this event that she was first introduced, through her most in- timate friend, to M. Roland de la Platierc, Inspector of Manufactures at Lyons, a man of strict probity and high scholastic attain- ments. He came to Paris on a visit, bearing a letter of introduction from her friend to Mademoiselle Phhpon. M. Roland, though more than twenty years her senior, and with a heart hitherto untouched by womanly charms, was so at- tracted by her rare genius, her beauty, and her purity of character that he very soon besought her hand in marriage. She referred him dutifully to her father. M. Phlipon, who had become since the death of his wife rccklqss, dissipated, and savage, returned to M. Roland's letter a rude and contemptuous negative reply. liis daughter's home life had been for some time rendered extremely unhappy through M. I'hlipon's harshness, 2 2 MADAME ROLAND. debauchery and improvidence. He had also made sad inroads upon the fortune left her by her mother ; her expostulations were met with anger and injustice on his part, and after his rudeness to M. Roland — a rudeness which had deeply wounded the feelings of that gentleman — she decided that it was use- less to attempt to live with him in peace, and she retired from home, hiring rooms in a convent, where she lived for six months alone. At the end of that time M. Roland sought her out, and renewed his proposals of marriage. They were married in the winter of 1779, she being then twenty-five years of age, while he was forty-seven. Previous to her marriage she had already dabbled in literature, and had written and published occasional criticisms and essays, among others one on a subject proposed by the Academy of Besancon, " How Can the Education of Women Conduce to the Edu- cation of Men .? " But for some years after her marriage her writing was confined mainly to copying, translating, and correcting ar- MADAME ROLAND. 23 tides for the " Dictionary of Manufactures," upon which M. Roland was engaged. This dry and tiresome labor undertaken to as- sist her husband was afterward, she remarks, of decided benefit to her in strengthening her style and in teaching her to systematize and arrange her own thoughts for publication. For the first ten years of her married life, few events worthy of note occurred to her. Her own distaste for fashionable society, together with the studious habits of her husband, caused them to live upon their estate in a secluded and retired manner. A few choice friendships were formed, and the birth of their only child, a little girl named Eudora, brought happiness to the hearts of both. In 1784, the monotony of this quiet life — a life which she sometimes felt to be al- most unendurably quiet — was broken up tem- porarily by a trip to England and to Switzer- land — a tour which she enjoyed intensely, embodying the observations made during its progress in a book of travel. 24 MADAME ROLAND. Her father, M. Phlipon, died during the winter of 1787. She had been ever a du- tiful daughter to him, as an extract from her memoirs proves : " My father," she writes, " neither mar- ried, nor made any %icry ruinous engage- ments. We paid a few debts he had con- tracted, and, by granting him an annuity, prevailed upon him to leave a business in which it had become impossible for him to succeed. Though suffering so much for his errors, and though he had reason to be highly satisfied with our behavior, his spirit was too proud not to be hurt at the ob- ligations he owed us." In 1789, events preceding the Revolution had thrown France into a state of ferment. Every one in whose soul one spark of the divine fire of liberty burned felt himself forced to take an interest and a part in the events and politics of the times. Politi- cal meetings were held over all France, and the slow-burning fires of insurrection and revolution broke out here and there into MADAME ROLAND. 35 sudden and no - longer - to - be repressed flame. Among the first to declare themselves admirers and advocates of a new and re- publican form of government, as a panacea for the national distress, were M. and Mad- ame Roland. In the prospective downfall of Royalty in France they beheld glorious visions of another France, a new American Republic, a republic void of aristocratical distinctions, where merit and not rank should demand and receive homage. Madame Roland, filled with enthusiastic energy, wrote from Lyons to the Paris jour- nals political letters of the most radical stamp, thus unwittingly helping to kindle the blaze which lit her own funeral pyre. But in joining the Revolutionists she had declared, " We must be ready for everything, even to die without regret!" Whatever may have been the mistakes which made the French Revolution so terrible a failure, it is certain that most of its original leaders were at first animated by only the purest 26 MADAME ROLAND. and most devoted patriotism and love of liberty. From the letters written by Madame Roland at this time I cannot forbear quoting a few brave sentences : " If we do not die for liberty, we shall soon have nothing left to do but to weep for her. Do you say we dare no longer speak 1 — Be it so. We must thunder then! " " The insolence of the rich and the misery of the people excite my hatred against injustice and oppression, and I no longer ask for anything but the triumph of truth and the success of the Revolution." " I am glad there is danger. I see noth- ing else capable of goading you on. It is impossible to rise to freedom from the midst of corruption without strong convulsions. They are the salutary crises of a serious disease." It was through these letters, ablaze with the passionate fire of the love of liberty, that she first became known to the liberal party as the radiant priestess of that liberty. MADAME ROLAND. 3 7 M. Roland was sent as Deputy Extra- ordinary to the Constituent Assembly at Paris in 1791, whither Madaine Roland ac- companied him on the 20th of February. Here she attended daily the sittings of the Assembly and watched with earnest anxiety every movement of that body. So earnest and enthusiastic was their belief in the free future of France, and so zealsusly did they disseminate their views, that the modest dwelling' of the Rolands soon became the headquarters and rendezvous of the leading patriots, where those who afterward became the chiefs of the Revolution consorted to discuss their views and mature their plans. Here, also, at first, those met as friends and co-laborers who afterward became bitter enemies. Robespierre, Danton, Vergniaud, Brissot, and Condorcet, shared alike at this time in the friendship and confidence of Madame Roland. Still, though her soul was afire with patriotic flame, her true womanly modesty asserted itself at these meetings. While Roland and the others discussed the 28 MADAME ROLAND. leading topics of the day, she sat silently by, apparently engaged with her writing or her embroidery, speaking only when her advice was asked or judgment appealed to ; but her few words were always direct, strong, and inspiring. Quiet, modest, but quick-thoughted and energetic, led on by the deep interest she felt in the affairs of the nation, Madame Roland soon, almost unconsciously to her- self, became the life and leader of the Girondists, the party of impetus at that time, but afterward, under Robespierrean rule, the party of moderation. But this leadership, dangerous to most women as it would have been, was yet not so to her pure soul. Beautiful as she was, and loose as was the morality of that period, no thought, much less word, of evil, was associated with her name. Men who had hitherto looked upon women only as the pretty sensuous playthings of an hour met this woman forgetful of her sex, in the deep interest of the questions of the MADAME ROLAND. 29 day. Looking into the lovely changeful eyes, they saw therein only the fire of high re- solve ; they gazed upon the perfect form, and remembered only that it was animated by the spirit of liberty ; they clasped firmly the white shapely hands with no thought of their dainty beauty, but knowing only that they worked right earnestly in defense of their mutual rights. A common danger threatened, a common sympathy joined them, and the baser parts of their natures were hushed into silence before the nobler quali- ties of humanity evoked by the needs of the hour. In September, the Rolands returned again to Lyons, but only for a few months, for M. Roland's office as Inspector of Manu- factures having, been annulled by a law of the Assembly, they decided to return at once to Paris, for the double purpose of obtaining greater facilities for the prosecu- tion of his labor on the Encyclopaedia and of watching more closely the progress of events. 30 MADAME ROLAND. In March, 1792, Roland was chosen Min- ister of the Interior, in order to conciliate the malcontents, but he continued in that office only until the following June. On the nth of June, having read before the king that famous letter of remonstrance to Louis XVI, said to have been written by Madame Roland, he was dismissed the next day from his office. That the people might understand the reason of his removal, Ro- land read this letter before the National Convention. Filled as it was with bold re- publican truths, its publication still further inflamed the people against the king, and popularized Roland ; and when, after the terrible lOth of August, Royalty in France was for the time being put an end to, he was recalled under the new administration, and reinstated in the Ministry. True to their principles, M. and Madame Roland did not allow an_\' change of station to alter the republican simplicity of their manners. She paid no visits and received only those visitors whom her husband's pub- MADAME KOLAXD. , j lie position and duties obliged her to re- ceive. By the adoption of this course, she found time for her studies, and to remodel and enliven, if she did not originate, many of the State papers which appeared over Roland's signature. In regard to this phase of her life, Carlyle writes of her thus : " Envious men insinuate that the wife of Roland is Minister, not the husband. It is, happily, the worst they have to charge Ker with. For the rest, let whose head soever be getting giddy, it is not this brave woman's. Serene and queenly here, as she was of old in her own hired garret of the Ursuline Convent." Although on her marriage with M. Roland she had confessed that she esteemed more than she loved him, yet never was wife more devoted to husband than she ; never was husband happier in a wife than he. In her memoirs she. thus bears testimony to the mutual confidence and sympathy subsisting between them : "During twelve years I shared in my 32 MADAME ROLAND. husband's intellectual labors, as I did in his repasts ; because one was as natural to me as the other. As wc had ever a perfect inter- community of knowledge and opinions, he talked to me in private of political measures with entire confidence. If he wrote treatises on the arts, I did the same, though the subject was tedious to me. If he wished to write an essay for some Academy, we sat down to write in concert, that we might afterward compare our productions, choose the best, or compress them into one. I never inter- fered with his administration, but if a cir- cular, letter, or important State paper were wanted, we talked the matter over with our usual freedom, and, impressed with his ideas and teeming with my own, I sometimes took up the pen, which I had more leisure to conduct than he had. Without me, Roland would have been quite as good a Minister, for his knowledge, his activity, and his integrity were all his own ; but I in- fused into his writings that mixture of spirit and gentleness, of authoritative reason MADAME ROLAND. 33 and seducing sentiment, which is only found in the language of a woman who has a clear head and a feeling heart." At the time of Roland's second ministiy, the tide of anarchical revolution had already- begun to overflow unhappy France. The rotten barriers of an effete monarchy gave way before the surging waves of that seeth- ing sea of infuriated men and women. Those who sprang to guide the helm of the Ship of State in this tempest were one after another washed overboard, and perished. In spite of their upright honesty, their purity of intention, their conscientious earn- estness, it was impossible for the Rolands to escape long the fury of the storm. Filled with horror at the shocking mas- sacres of September, Roland wrote an ad- dress of remonstrance to the Assembly on that occasion, which gave great offense to the Robespierrean party, that was already in power. Danton, Robespierre, and Marat were at this time the bitter enemies of the Rolands. Danton especially circulated 34 MADAME ROLAND against them all kinds of rumors calculated to madden and inflame the populace against them. Recognizing " the power behind the throne," it was Madame Roland against whom these slanders were chiefly directed. It was Madame Roland who, on the 7th of December, 1792, was summoned before the bar of the Convention to answer those charges. She plead her own cause, stand- ing erect before that tribunal of fierce- C3'ed men, a bright, regal-browed, beautiful woman, strong and brave in the face of their scowls, conscious of having pursued the right through all. She answered quietly, firmly, eloquently, undauntedly, all their questions, and they were obliged to dismiss her, with a secret sense of shamefacedness at their own discomfiture, but none the less determined to accomplish the ruin of her and hers. Recognizing how vain were all efforts to stem the tide of terror and anarchy (then deluging the country with blood), and dis- liking to have their name associated with MADAME ROLAND. 35 those who really held the reins of power, Roland resigned in January, 1793. That resignation could not now save them. In May, Roland was arrested, and held a pris- oner in his own house. His wife arose from a bed of sickness to demand his re- lease at the bar of the Convention ; waited vainly all day to get a hearing, and came home at night nearly discouraged,- to be rejoiced by the tidings that he had made his escape. Her earnest wishes kept him in concealment after that against his own desire. Knowing her danger, friends begged her to escape in disguise while there was yet time to save herself But against this her Spartan soul revolted. " I am ashamed," she said, "of the part you would have me play. I will neither disguise myself nor leave the house. If they wish to assassi- nate me, it shall be in my own home. This example is due from me, and I will afford it." She was threatened in order to make her divulge the secret of her husband's hid- 36 MADAME ROLAND. ing-place. Her only reply to their threats was, " I scorn to tell a falsehood. I know his plans, but I neither ought nor choose to tell them." When in June, 1793, she was, as she ex- pected to be, arrested, her domestics clung weeping around her. " These people love you," observed one of the officers sent to convey her to prison. She turned hei- proud, calm face toward him : " I never had those about me who did not," was her reply. The maddened, ignorant mob hoot- ed, and shouted derisively around the car- riage in which she was seated. "Shall we close the blinds of the carriage t " asked one of the officials, politely wishing to spare her feelings. "No, gentlemen," she said calmly; "I do not fear the eyes of the populace. In- nocence should never assume the guise of crime." " Madame," said the officer, " you have more strength of mind than many men ; you wait patiently for justice." MADAME ROLAND. yj "Justice!" she exclaimed; "were jus- tice done I should not be here. But if 1 am destined for the scaffold, I shall walk to it with the same firmness and tranquil- lity with which I now go to prison. I never feared anything but guilt." During the five months of imprisonment that followed her arrest, although sur- rounded by all the horrors of the Revolu- tion, and though tortured by her anxiety in regard to her husband and child, she kept up before her fellow-prisoners a dig- nified, courageous deportment, cheering and comforting the faint-hearted and despairing with rare serenity and heroic calmness. When alone, however, the feelings of the wife and mother triumphed at times over her philosophical endurance, and she wept with passionate, womanly vehemence. But of these yieldings to despondency her fel- low-sufferers were allowed to see no trace, and beheld in her only the Spartan firm- ness of a soul at peace with itself Knowing how uncertain, or, rather, how 2 8 MADAME ROLAND. certain, her fate was, she employed much of her time in writing her memoirs, every page of which had to be concealed and carried to a place of safety by those friends who gained admittance to her prison. She wrote at first historic memoirs of all the principal actors in the Revolution ; but the friend to whose care the manuscript had been confided, fearing its discovery, felt obliged to destroy it. Toward the close of her imprisonment a form of trial and conviction was gone through with, but she knew well that she was pre- sentenced to the guillotine, and so built no false hopes on that trial. Once she thought of writing to Robespierre, who owed to her a debt of gratitude for having been the means of saving his life in 1791 while Roland was in power ; but on considera- tion she tore the letter she had written to him into pieces, disdaining even in this her great need to ask her life from him. Once, too, she entertained the thought of suicide, rather than endure a public execu- MADAME ROLAND. ,q tion ; but feeling that this would be con- strued into an act of cowardice, she threw the opium procured for that purpose away. During their imprisonment the prisoners were allowed to see and converse with each other, and she exerted herself at such times to the utmost to cheer and encourage her fellow-prisoners. She showed them a face bright and buoyant with a brave spirit, if not with hope. Young men and old, look- ing upon that face in its defiance of the power of death, listening to the brave words of that unflinching soul, grew strong- to meet the martyrdom they had dared for dear Liberty's sake, and learned to smile gravely even under the grim shadow of the guillotine, feeling that, after all, their lives had not been lived in vain, when they were to give them up in sacrifice to freedom in such glorious companionship. Riouffe, one of her fellow-prisoners, who subsequently escaped, says of her: "Some- thing more than is usually found in the looks of women painted itself in those large 40 MADAME ROLAND. dark eyes of hers, full of expression and sweetness. She spoke to me often at the grate, with the freedom and courage of a great man. Such republican language in the mouth of a beautiful French woman pre- paring for the scaffold was a miracle of the Revolution for which we were not prepared. We listened to her in admiration and as- tonishment." Her brave soul having proved itself equal to every other emergency was now to prove itself equal to the last great emergency — Death ! She rose up equal to the level of that occasion, and in the language of Robert Browning seemed to say : "I would liate that death Ijandaged my eyes, and forbore And bade me creep past. No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, Tire heroes of old ! Bear the brunt, in ii minute pay glad, life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold." The 8th of November, 1793, was the day set apart for her martyrdom. She was calm, radiant, pitying, to the last. The car of MADAME ROLAND. 41 the condemned might have been that of a conquering queen as it moved slowly amid the jeering crowd toward the place of execution, bearing that erect white-robed figure whose tender eyes were bent pityingly on the maddened faces around her, her own bearing a look of high steadfast resolve. Carlyle describes her on her way to execu- tion as, " A noble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to her girdle, and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman's bo- som. Like a white Grecian statue, serenely complete she shines in that black wreck of things. Graceful to the eye, more so to the mind ; genuine, the creature of sincerity and nature in an age of artificiality, pollution, and cant ; there, in her still completeness, she, if thou knew it, is the noblest of all French women." There was a pause — a stir, at the foot of the guillotine. Would she faint, this brave woman, at the horrors prepared for her — at the headsman's basket and sharp A 2 MADAME ROLAND. hungry machine of death ? She bent rev- erently to the statue of Liberty which with strange mockery was set up near the guil- lotine ; uttered her world-famed apostrophe to it, " O Liberty ! what crimes are com- mitted in thy name ! " spoke a few cheer- ing words to the old man, La Marche, who shared her fate ; begged the executioner to spare those aged eyes the horror of witnessing her death ; asked, as her face grew eloquent with the sublime thoughts which this supreme hour of her life evoked, for pen and paper to which to commit them — asked only to be brutally refused. With unfaltering step, unblanched face, and serene eyes, she stepped upon the scaffold, and stepped a moment later into the unknow- able, and, through that cruel death, into at least an earthly immortality. So perished, at the age of thirty-nine, one of the purest, if not the purest character evoked by the French Revolution. Much as I revere the character of the man Jesus, I doubt whether his death was more sublime than was hers. MADAME ROLAXD. 43 I doubt also whether any belief in his aton- ing virtues could have made this woman's death more heroic than did her faith in "all that was great, and good, and immor- tal," within herself, and her belief of the truths she advocated, and for which she died. As soon as M. Roland heard of her exe- cution, filled with anguish and despair he emerged from his concealment at Rouen, and started on the road to Paris, probably with some vague thought of avenging her death ; but, unable to endure his poignant grief, killed himself with his sword, by the wayside, leaving a note by which to iden- tify his body, in which he said, " Indignation, not fear, induced me to quit my retreat. When I heard of the fate of my wife, I no longer wished to live in a world so polluted with crime ! " His corpse was found under a tree by the roadside. Madame Roland had declared that her husband would never consent to survive her execution, and the event justified her pro- phetic fear. Beautiful faith of a wife in a 44 MADAME ROLAND. husband's love ! and noble testimony of the husband to the merit of his wife ! A writer in the London Critical Review says, in re- gard to her, "The objections to her charac- ter are those common to her with most of the French writers and politicians of that pe- riod. They are philosophers without wisdom, and moralists without religion." " Her life," say Philip and Grace Wharton, "was morally faultless ; but she was a Deist." Even the liberal-hearted Lydia Maria Child remarks, "I might enlarge upon other points of her character, which qualify my respect for Mad- ame Roland ; but the times in which she lived were corrupt, and religion cast away as an idle toy, fit only for the superan- nuated." All of which means only that the one blemish to be found in her by her biogra- phers was that which soon shall be ac- counted the highest evidence of her clear insight — that she had dared to think for her- self in religious as in other matters, and being a brave as well as conscientious wo- MADAME ROLAND. ^5 man, had boldly avowed herself a Deist, and a disbeliever in the " divine right " of priests as well as of kings. Having lived a pure, true life, she died trusting to her own mer- its rather than to those of any mediator. Her Deism, it appears, did not corrupt her morals, or make her any less lovingly brave ; did not make her a less dutiful daughter, less faithful wife, less' loving mother, less warm - hearted friend ; did not make her even fear death. She was a clear thinker, a wise pilot at the helm of State, a daring patriot, an earnest, courageous soul. She was a true woman, who acted out in free- dom, and untrammeled, the highest attri- butes of the feminine nature. "A perfect woman, nobly planned To warn, lo comfort, and command." Mrs. Barbauld speaks in the following en- thusiastic terms of Madame Roland's "Ap- peal to Impartial Posterity " : " What talents ! What energy of char- acter ! What powers of description ! But 46 MADAME ROLAND. have you seen the second part, which has not been printed here, and which contains memoirs of her life from the earliest period to the death of her mother, when she was one-and-twenty ? It is surely the most sin- gular book that has appeared since the ' Confessions of Rousseau,' a book that none but a French woman could write, and won- derfully entertaining.- I began it with a certain fear upon my mind : What is this woman going to tell me ? Will it be any- thing but what will lessen my esteem for her? If, however, we were to judge of the female and male mind by contrasting these confessions with those, the advantage of purity will be greatly on the side of our sex." " Madame Roland," says Margaret Fuller, " is the fairest specimen we yet have of her class ; as clear to discern her aim, as valiant to pursue it, as Spenser's Brito- marte ; austerely set apart from all that did not belong to her, whether as woman or as mind. She is an antetype of a class to MADAME ROLAND. 47 which the coming time will afford a field — the Spartan matron, brought by the culture of the age of books to intellectual con- sciousness and expansion. Self-sufficingness, strength, and clear-sightedness were in her combined with a power of deep and calm affection." In 1795 the Memoirs of Madame Ro- land were published in two volumes, and sold for the benefit of her young daughter Eudora, by the friend who had undertaken the care of the child. In 1800 appeared an edition of her works in three volumes, containing all her writ- ings, consisting of " An Appeal to Impar- tial Posterity," " Works of Leisure Hours, and Various Reflections," "A Journey to Sans Souci, and Travels in Switzerland." These writings are marked by fervid grace and discriminating thought, warmed by en- thusiasm and vivacious earnestness. Her life required of her heroic action, which filled up to completeness the measure of its pos- sibilities ; yet she could not, even had it 48 MADAME ROLAND. been otherwise, have passed away from us without leaving to posterity some record of the greatness of her nature, the noble- ness of her thought. Her more mature writings would, I am convinced, have evi- denced to the world what manner of woman she was. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. RARELY has so pure, so true, so brave-hearted a woman been known as was the subject of the present sketch. A woman, however, whose memory has been •blackened and calumniated, whose name has been spoken in contempt, whose virtues have been too frequently overlooked or for- gotten, and whose mistakes have been held up to the world's scorn as positive vices. Some who remember only her avowed Deism, her socialistic theories, her open dis- regard and contempt for the marriage cere- mony, her bold handling of subjects foreign to the accepted idea of womanly delicacy, her scornful ridicule of all those clinging, dependent graces which arc held to endear 52 MA/^Y WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. her sex to the heart of man, may dissent from my estimate of her worth ; but for myself I cannot see my way out of giving her the liigh place she merits, when I re- member her earnestness, her perseverance, her unconquerable courage, her faith in hu- manity, her noble charity and self-forget- fulncss, her fidelity in friendship, her gener- ous, forgiving spirit, and her hearty detesta- tion of everything false or trivial. Hers was a hard life from its beginning. Her father, an Englishman, by the name of Edward John Wollstonecraft, was obstinate, unthrifty, unreasonable, and domineering. Her Irish mother was weak, with no true idea of parental government, and slavishly fearful of her husband's bad temper. It was the domestic tyranny of her father which first disgusted Mary's girlish but thoughtful mind with the marriage laws — that gave to such a man absolute, autocratic control over his family — and which turned her at- tention at a very early age to those sub- jects the consideration of which made her MAA'V WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 63 the daring iconoclast she afterward be- came. The habits of the family were so migratory that Mary's birthplace could not in after years positively be known, but it was thought to be Epping Forest. She was born April 27, 1759. Although a girl of rare abilities and studious tastes, she had no other opportunities of procuring an edu- cation but those afforded by the commonest day schools, until at the age of sixteen she became acquainted with Rev. Mr. Clare, an eccentric old clergyman, who became deeply interested in the beautiful, talented, but un- taught and undisciplined young girl. He not only gave her free access to his full and rare library, but helped her by his ad- vice and assistance to the course of study that would be most profitable to her. It was at his house she first formed that ac- quaintance, which ripened into a life-long friendship, with Frances Blood, a young girl two years her senior in age, and at that time her superior in educational advantages and accomplishments. This friendship, to- 54 MAA'V WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. gether with that of Mr. Clare, gave a new impulse to the aims and pursuits of her life, and she began from that time to bend every energy in efforts to obtain as thor- ough an education as her means, with the most rigid economy, would admit of, and from thenceforth her mind took a higher, wider, intellectual range. In order to obtain money to carry out her plans, she went to live, as companion and waiting - maid, with an eccentric old lady, a Mrs. Dawson, with whom she re- mained until recalled home by the death of her mother, in 1780. Her father soon after marrying again, and her younger sister Eliza having married a Mr. Bishop, who treated her so brutally that she was forced to leave him, Mary, in order to obtain the means of livelihood for both, started a day school at Newington Green, in which enter- prise she was assisted by her friend Fannie Blood, who went into partnership with her, and also occasionally by her sisters Eliza and Everina. MAIiV WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 55 It was while teaching at Newington Green that she became acquainted with the Rev. Dr. Richard Price, a man of Liberal ideas, an enthusiastic revolutionist, whose staunch republicanism first gave form and direction to Mary's hitherto undefined thoughts on civil and religious liberty. In his society she first found vent for her en- thusiastic admiration of a republican form of government and all free institutions. Early in 1785, her friend Frances Blood married, and went to reside with her hus- band in Lisbon, Portugal, leaving Mary in full charge of their school, assisted by her two sisters. In December of that same year Frances died, soon after giving birth to a child. Before that event occurred, Mary was sent ' for to cheer the last hours of her dearly loved friend ; a summons which she at once obeyed, leaving the school tempo- rarily in charge of her two younger sisters, whom she was educating for teachers. She reached Lisbon in time to soothe and so- 56 MAA-y WOLLSTONECRAFT GODIVIAT. lace by her presence her dying friend, and to close in death the eyes that for so many years had looked only lovingly into her own. Fannie's death was the cause of again arousing Mary's hot indignation against re- ligious intolerance, and of strengthening her conviction that efforts should be made to break these shackles from the human mind : for the authorities at Lisbon refused to allow her friend to be buried in conse- crated ground, as she was a Protestant in religion ; and Mary's first open defiance of the " powers that be " was in assisting to " steal her friend a grave." In December she returned to England, to find her school broken up and disorgan- ized by the mismanagement of those whom she had left in charge ; and, disheartened by the death of her colaborer, she deter- mined not to reorganize it, but for a season to try some other method of gaining a livelihood. She had at this time little money, and many claimants upon her purse and heart, for her sisters were entirely de- MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 5y pendent on her bounty ; and her generous nature was just at this time strongly ap- pealed to by the poverty and distress of Mr. and Mrs. Blood, the parents of her friend, who were in England, and very anxious to return to their own home in Ireland, but without the necessary pecuni- ary means to do so. Eager to repay to the parents the kindness she had received from their daughter, Mary was spurred on to write a pamphlet of i6o pages, entitled " Thoughts on the Education of Daughters,!' for which she received ten guineas from Mr. Johnson, a London publisher. This money; the first proceeds of her literary talents, she gave to Mr. and Mrs. Blood, to take them to Dublin. Dearer to her than the money, however, were the words of praise and encouragement which Mr. John- son saw fit to bestow upon her talents in giving it. He urged her to devote her time to literary pursuits, but she had scarcely confidence enough in her own ability to do so ; and having accepted the 58 MARY WOLLSTONECRA'FT GODWIN. situation of governess in the family of Lord Kingborough, she remained there a year, at the end of which time she yielded to Mr. Johnson's repeated solicitation, and began to devote herself to a literary career. During the three years which followed, she wrote almost exclusively for Johnson ; oftener, however, translating, condensing, and compiling from other sources than com- posing original articles ; and thus, though the force and strength of her own peculiar genius was l?ept in abeyance, she was still the gainer in a facility of language, depth of thought, and culture of expression, which afterward gave to her original writings that graceful force and clearness for which they are noticeable. During those three years, however, she wrote her first story, " Mary — A Fiction," which was intended rather as a tender tribute to the memory of her friend Frances Blood than as a studied at- tempt at romance -writing. She, also, at this time, wrote frequent articles for the Analytical Rcviczv. Fler translations from MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODIVJX. Sg the French, German, and ItaHan show the variety and breadth of her self-acquired edu- cation. It was during these first years of author- ship that Mary's father became involved in such pecuniary difficulties that she felt her- self under obligation to assist and care for the younger members of her family, and in order to do so she found it necessary to practice the most rigid economy. Her two sisters, whom she had had educated at her own expense, the one in London, the other at Paris, were procured, through her endeav- ors, situations as governesses. Her brother Edward was a lawyer in London ; Charles, a farmer in America ; and James, an officer in the British navy. It was Mary who pro- cured the land-grant for Charles, and ob- tained the commission for James. Yet they appear to have seemed ungrateful for the favors she did for them, if we may judge from a few grateful sentences in letters to her friend and publisher, Mr. Johnson — as these, for instance : " I never had a father 6o AfAXV WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. or a brother ; you have been both to me." " When I invokmtarily lament that I have not a father or a brother, I thankfully rec- ollect that I have received unexpected kind- ness from you and a few others.'' Illustrative of her generous largeness of heart, it is told of her that, in spite of all these family claims upon her time, purse, and affections, she still found means to take under her charge and protection a little girl, whose lonely orphanhood was all the claim she needed to win the moth- erly kindness of this philanthropic woman. Can we wonder that, accomplishing so much with her limited means, she held in pitying contempt, and stigmatized as " pam- pered dolls," those women, of whom there are so many, who, with larger opportunities than herself, fail in their duty as women and responsible individuals to make proper use of their time, wealth, and talents — merely using all three as means to make themselves attractive to the eyes of sensual men .' When, in 1790, Edmund Burke, previa MAli V WOLLSTONECRAFT GOD WIN. 6 1 ously looked upon as the staunch friend and advocate of human freedom, surprised and grieved his friends by his "Reflections on the French Revohition," Mary Wollstone- craft — who had aheady defiantly exercised the rights denied her sex, by interesting herself in the politics and government of her country — grew hot with indignation at what she conceived to be his perfidy to his previously enunciated principles, and was among the first to reply to him in a pam- phlet, of which a writer in Harper s Maga- ainc speaks thus : " The friends of liberty — Burke's old admirers — were wofully dis- appointed by what seemed to them his apostasy from his and their old political faith. The advocates of despotism, of pre- rogative, of the divine right of kings, were delighted. Intense excitement universally prevailed. While this excitement was at its height the public mind was startled by an answer coming from an unexpected quarter, written with great vigor and spirit, entitled 'A Vindication of the Rights of Man,' and 62 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN: bearing on its title-page the name of Mary Wollstonecraft. Its violence of tone and temper can now scarcely be praised even by the warmest advocates of its doctrines. But it was heartily welcomed and com- mended at the time by the lovers of liberty in England and on the Continent. It intro- duced Mary Wollstonecraft to fame, and placed her among the celebrities of that exciting period ; nor was the impression thus produced very much weakened by the sub- sequent and more elaborate answers of Paine and Macintosh to Mr. Burke's ' Re- flections.' One half of it was written and printed when its author appeared at Mr. Johnson's, one evening, and announced that her courage was failing ; that she could not write any more at present ; and described with comical ingenuousness her helpless in- dolence and obstinate disinclination to go on with the work. Her publisher answered her with quiet kindness, begged her to put no constraint on her inclinations, and to give herself no uneasiness about the sheets MA/!y WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 63 already printed, which he would cheerfully throw aside if it would contribute to her happiness. It was now her turn to be astonished. She sprang to her feet with an earnest ' No, thank you, Mr. Johnson ; I shall go home and finish it at once.' And she did." The writer from whom we quote the above goes on to say : " Her first meeting with Mr. Godwin, her future husband, oc- curred soon after this startling publication. They met at a dinner party, and were mutually displeased. Godwin had read her book, and, although he was an earnest re- publican, his quiet temper was offended by the occasional harshness and ruggedness of character exhibited by her ' Vindication. She, in turn, was annoyed by his philosoph- ical calmness and gentle equanimity, and so they separated, little dreaming that here- after they would become husband and wife." It is very probable that it was the pub- lication of that work, and the consequent comments on the audacity of a woman 64 MA/^Y WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. undertaking to write on political affairs, which turned her attention more closely to the subject of " Womaiis rights." She began to question the reasons given to account for woman's subordinate position ; began to endeavor to ascertain her true capabilities, responsibilities and needs, and to ask to what extent her subordination retarded true progress even in the sex whose will kept her in that subjection. The result of these inquiries and investigations was the pub- lication in 1792 of her " Vindication of the Rights of Woman," a passionate defense of the true dignity, and an eloquent plea for the fitter education, of woman ; a work com- ing directly from her heart, and sanctioned by the deliberate reasoning of her brain. However much educational prejudice may warp candid criticism of this work, it must still be confessed that it is an eloquent and impassioned effort.- Its aim is revealed in a sentence occurring in its dedication to M. Talleyrand, in which she says, " Con- tending for the rights of woman, my main MARY IVOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 65 argument is built upon this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge ; for truth must be common to all, or it will be ineffi- cacious with respect to its influence on gen- eral practice. If children are to be edu- cated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot ; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interests of mankind ; but the education and situation of woman at present shuts her out from such investigations." In this work, which she wrote in the short space of six weeks, she is almost mas- culinely severe and contemptuous in her estimate of her own sex, attacking with sarcasm and pitying scorn its attempts to hold men's hearts in bondage by sensual at- traction, rather than by superior excellence of morals or high intellectual attainments. But more just than man, she blames man 66 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. himself for woman's incapacity. Her hearty detestation of affectation and mock modesty is apparent in the freedom and good sense with which she approaches and deals with topics which in those days were considered too indelicate for women to write or con- verse about, albeit they were topics which most concerned women. To Mary Woll- stonecraft's honor be it recorded, that, al- though at the time of its publication, and for long years afterward, this book met with abuse and misrepresentation — with sneers and ridicule from its male critics, and little shrieks of affected delicacy from her own sex, it yet succeeded in inaugurating the work of reform in female education. Even while men sneered, they could not well help perceiving the force and truth of her argu- ments, and so at last, though rather shame- facedly, began to make movements them- selves in the right direction ; and though Avomen blushed and simpered if her book was publicly mentioned, they yet were curi- ous enough about it to read its pages by MARY IVOLLSTONECRAFT GODIV/N. 67 stealth, and, feeling self-condemned by her accusations, began little by little to act on her advice, provided they could do so without observation or criticism. And to- day there is nothing in its pages calculated to startle or surprise the general reader, for, as the magazine writer from whom I have before quoted remarks, " It contains little upon the subject of woman's rights which has not noiv become familiar to every mind." Toward the close of 1792, having, on her father's account, become involved in pecuniary difficulties, she determined to leave London for Paris. In that city, amid the thrilling scenes of the Revolution then at its height, her republican opinions and so- cialistic theories received new impetus. Mary was earnest and enthusiastic. What others were content to theorize and philosophise over, she was anxious to test by practical experience. She did not know, or else over^ looked the fact, that it needs a new world, and a new race of human beings, to put 68 .l/.J/vT IVOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. visionary theories into immediate practical effect, however beneficent and beautiful they may appear in the ideal. More understood this when he made for his Utopians a Utopia fitted expressly for their needs. Theories of government in order to be of immediate Use must be adapted to the intellect and needs of living people ; the customs and prejudices of centuries cannot be broken on the wheel of a new ideal, however perfect the ideal may appear to be. In such cases the theory itself may be broken into hope- less impracticability, but the people will re- main the same. Mary's reputation as an authoress and writer of revolutionary books drew around her in Paris many persons of congenial tastes and kindred views. Among these was Gilbert Imlay, an American gentleman, who soon began to show evidence of a warmer attachment than mere friendship for this daring, enthusiastic, liberty-loving woman- The attachment soon grew to be mutual, and, Avith all the passionate ardor of her MAKY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODiVlX. 69 nature, Mary gave herself up to this happy dream of a perfect and congenial union. Her ideal of a true and holy marriage was that where congeniality of tastes and pur- suits, oneness of thought, and true, tender love should hold the parties together by stronger and more indissoluble bonds than merely legal rites could bestow. She for- got, or was unaware of, the thousand and one circum.stances which arise to make men forget their most sacred oaths, their most solemn vows ; she was not herself blase enough to know anything of the dead - sea fruit of satiety which is sure to follow pos- session of the thing desired, in a selfish and ardent nature ; so she cast aside as useless mummery those legal ceremonies which in our present state of society are woman's surest protection and man's only claim ; arid trusting entirely, undoubtingly, to a man's love and loyalty, became the wife of Gil- bert Imlay in everything save the sanction of the law. This step proved a bitter, well - nigh a 70 ^////I'K WOLLSTOiVECRAFT GODWIX. fatal, mistake on her part. For a year or two, while the sweet newness of his attach- ment had not lost its charm for his fickle passions, her Utopian dream seemed a reality to her. One can fancy the fine pure-hearted scorn with which, in the meantime, she must have looked upon those mismatcd, unloving souls, held together by the law's firm undis- criminating bond, while in her union love was the only high-priest and lawgiver, and she had demonstrated to an unbelieving ■\\'orld the realization of a theory. She would have laughed to scorn any croaker who prophesied an estrangement between her- self and the father of her child — tlicir child ! Could even heaven prevail against a union cemented by so strong and true a love .' But Imlay soon tired of what to him was only a bit of romance, and his cloyed passions demanded a change of loves. Early in 1795, he made some excuse to leave her in Paris, while he went to London, hoping thus to get easily rid of her ; but, unsuspi- ^rA/^:Y wollstoi\f.ckai-t godwlw ji cious of his designs, she followed him in May, accompanied by her child and its nurse. He threw off all disguise then, and let her see plainly that he no longer cared for her. Her ardent, impetuous, thoughtful soul sank under this undreamed-of blow, and in the depths of her despair she twice attempted suicide, once succeeding so far in her design as to throw herself into the Thames river, from whence she was rescued in a state of insensibility. Her violence of despair so frightened Imlay that he pretended a recon- ciliation with her, protesting his repentance, and renewing his old vows of undying love and constancy. But determined at heart on a separation, he soon found an excuse to send her as his agent on some business affairs to Sweden and Norway. She was ac- companied only by her little girl Frances and the child's nurse. It was during this absence that she wrote those " Letters from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark," of which her husband, William Godwin, remarks : " No other book of travel so irresistibly 72 MANY WOLLSTONECKAFT GODWIN. seizes on the heart. It speaks of her sor- rows in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that her genius commands admiration, and we are constrained to love the writer"; and Mrs. Siddons, the celebrated actress, says of them, " No one could read them with more reciprocity of feeling, or be more deeply impressed than I am with admiration of the writer's extraordinary powers." The greater number of these letters are ad- dressed to Imlay, and we cannot but won- der of what sort of stuff the man's heart was made, that he could resist these elo- quent appeals to all that was best of him, or refrain from loving so true and tender a soul. But that he did not love her, and that his new-made protestations were false, is proven from the fact that on her return in October to England, after her four months' absence, she found that Imlay had gone back to America with a newer love. Perhaps she had already guessed that MARY IVOLLSTONECKAFT GODWIN. n this might be the case before her return ; perhaps her heart had received too severe a shock at her first discovery of his perfidy to again trust him implicitly ; at any rate, she did not again yield to her former frenzy of passionate grief, but, seemingly deter- mined to no longer grieve over the loss of one who had proved himself so utterly un- worthy of her respect or affection, devoted herself with renewed interest to her literary labors, and to the care and education of her little girl. It was soon after her return from Nor- way that she was again thrown into the society of William Godwin, who was already a writer of considerable repute. He is de- scribed by Carlyle as " one of the marked men everywhere — grave, strong, and with some imagination, too, as ' Caleb Williams ' proves. He was, too, a fine-looking man, with a fair fine forehead." The interest he felt in Mary's misfor- tunes, the admiration excited in him by her genius, and the radical opinions which he 74 MARY WOCLSTONECRAFT GODWIN- held in common with her, drew him to- ward her, and gradually led the way to a deeper, tenderer attachment, which was soon reciprocal. Time and sorrow had softened the brusque, impetuous manner, and toned down the highly enthusiastic nature to more womanly gentleness ; and although nearly thirty-eight years of age, she yet retained much of that youthful beauty which the painter Opie immortalized by his brush, and of which one who has seen it writes thus : " Ingenuous sweetness is the prevailing expression. None of her works, save her ' Letters from Norway,' would lead us to expect such a style of beauty. We should look rather for a strongly marked and mas- culine face." Robert Southey writes of her to J. Cot- tle, under date of March, 1797: "Of all the lions or literati I have seen here (in Lon- don), Mary Imlay's countenance is the best — infinitely the best. The only fault in it is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Home Tooke display — an expres- MA/^y WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 7 5 sion indicating superiority ; not haughtiness, not sarcasm in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw.'' That Godwin and Mary, in spite of the latter's harsh experience, should dare to live as man and wife for some time without the sanction of the law, only marrying when fearful of the legal rights of their un- born babe, shows that they still held to the truth of their Utopian theories ; but for the sake of their child, they conceded so much to custom as to be legally married, but very privately, on the 29th of March, 1797, in old St. Pancras Church, Lon- don. Their short marital experience was, ap- parently, one of unclouded happiness. Their halcyon days, though coming late, were none the less delightful, though it may be doubted, considering, the cold, self-poised nature of Godwin, whether a longer life 76 . MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN'. with him would not have brought to the ardent heart of Mary a withering chill. On the 30th of August, 1797, their only child, Mary WoUstonecraft Godwin, was born, and on the 1 0th of September following the mother died, leaving to the care of Godwin this child (who afterward became the wife of Shelley) and the child of Imlay, who was known as Fanny Godwin, then about three or four years old. This daugh- ter lived with Godwin and his second wife until she was twenty-two, when, without any known cause, she committed suicide, by taking laudanum, while on her way to visit her aunts, the WoUstonecraft sisters. Godwin bore his wife's death with his usual stoical equanimity, but busied himself with her works and memoirs, to the exclusion of all other literary labor, in the year follow- ing her death. " This light was lent me for a very little while," he says in the me- moir prefixed to her works, "and it is now extinguished forever." But Mr. Roscoe, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. J J reading those memoirs soon after their pub- lication, wrote thus : "Hard was Ihy fate in all the scenes of life, As Daughter, Sister, Mother, Friend, and Wife, But harder still thy fate in death we own. Thus mourned by Godwin, with a heart of stone." Shelley speaks of her, in a poem ad- dressed to her daughter, as follows : "Of glorious parents, thou aspiring child, I wonder not, for one then left the earth Whose life was like a setting planet mild. Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled Of her departing glory. Still her fame Shmes on thee, through these tempests dark and wild." Of her personal character her husband, who should know her best, speaks in the highest terms : " Never did there exist a woman," he says of her, " who might with less fear expose her actions, and call upon the universe to judge them." "Lovely in her person, she was, in the best and most engaging sense, feminine in her manners." "The strength of Mary's mind lay in her intuition. In a robust and unwavering judg- 78 MAJ?y IVOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. ment of this sort, there is a kind of witcli- craft. When it decides justly, it produces a responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind. In this sense my oscillation and skepticism were often fixed by her bold- ness." " About thirty years ago," writes M. D. Conway, in ' South Coast Saunterings in En- gland,' " the most eloquent London preacher ot that day, W. J. Fox, said in an address to the working class : ' In that old St. Pancras, with its ancient burial ground, at a remote corner, those who are disposed for such a pilgrimage may find an unobtrusive, unostentatious tomb, built some forty years ago by William Godwin for Mary WoU- stonecraft, and where some few years ago they who had been united in life became blended in the grave. When people can rightly estimate their benefactors ; when no- bility is judged by intellect and character, and not by title or station ; when woman's wrongs are righted, and man's rights are recognized ; when achieved freedom throws MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. "jg its light and luster back on those who toiled through the transition time, and were as stars that rose and set again before the coming day — then will crowds frequent that now solitary corner ; laurels will be planted around that humble monument, and sculp- tured marble will tell what public gratitude awards to those who lived, and wrote, and spent the best energies of their lives in preparing the way for man's redemption from social and political bondage.' In the year 185 1, the widening of a street in St. Pancras disturbed many graves, and the present Lady Shelley removed the bodies of William and Mary Godwin to a churchyard in Bournemouth. The ' sculptured marble ' which fulfils Mr.. Fox's prophecy is a simple flat slab, but there are vistas of history opening from its brief records : ' William Godwin, author of "Political Justice," born March 3, 1756; died April 7, . 1836.' 'Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of "A Vindi- cation of the Rights of Woman ;" born April, 1759) died September 10, 1797.' The grave 8o M^l/n' VVOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. is fringed with ever-fresh roses, which seem to say : ' Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.' '* Mary's religious opinions, like many other things in regard to her, have been misrep- resented. She has been called a Materialist, and Atheist ; she was neither of these, though a Freethinker. She was a Deist : a devout and reverential believer in the existence of an all-wise and all-loving God. In proof of this, I quote a few sentences from her " Rights of Woman" : " Gracious Creator of the whole human race ! hast thou created such a being as woman, who can trace thy wisdom in thy works, and feel that thou alone art by thy nature exalted above her — for no better pur- pose .'' Can she believe that she was only made to submit to man, her equal, a being who, like her, was sent into this world to acquire virtue .■' Can she consent to be oc- cupied merely to please him, when her soul is capable of rising to thee.?" (Page 71.) A/.-IA'V WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIX. 8 I " I have reverentially lifted up my eyes and heart to Him who liveth forever and ever, and said, O my Father, hast thou by the very constitution of her nature for- bid thy child to seek thee in the fair forms of truth ! And can her soul be sullied by the knowledge that awfully calls her to thee!" (Page 132.) " That awful intercourse, that sacred com- munion, which virtue establishes between man and his Maker, must give rise to the wish of being pure, as he is pure !" (Page 140.) " Religion ! pure source of comfort in this vale of tears ! how has thy clear streams been muddied by the dabblers who have presumptuously endeavored to confine in one narrow channel the living waters that ever flow toward God — the sublime ocean of ex- istence ! What would life be without that peace which the love of God, when built on humanity, alone can impart ! " (Page I75-) " Why should I conceal my sentiments ? 82 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. Considering the attributes of God, I believe that whatever punishment may follow will tend, like the anguish of disease, to show the malignity of vice, for the purpose of reformation. Positive punishment appears so contrary to the nature of God, discoverable in all his works, that I would sooner be- lieve that the Deity paid no attention to the conduct of man than that he punished without the benevolent design of reforming. To- suppose only that an all - wise and powerful Being, as good as he is great, should create a being, foreseeing that, after fifty or sixty years of feverish existence, it would be plunged into never-ending woe — is blasphemy. On such a supposition (I speak with reverence), he would be a consuming fire. We should wish, though vainly, to fly from his presence, when fear absorbed love, and darkness involved all his counsels. I know that many devout people boast of submitting to the will of God blindly, as to an arbitrary scepter or rod, on the same principle as the Indians worship the devil. MAJiY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 83 Like people in the common concerns of life, they do homage to power, and cringe under the foot that can crush them. Rational re- ligion, on the contrary, is a submission to the will of a Being so perfectly wise that all he wills must be directed by the proper motive — must be reasonable. And if we thus respect God, can we give credit to the mysterious insinuations which insult his laws .' Can we believe, though it should stare us in the face, that he would work a miracle to authorize confusion by sanc- tioning an error.'" (Pages 200-201.) These extracts show plainly enough her deeply reverential, yet broad, religious views. She found it impossible to accept the dog- mas of the churches as true, and yet in unison with the idea of an all-pervading, all-wise, and all-creative Power, such as she believed God to be, she could not narrow her God within the church limits, so, rather than loose her hold of her high conception, she let go the churches and their narrow creeds, but held fast, with all the deep 84 MAJiV WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. ardor and breadth of her nature, to the un- knowable, but all-sufficient God. " Mary Wollstonecraft," says Margaret Fuller, in her ' Women of the Nineteenth Century,' " was a woman whose existence better proved the need of some new inter- pretation of ' Woman's Rights ' than any- thing she wrote. Such beings as these, rich in genius, of most tender sympathies, ca- pable of high virtue and a chastened har- mony, ought not to find themselves by birth in a place so narrow that, in breaking bonds, they become outlaws." At the time of her death, Mary Woll- stonecraft was only thirty -eight or thirty- nine years of age. She was thus in the very " golden prime " of womanhood, and the fullest vigor of intellect. We know not what high place in literature her strong in- tellect might have gained had a longer lease of life been accorded her. The few works she has bequeathed to us leave no doubt as to the genuineness of her power- ful and eloquent genius. Of these works, MA/iV WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. 85 the following is a pretty complete list, al- though there may be others of which the trace has been lost: " Thoughts on the Education of Daugh- ters." 1785. "Mary— A Fiction." 1787. "Original Stories from Real Life." 1788. "Vindication of the Rights of Man." 1790. "A Vindication of the Rights of Wo- man." 1792. " Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution." 1794. "A Comedy." 1795. "Letters from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark." 1796. Of her style, Mary Russel Mitford, her- self a pure and good writer, speaks thus enthusiastically in a letter to Rev. William Harness, in 1854 : "Another person to whom this work (A Life of Mrs. Opie) does huge injustice is Mary Wollstonecraft. Of course, I don't go along with her extreme opinions, although 86 MAA'V WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN. they are but pale, not to say faded, pink, compared with the dashing scarlet of Amer- ican and French audacity; but she was an exquisite writer. Madame De Stael stole much from her ; but her French is miser- able bombast compared to Mary Wollstone- craft's charming English ; and George Sand — approaching her in a pure and perfect style — is wide as the poles apart from her in purity of feeling ; for, married or not married, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote like a. modest woman — was a modest woman." MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. I AM a little doubtful as to the propriety of classing Mrs. Shelley among those Liberal-minded women who dared bravely to speak and write their inmost convictions of what they deemed the truth. The great shock of Shelley's sudden death had taught her, I think, that worldly wisdom and cau- tion which seemed afterward to mark her course. Had Shelley lived, she would, doubt- less, have been more outspoken, and would have earned for herself a more undying fame than she is now destined to. But being so intimately connected with three of the brightest names in the calendar of Free- thought, and herself never denying, even if she did not publicly uphold, the principles go AA-lJiy IF. GODWIN SIIILLLEY. of her father, mother, and husband, we can- not refuse her a place among these sketches of Freethinking women. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was the only child of WiUiam Godwin, author of " Political Justice," and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." She was born August 30, 1797, and William Godwin, in gaining a daughter, lost a dearly beloved wife. She was brought up in the vicinity of Dundee, Scotland, where she passed most of her youth. Her father married again in 1801, and in 1804 went into business as a bookseller, an oc- cupation which, I think, he followed during the rest of his life. Between the father and child existed a tender love, which partook of the nature of friendship as well as of parental and filial affection. She was to him the link that bound him to the mem- ory of that brief year of happiness which he had enjoyed in the love and companion- ship of a spirit brave and intellectual as his own. To make that link more complete MARY V/. GODWIN SHELLEY. 91 and lasting, he had given the daughter the mother's name in full. He took the utmost pains with her education, and early instilled into her mind all those ideas of justice and liberty which are so prominent an element in his writings. It would have been a little singular if, brought up thus among books, with a prominent author for her father, who drew around him the choicest littcratciws of the day, and who discussed in her presence the topics congenial to them — it would, I repeat, have been strange if the little Mary had not caught a fancy for the same em- ployment. " As a child," she says of her- self, " I scribbled, and my favorite pastime during the hours given me for recreation was to write stories." Godwin's iconoclastic spirit drew around him sympathetic souls — turbulent, discon- tented dreamers of all kinds, as well as the steadier and more fixed lights of literature and politics. Among the rest came the boyish, impetuous Shelley, whose rare genius had at that time scarcely developed itself 92 MARY ]]\ GODWIA^ SHELLEY: even into worthy promise of his after accom- phshment. He was then burdened with debts, and struggling against the poverty and embarrassments which his apostasy from the faith of his fathers, and his youtliful and inconsiderate marriage, had entailed upon him. In pursuing his acquaintance with the father, Shelley was frequently thrown into the society of the daughter, Mary Godwin, who was at this time a beautiful, enthusiastic girl of sixteen, to whom Shelley's story, in combination with Shelley's self, was sad and romantic enough to win her sympathy and her heart. Shelley greatly admired Godwin and his first wife, whose liberal sentiments found a warm response in his soul ; and the daughter of this gifted pair, herself young, witty, and lovely, could not fail to be to him an object of great interest. Mary Woll- stonecraft and Godwin, filled with Utopian ardor, had believed that the day was al- ready come when marriage should be no longer a matter of priests or parliaments, but of congeniality of tastes and sympathies. MARY ir. GOVITAV SHELLEY. 93 They had dared to act out their opinion in the face of a shocked public, only marrying in time to give legality of birth to their child. These ideas in regard to marriage found a responsive echo in the mind of Shelley, whose legal marriage had proved so disastrous to all parties ; and so when the mutual unhappiness of himself and wife cul- minated in her despairing departure with her children to her father's house, it was not, perhaps, surprising that his admiration for Mary Godwin was allowed to deepen into love, openly expressed. Great as is my admiration of the tran- scendant genius of Shelley, I must, as a wo- man, confess to feeling far greater .sympathy in this affair for his young, and possibly foolish, wife, than I do for him. Hers was the more bitter repentance ; hers were the greater sufferings ; hers was the harder fate. I grow angry at this blot on Shelley's otherwise fair fame, but that fair fame does not dispose me to be more lenient toward this one mistake. My heart grows 94 A/yl/^Y IV. GODWIN SriELLEY. sad over the sorrowful fate of that young and deserted wife, whose bitter agony found relief at last in self-destruction. I know it is customary with the apologists of Shelley to ascribe this act to a mania which had held possession of her from her girlhood ; but that Shelley himself did not think so is shown by the depth of his feelings on hearing of the sad event ; for it is said that after learning of her death he became tempo- rarily insane, and did not recover his usual tone of spirits for a long time afterward. One could fancy almost a sort of poetical justice in the fact of Shelley's meeting Ids death a few years later as she did — by drowning. But of the peculiar trials of her prede- cessor Mary Godwin knew — could know — nothing. Despite his unquestionably great genius, Shelley was yet but an undisciplined, romantic boy in years and in feeling. He deemed himself the greatest sufferer from this marriage ; and listening only to the poet's impassioned recital of his own woes. .1fJ7v-y IV. GODWm SHELLEY. 96 the chivalric causes which made him " marry- in haste, to repent at leisure," the lack of sympathy shown by his wife toward all his high aims and pursuits, and his deep regret over that fatal step, combined with a hint of the glorifying love which came almost too late— who can blame Mary God- win if she, a romantic girl of seventeen, who had been educated to believe in the superiority of true love and sympathy over any mere man - made laws, became will- ingly, and even without the consent of her philosophic father, the wife of Shelley, in all but legal recognition. In 1814, Shelley, not yet separated from his first wife, meeting Mary at the grave of her mother, whither she often fled to escape the scoldings of her step-mother, declared his love for her. The scene, their peculiar circumstances, their daring faith in each other, their youth, their beauty, made for them a romance which was irresistible. On the 14th of July, Harriet, Shelley's wife, came to London, and Godwin called on her. 96 MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. and endeavored to reconcile Shelley to her, not dreaming of the drama going on under his own roof. On the 28th of July, Mary Godwin, aided, abetted, and accompanied by her step-mother's daughter, Jane Claremont, ran away with Shelley. Mrs. Godwin pur- sued the party, but could not make them return. Godwin held little or no communi- cation with them until after the death of Shelley's first wife, and their legal mar- riage. " The three," says K. Paul, in his biography of Godwin, "went to Paris, where they bought a donkey, and rode him in turn to Geneva, the others walking. He was bought for Mary, as the weakest of the party, but Shelley's feet were soon blis- tered, and he was glad to ride now and then, not without the jeers of the passers- by. Sleeping now in a cabaret, and now in a cottage, they at last finished the strange honeymoon, and the strangest sentimental journey ever undertaken since Adam and Eve." On account of his differences with his MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. gj family connections, England had become too unpleasant for Shelley's comfort or happi- ness, and so lie remained abroad after his elopement until the death of the first Mrs. Shelley, who drowned herself November 9, 1 8 17, left them free to legalize their union. Shelley hastened home to England, to claim the two children of his first marriage, after the death of their mother. It was a bitter mortification and grief to Shelley that Mr. Westbrook, the children's maternal grand- father, refused him the custody of them ; and on bringing the matter into court, the claims of the father were set aside on the grounds of his " Infidelity," and the children were, sent to be educated in a clergyman's family, the more surely to save them from any hereditary taint of -skep- ticism. Although in this matter we cannot but sympathize with the shock to Shelley's feelings, yet from Mr. Westbrook's point of view the act was not only justifiable, but meritorious ; for how could he reconcile it to his conscience to allow the Infidel 98 MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. and his new Infidel wife to have the care of his daughter's little ones, especially when it had been proved to his 'satisfaction, at least, that his daughter found it impossible to live with him ? And, besides, he could not but hold Shelley in a manner responsible for that daughter's death. The death of Shelley's grandfather, the old baronet, in 1815, had placed at his dis- posal a yearly allowance, which placed him in moderately good circumstances. In 1818, haunted by a fear that by some chicanery of the law he might also be deprived of the care of his boy William, the eldest son of his second wife, he left England with his wife and child, never to return. In the nomadic life which for several years . they led in Italy, existence grew very dear and sweet to both. Shelley was now writing constantly, and his rapidly extend- ing fame drew around them a band of con- genial spirits, among whom were Byron, Tre- lawny, Leigh Hunt, Keats, and Polidori. Lord Byron had met them in Switzerland in 1816, MARY XV. GODWIN SHELLEY. 99 and there formed that acquaintance with Shelley which resulted in a friendship that was terminated only by the great termin- ator of all things — Death. Yet even now they were not allowed to think themselves forgotten of Sorrow, for at different times Death stilled the hearts of the two eldest of their little children, \\ho had grown so dear to them : taking first William, and then Clara, only the youngest, named for his father, Percy, remaining to them. Before their union, Shelley had recog- nized, and acknowledged, his wife's genius, and constantly afterward he urged her to write, and prove herself to the world a true child of her "gifted parents ; but she was too happy in his society, too busy with the care of her little ones, to obey his suggestions, or to accomplish much literary labor previ- ous to his death. However, there came an evening, when Lord Byron was visiting them at their Italian villa, only Byron, Polidori, Shelley, and his wife being present, and lOO MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. the talk chanced to run on ghosts, goblins, and wraiths. The subject had a weird fas- cination for those poetic, mystic natures, and it held them with its half-defined sense of the horrible until far into the night. As they at last rose to retire, Byron in one of his sudden impulses, said, " Let us each write a ghost story ! " All eagerly agreed, and made a compact there and then to do so. No one was to see any part of the others' manuscript, till all were completed. Like most sudden compacts of the kind, it was only partly carried out. The idea was to Mary a strangely fas- cinating one. She was young, scarcely nine- teen, and had been brought up in Scot- land, the land of "bogles," "brownies," and witchcraft ; and despite the practical philosophic teachings of her father, she had imbibed a good share of the spirit of belief in the " uncanny." All night long the idea of her story grew in all its weird horror in her brain ; and " Frankenstein," her most notable work, was the result. I think hers MARY n\ GODWIN SHELLEY. lOI was the only completed story that arose from Byron's proposal and that night's compact. Shelley was delighted with this specimen of his wife's gifts, and proud of his intuitive perception of her power. It was not, however, published for a year after its completion, but was the first she gave to the press. This work shows a mind wonderfully thoughtful and mature for one so young as Mrs. Shelley was at that time, and amid the strange, ghastly horror of the story, there gleam ' here and there traces of the daring skeptical philosophisings so prominent in the writings of her parents and her husband ; as, for instance, when she makes Frankenstein say : " With how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if coward- ice or carelessness did not restrain our in- quiries." And, again : " For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a Creator toward his creature were, and that I ought to render him I02 MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. happy before I complained of his wicked- ness." I think "Frankenstein" was the only work of importance, if not the only one, which Mrs. Shelley completed during the lifetime of her husband. Sorrow and pov- erty compelled her afterward to a vocation for which her predilections and education had fitted her, and in which she would have appeared to greater advantage had not her maternal doubts and fears fettered and restrained the freedom of her pen. In the midst of her loving happiness, her pleasant friendships, her dreams of fame for herself, and, more than all else, for her be- loved Shelley, there came that dreadful, that cruel blow, from which she never after- ward quite recovered — the drowning of Shel- ley in the bay of Spezzia, by the upsetting of his yacht, on the 8th of July, 1822. To kiss him a light " good-by " — to let him go with smiling eyes, and unfearing, unpro- phetic heart to his death — to watch, in company with that other young wife, made MARY W. GODWIN SJIELLEY. 103 a widow by the same disaster, so calmly, so unfearingly, the last gleam of the snowy sails of that treacherous craft, out on the blue waters of that cruel bay — and then so soon to wake to the knowledge that on that bright deceitful morning she had looked her last into the loving, living eyes of Shelley — that "wind, and wave, and oar" had combined to rob the poet-husband of life, and her of love— Oh, it seemed too cruelly awful to be true ! "I can never forget," says Lord Byron, " the night when she rushed into my room at Pisa, with a face pale as marble, and terror impressed on her brow, demanding, with all the impetuosity of grief and alarm, where was her husband. Vain were all our efforts to calm her ; a desperate sort of courage seemed to give her energy to con- front the horrible truth that awaited her ; it was the courage of despair. I have seen nothing in tragedy on the stage so power- ful or so affecting as her appearance, and it often presents itself to my memor}-." I04 MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. The ashes of Shelley were buried in the Protestant burial-ground at Rome, near the grave of their eldest child. Those sacred ashes kept the mourning and uncomforted young widow a year longer alone in a strange land among strangers ; while her fa- ther and her home friends were urgent for her return to them. To be near Ins grave — the idolized husband whom she thenceforward never names but as "mine own Shelley" — she was willing to give up home and friends. But her love for that husband's son and name- sake did that wliich no other affection could do — recalled her to England in 1823. After the death of Shelley's grandfather, the first baronet of the name, his title and estate fell to an uncle of the poet, Sir Timothy Shelley. Mrs. Shelley's only living child, the little Percy, was, after Sir Tim- othy, the prospective heir ; and at the sug- gestion of his father's family, she returned with him to P^ngland, in order to give him the benefit of an English education. Sir Timothy was prejudiced against her on MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. lo5 account of those Liberal views which it was well known she indorsed, and he was anx- ious to have the future baronet brought up in strict Orthodoxy, and to that end did his best to separate the boy from his mother. With the memory of Shelley's bitter expe- rience in being denied the custody of his children, on the grounds of his " Infidelity," and fearing a like fate for herself, it is not to be wondered at that the mother's love proved stronger than the thinker's spirit, and that to keep her child all her own she made concessions which nothing else would have wrung from her : and so for her boy's sake, her pen wrote no word which might offend that boy's relatives. Yet she did not deny her faith — the " belief of the unbeliever " — but merely kept passive. But Sir Timothy could not quite forgive her for her refusal to give up the child to his care, and in every way showed a churlish and ungenerous spirit toward her. M. D. Conway, in speaking of his hardness toward her, remarks : "It was a hard struggle with I06 MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. the poor widow, between her duty to the memory of Shelley; and that toward her son, whose welfare and education imper- atively demanded the annual loan (made to her by Sir Timothy, to be repaid when her son entered upon his inheritance), and the result is, we have to thank the crabbed old baronet, not only for our want of a real biography of Shelley, but also for the silence of the authoress of ' Frankenstein,' at the period of the ripeness of her genius." This paragraph conveys the idea that Mrs. Shelley wrote nothing after her return to England — an erroneous idea, as she, in fact, wrote a great deal : supporting herself and helping her father with the results of her literary toil. But there can be no doubt that the course pursued by the baronet to- ward her had the effect of silencing the true expression of her views ; therefore we have no means of learning positively what those views were, although in the Shelley "Memorials" she states distinctly that she never had been an Atheist, while she gives MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. lOj at the same time the impression that she was an ultra-liberal Deist. Soon after her return to England, her second novel, "Valperga," was published. For this work she was paid by the pub- lishers ^400. This sum she presented to her father, who at that time was struggling with some pecuniary difficulties. " The Last Man " was her next production, published in 1824; " Perkin Warbeck " was published in 1830; " Lodore," in 1835; " Falkner," in 1837. She edited the "Works and Letters of Shelley" in 1839-40, and some years later wrote the somewhat incomplete " Me- morials." In addition to these labors, she wrote all the Italian and Spanish biog- raphies in Lardner's "Encyclopedia," except- ing those of Tasso and Galileo ; two vol- umes entitled " Rambles in Germany," de- scriptive of the travels of her son and his tutor ; and was for some years a contrib- utor to the "Annuals," once so fashionable in England. So it is very evident that she was not "silenced." She was only a mental lOS MARY IV. GODWIN SHELLEY. prisoner on parole ; her liosta£,rc, the inter- ests of her darHng boy. At first she made her home with her father, between whom and herself there still existed the firm, true friendship which al- ways characterized their relationship ; but in furtherance of her one supreme care in life, the welfare of her Shelley's child, she left her father, so as to be near the schools to which her boy was sent ; going to reside for that purpose first at Kentish- town, and afterward at Harrow. Young, talented, and lovely as she was, there can be no doubt that she was sought after in marriage by those who could have placed her above the drudgery of her pen ; but her heart was in that grave at Rome, where Shelley's ashes reposed, and she was too proud of the honor of his name to ex- change it for that of any other man. In 1836, WiUiam Godwin died, aged eighty — full of years, as of honors ; and in i8zJ4 the death of Sir Timothy secured to Percy Shelley the succession to the baron- MAKY IF. GODWIN SHELLEY. lOQ etcy, and to his mother immunity from pecuniary cares, as well as freedom of ex- pression. But this immunity came too late ; she was growing old herself, and, if even she had cared to take an active part in the defense of her views, she had no longer cither incentive or ambition to take the trouble to do so. Iler only litcrar\- labor after this time was a labor of love, in pre- paring and writing the Shelley "Memorials." She died in 1851, seven years after the death of Sir Timothy, in the fifty-fourth year of her age. A costly monument was erected by Sir Percy Shelley in Christchurch, near Bourne- mouth, England, to the memory of his father and mother, in 1854. " It is a fine work of art," says M. D. Conway, describing it, "representing Mary Shelley supporting on her lap the lifeless body of her husband, just after it has been washed ashore. The prow of a boat near by suggests the dreary story which none can forget.'' But neither of the bodies rest beneath this statel\' mausoleum, I lO MAKY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. Shelley's ashes being still at Rome, while Mary Shelley lies in a churchyard at Bourne- mouth. Beside her rest also the remains of both her parents, Sir Percy and his wife having had them removed from St. Pancras churchyard, where they were originally bur- ied. The orthodox preacher who officiated in the church to which this graveyard be- longs objected seriously to having the bod- ies of such notorious heretics interred within its sacred precincts, but the present Lady .Shelley, wife of Sir Percy, evidently a wo- man of determination and spirit, as well as an enthusiastic admirer of the noble dead whom she wished thus to pay honor to, made up her mind that the bodies should be buried there ; and, says Mr. Conway, my authority for this statement, " one day ac- tually came from Christchurch in her car- riage, following a- hearse which bore the bodies. She sat in her carriage before the locked iron gates, and expressed her reso- lution to sit there until the bodies were admitted for burial. The rector, dreading JlfA/HY IF. C0DJF7.V SHELLEY. I I I perhaps the scandal which would be caused, yielded ; the gravediggcr did his work with haste ; and by night, without any ceremonial, the bodies were let down into their graves. " When afterward the baronet and his lady wished to place over the graves a marble slab, the rector again protested, on account of the inscription, which said that Mary Wollstonecraft was the author of ' A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.' Lady Shelley asked him rather pointedly if he had ever read Mary Wollstonecraft's book ; and he having said he had not, she said he had better read it, and state his objec- tions afterward. So she sent him the vol- ume, and he read it. He then said he could not find fault with it, and so the in- scription went on." Of her own silence on the subject, whicli her mother had so much at heart, Mrs. Shelley writes thus half-apologctically : " If I have never written to vindicate the rights of woman, I have ever befriended women when oppressed. At every risk I have be- 112 MA A' y IK. GODWIN SIIELUiY. friended and supported victims to the social system ; but in truth it is but simple justice." Save as a matter of principle and educa- tion, perhaps, more than this could hardly have been expected of her, as hers had not been the bitter experiences of Mary WoU- stonecraft in the relations of daughter and wife ; for William Godwin and Shelley were both firm believers in equal rights, and the first no more resembled a John Edward Wollstonccraft than the latter did an Imlay. Of Mrs. Shelley's personal appearance in the early days of her wedded life, Shelley himself gives us this description, in a poem addressed to her at that time : "And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak ; Time may interpret to his silent years ; Vet iu the paleness of tiiy silent cheek, And in llie light Ihnie ample forehead wears, And in thy sweetest smiles, and m thy tears, And in lliy gentle speech, a prophecy Is whispered to subdue my fondest fears ; And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see A lamp of vesper lire burning eternally." lifAKY ir. GODWIN SHELLEY. 113 Robert Dale Owen, who met her in Paris in 1827, and who very nearly, if not quite, fell in love with her, thus describes her at the age of twenty-nine or thirty : " She impressed mc as a person with warm social feelings, dependent for happiness on loving encouragement, needing a guiding and sustaining hand. " In person she was of middle height and graceful figure. Her face, though not regularly beautiful, was cornel}' and spiritual, of winning expression, and with a look of inborn refinement, as well as culture. It had a touch of sadness when at rest. "Mrs. Shelley shared many of my opin- ions, and respected them all." I am aware how incomplete this sketch of Mary Shelley is, but my materials were more scant than I could have wished them to be, although perhaps I have said all that is necessary. I have given her name a jDlace in this collection of Freethinking women, not so 114 MARY W. GODWIN SHELLEY. much for what she said or did, as for what she was, and because of the many associa- tions which cluster around the names she bore — associations calculated to arouse a glow of enthusiastic feeling in every Free- thinkers' heart. GEORGE SAND. GEORGE SAND. (Madame DuDiiVAN'r.) AS I write this name, which to-day I hold in the deepest reverence and respect, I recall — with a smile at my own ignorance — the terror and vague dislike which were the first emotions which the sight of it awakened in me, and in thou- sands of others, who, like me, had been taught that it was the synonym of all that was evil in woman's nature. It was a name not to be spoken publicly, to be only whispered in low, secret tones, as the name of a wrong-headed, bad-hearted, and immoral woman, who flaunted her sins openly in the face of the world, but who yet had still womanly delicacy enough left in her I 1 8 CliOKGE SAiVD. not to shame the holy baptismal woman s name bestowed upon her in innocent child- hood, by shouldering upon it the weight of her wicked writings, and had hid that name under the masculine noiii dc phimc which had become a bugbear to all pure-minded, well-disposed people. I had never read in those callow days — the days when I held ignorance to be the only true innocence — even so much as a line of this terrible wo- man's writings. I took my cue from the Sunday - school and newspaper literature, which mentioned her only to condemn, and it was with the utmost astonishment that, reading " Consuclo," before I knew who its author was, I found all my preconceived ideas concerning her morality utterly upset and overturned when I learned that " Con- suclo " was one of her wickedest books. Since then, I trust, I have learned to value George Sand at her own high worth, and have brought myself to confess that her mistakes and eccentricities are not for me, or others like me, with natures and expe- GEORGE SAND. 119 riences widely differing from hers, to call in question or to sit in judgment upon. With views of the marriage relation widely differing from those of George Sand, and be- lieving in good faith that I can jaerccive wherein many of her ideas are Utopian and impracticable, I yet hope that I am capable of doing justice to the purity of her motives and the bravery of her life. And I hold the gifted Mrs. Browning the higher in esti- mation in that she was clear-sighted enough to recognize this maligned and defiant wo- man's grand genius and lofty attitude among writers, in spite of the dissimilarity of opin- ion which existed between these two exalted natures. Is not Mrs. Browning's insight into the character of George Sand true and clear as she addresses her thus : "True genius, but true woman! dost deny Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn, And break away tlic gauds and armlets worn Ey weaker women in Captivity ? Ah, vain denial ! tliat revolted ery Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn ; Tliy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn. I 20 GEORGE SAND. Floats back diblievelled strength in agony, Disproving thy man's name ; and wliile Ijcfore The world thou burnest in a poet fire, We see thy woman's heart beat evermore Through the large flame ;" Amintinc Lucilc Aurorc Dupin was born in the province of Berry, some time in the year 1804. Her father's family was an extremely old and aristocratic one, and possessed of a good but not remarkably wealthy estate. Her father, Maurice Dupin, an officer in the Imperial Army, had in- curred his mother's severe displeasure by falling in love without first consulting her, and afterward marrying a pretty girl belong- ing to the tradesmen class, which she con- sidered infinitely beneath her. But before Maurice Dupin had attained his thirtieth year, he was killed by a fall from his horse, leaving his wife with several young children, all boys but Aurorc, to care and to provide for, and with very little means of providing for them. Madame Dupin, the elder, offered to take GEORGE SAND. \ 21 charge of her son's children on condition that their mother resigned all claim upon them, and herself returned to her own people. The young widow preferred to keep her boys to herself, but as the little Aurore was only an infant, and would harass her mother in her efforts to gain a livelihood for herself and the others, she was sent to her grandmother, who formally adopted her, and under whose care she remained until the death of that lady. But Madame Dupin, the grandmother, was scarcely the right person, and her home was scarcely the right kind of a home in which, to bring up and educate such an ardent, impetuous, passionate, and intense nature as the little Aurore possessed, who would, probably, have turned out a far dif- ferent sort of being had she remained under the care of her mother, and with the com- panionship of her brothers. But at Nohant she had no suitable companions of her own age ; her grandmother was a woman of strong character, of considerable genius, of 122 GEORGE SAND. hearty likings and dislikings, of proud, aris- tocratic tendencies, in spite of a theoretical republicanism on which she prided herself. Her intimate friends were few, but of con- genial tastes and pursuits : people of learn- ing, mind, and character, and of her own age. Thus the ardent, yet thoughtful little girl was left much to herself, and to odd, strange fancies, the result, in part, of her lonely hours, in part of the strange philo- sophic conversations which she heard in her grandmother's drawing - rooms, and in part of the speculative and dreamy books with which her grandmother's library was filled, and to which she had free access. Aurore sought relief from her loneliness in the society of Nature, roving the woods and fields which surrounded her grand, stately, but gloomy home for hours to- gether, or going off on horseback for forest rides of many miles. In the woods and glades she found that companionship she missed so much, and needed more even than she knew. It was in her fresh youth GEORGE SAND. 12" that she began, as Justin McCarthy re- marks of her, to " look directly and lov- ingly into the face of Nature, and learned the secrets which skies and water, fields and lanes, can teach the heart that loves them." Longing, in this cold, isolated life, for the society of her mother and brothers, as only an intense, passionate, lonely child can long for the needs denied it, was it strange that she soon came to secretly hate the aristocratic, domineering spirit of caste which separated her from them, and that she dreamed happy, impossible dreams of the days to come, when she should be free to seek the beloved, and to enjoy their so- ciety ? Aurore's education was by no means neglected. She had the best of masters in everything, r.nd her grandmother was anx- ious that she should be thoroughly educated and accomplished, as became a daughter of the aristocratic Dupins. But though she was an apt scholar, she gave her teachers many a start and shock by her daring words and actions, and often upset the staid 124 GEORGE SAND. dignity of her grandmother by some wild, unexpected prank. Madame Dupin was an admirer of Rous- seau and his philosophy, and the conversa- tions held upon them by herself and friends were eagerly drank in by the unobserved little girl, and te these conversations may be ascribed many of George Sand's revolu- tionary ideas in after-life, as well as to the fact that she was an enthusiastic reader of his works when still but a child in years. Is it not natural that that which we crave the most, and yet thus craving are constantly denied, we invest with an undue and fictitious importance .' So it happened with Aurore. Love of all kinds seemed to be denied her. The companion- ship and tenderness of her only living pa- rent, the pleasures of youthful friendship, the society of the young of both sexes — these were all inaccessible to her. The needs of her social nature being ignored, she was forced to satisfy her hungry sym- pathies by filling her little world with ideal GEORGE SAXD. 120 personages, and thus her vivid imagination was allowed to run riot without that salu- tary check which experience of the real in life gives to that faculty. But in spite of these omissions, I suspect that her grandparent thought that she had well fulfilled the hard duty she had under- taken in the care and education of this un- tamable grandchild of hers, for the young girl, with her impulsive nature, could not have been easy of government. There was a tendency to masculine daring in Aurore not at all pleasant to deal with or to con- template, especially when it was desirous to have her turn out a model young lady, such as French girls are always expected to be before marriage. There were long, daring rides on horseback, and lonely, unattended tramps through field and forest ; rebellions against authority by both word and act ; endeavors to set aside the elder, firmer will — which, we can imagine, did not conduce to the grandmother's comfort or complacency of mind. I 26 GEORGE SAND. But the slow years went by, and in time, when about fifteen, she was sent, as most well-born French girls are, to a con- vent in Paris to finish her education. Here she went through the various stages of feel- ing which an ardent, imaginative girl of that age would be likely to experience when ex- posed to the influences of a religion which is strongly tinctured with mysticism, and which appeals only to the emotional part of our na- tures. She grew devout, penitent, and pious, and longed for the apparent quiet happiness of the holy sisterhood — a happiness and calm all the more enticing because it was so diametrically opposed to her own unrest- ing vehemence of character. She thought seriously of entering as a novice, but, fortu- nately for her, this phase of feeling passed away before it congealed into a fixed pur- pose. When she was about sixteen, her grand- mother died, and she was left heiress of the Dupin estate at Nohant. It would not do for a young and unmarried French girl GEORGE SAND. 127 to live alone — without some female guardian residing with her to give that aspect of propriety which, is so essential to respect- ability. Aurore was glad of this, as it gave her an excuse to ask her mother to come and live with her, a request which the younger Madame Dupin readily complied with ; and so at last, after long years of separation, the mother and child were re- united. But Aurore'.s imagination, unchecked by experience, had pictured in too vivid hues the pleasures- of this reunion. Mother and daughter, in all the years of their sep- aration, had unavoidably, but steadily, been growing away from each other, and noth- ing save the tenderest love, the clearest wisdom, the finest tact could have brought them into true unison at this late date. These, we may be sure, were wanting, at least on one side, and probably on both ; and Aurore found herself as unhappy in her mother's society as she had ever felt in her grandmother's. In spite of her democratic theories, Aurore's education and surround- 128 GEORGE SAND. ings had made her hkinga, needs, and tastes those of an aristocrat ; while Madame Du- ipin was a true daughter of the people, not perhaps in theory, like her daughter, but in manners, thoughts, and ambitions. Hers hfid been a busy, active, earnest life, which had left little room therein for dreams or speculative theories. The knowledge slowly dawned on Aurore's mind that her mother was in nowise "congenial"; that she could not be to her the confidante and s.ympa- thizing friend for whom she so longed. There was no open rupture between them, but their position toward each other was mutually embarrassing and hampering. Au- rorc did not like the opposition to many of the eccentricities and habits which had grown upon her in the isolated life she had led ; she longed with all her heart to be free, truly free ; to live her own life, to follow her own inclinations. But unless she ;;et society at defiance, for which she was not then quite ready, she could not be free, so long as she remained unmarried. Mar- GEOKGE SAND. 129 riage is the French girl's only safe avenue to even partial freedom of life. Aurore was only eighteen, was living on her estate in a retired way, in a retired part of the country. There were not many eligible young men of her own class in the vicinity, and so she had little opportunity for choice of suitors, and when M. Dudevant, a young man of twenty-seven, an officer in the Imperial Army, of a highly respectable family, of irre- proachable character, and a near neighbor, offered himself to her mother as an applicant for the hand of Aurore, his offer was gladly accepted by both. Aurore sav/ in his offer only an avenue of escape from tiresome con- ventionalities, and her mother Avas glad to be thus happily rid of the care of this un- manageable and eccentric daughter, while she hoped that the joys and cares of wife- hood would soften and tone down this too exuberant nature. No one could accuse her of not having done her duty by her daughter, since she had secured for her a thoroughly eligible husband, upon whose I^o GEORGE SAND. shoulders she very gladly shifted her re- sponsibility. Perhaps — for she was only eighteen, re- member — Aurore had also her dream of love, and of the satisfying of the supreme need of a true woman's soul in this marriage, even if it was one of convenience. If so, she was doomed to disappointment. M. Dude- vant was a calm, dogmatic, commonplace man, incapable of the slightest comprehen- sion of an ardent, rapturous, grand nature such as that of his young wife. Genius and all its attendant eccentricities was a mys- tery and a bore to him. He was eminently respectable, dull, and commonplace ; but he knew that all law, order, and precedent demanded that man should rule, that wo- man should obey, despite of all, or any, natural superiorities or inferiorities on- either side. When he had once said that he loved a woman, or had implied as much in an offer of marriage, that was sufficient for a lifetime. Of the rhapsodies, the ecstasies, the poetry, the despair of love, he knew GEORGE SAND. 131 little, and cared less. He walked always on life's levels ; the heights and depths were to him undiscovered and undiscoverable. To a woman like himself he would have made a model husband ; to a woman of George Sand's keen sensibilities, impassioned and impulsive nature, life with this stolid, matter- of-fact man became a series of battles against trivialities and pettinesses, which soon became too hard to be borne. What she suffered before she took the decisive step which placed her in suth a state of active hostility against marriage and marriage laws, we of less sensitive natures may not know : nor, perhaps, can we guess what the Baron, her husband, suffered from the flightiness, the eccentricities, and the mysticisms of his beautiful and romantic wife. At any rate, she avers that he agreed to the separation between them willingly enough, so long as she left him in posses- sion of her estate. The separation took place while she was still quite young — only about twenty-four. Gossip says that other 132 GEORGE SAND. motives than her desire for independence were the cause of her leaving him — that her meeting with Jules Sandeau, a young jour- nalist, at a romantic spot where she had repaired for her health for a few months, was the primary cause of her dissatisfaction with M. Dudevant, and that she left her home in order to be near her lover in Paris. But that she took her little children alonsr with her, and ever proved to them the most devoted of mothers, is evidence that other considerations than absorbing love for any man induced her to take this step. She went direct to Paris, where she had a bitter struggle even to live. She had a little money at command at first, and so for a while managed to live comfortably ; but too soon her means were exhausted, and she found that she must turn her talents to some definite purpose, in order to make a livelihood for herself and children. For several years she found this slow, hard work. At first she tried painting, in which she was proficient ; then, by-and-by, she turned her GEORGE SAND. I 33 attention to literature. If she had many and various lovers, as is alleged of her, she failed, at least, to make them pecuniarily useful. She did make use of her lover San- deau, in so far as to adopt part of his name as her noin de plume. She chose to appear before the public under a masculine guise, for already she had learned that the world is more lenient in its criticism and judg- ment of a man than it is of a woman. The petty, superficial homage paid to youth and beauty in a woman did not deceive her. But hard and laborious as her new life was, she gloried beyond measure in its free- dom. Freedom ! Liberty ! these were joy- breathing, magic words to her ; and enjoy- ing the reality of them, she laughed gayly in the face of shocked society, and dared to take still another innovating step, in free- ing herself from a dress she found incon- venient and expensive, donning for street and business purposes the male student's more convenient attire. Even in her new vocation as novelist. 134 GEORGE SAND. the same spirit of liberty ruled the emana- tions of her brain. She was young, imagin- ative, passionate, and she dared express her real feelings in her books. This, perhaps, is the true secret of her success — that being truthful in the expression of her own over- flowing, exuberant emotions, she was thus enabled to portray the reality of the same feelings in others. Whatever may have been the faults of George Sand, deception or hypocrisy was not numbered among them. Whether the virtue of truthful frankness of speech did not partake of the nature of a fault in her, I leave for others to deter- mine. If in her later works there is missed that expression of the passions which marked so strongly her first literary ven- tures, it is not because she has learned to conceal her real opinions, in deference to the public, but because the season of emo- tion has passed away for her, and she can- not write of that which is not to her a living reality. So her , stories of to-day are more like what we might expect from her GEORGE SAND. 133 cooler blood and the stronger good sense which must mark the mature age which is now hers. After she began in earnest her career as a novelist, it was not long before her works attracted attention and criticism. Those first strong, enthusiastic, and power- fully passionate books caused her name to be held up as a bugbear to young readers by their elders, a proceeding which only made those juniors seek her works all the more eagerly. As she became successful both in point of reputation and in fortune, she was sought out, and became soon the center of the Parisian literati. Her iconoclastic opin- ions and daring mode of life, together with her prominence as a writer, caused all sorts of wild stories and vague rumors to get afloat concerning her. Out of all these it would be difficult to sift out and recog- nize that which is true from that which is false. Until within the last ten years, George I 36 GEORGE SAND. Sand has not been estimated at her highest worth by the critics of this country and of England. Here and there one clearer-eyed than the others saw some good in her. Among these, and one of the first to say an appreciative word, was Margaret Fuller, who more than twenty years ago wrote thus, in her "Woman in the Nineteenth Century " : "George Sand we esteem to be a person of strong passions, but of original nobleness, and a love of right, sufficient to guide them all to the service of worthy aims." " In power, indeed, Sand bears the palm above all other French novelists. She is vigorous in conception, often great in the apprehension and contrast of characters. She knows passion, as has been hinted, at a zuhitc heat, when all the lower particles are re-moulded by its power. Her descriptive talent is very great, and her poetic feeling exquisite." " It is impossible not to see in her not only the distress and doubts of the intellect. GEORGE SAND. 137 but the temptations of a sensual nature ; but we see, too, the courage of a hero, and a deep capacity for rehgion." " But we know through her works that, whatever the stains on her hfe and reputa- tion may have been, there is in her a soul so capable of goodness and honor as to depict them most successfully in her ideal forms." Of her writings and their influence, Mar- garet Fuller, herself as pure and good a wo- man as American literature has ever known, says further : " All is open, noble ; the free description, the sophistry of passion, are, at least, redeemed by a desire for truth as strong as ever beat in any heart. " To the weak or unthinking, the reading of such books may not be desirable, for only those who take exercise as men can digest strong meat. But to any one able to understand the position and circumstances, we believe this reading cannot fail of bring- ing good impulses, valuable suggestions ; and it is quite free from that subtle miasma 138 GEORGE SAND. which taints so large a portion of French Ifterature, not less since the Revolution than before." The day has come — and, fortunately, while George Sand still lives and writes — when Margaret Fuller stands not alone in her opinion as to the merits of this writer, even here in America. She stands now the acknowledged head of French fiction writers ; and those who once blushed at the mere mention of her name have come to look forward with lively interest to each new work from her pen, while she has won for herself high encomiums from the severest critics. In the hard years of conflict with poverty and contumely, she was forced to engage in other conflicts, which gave her many bitter hours of pain and disquiet. As her children grew from helpless childhood to an age when they could dispense with her care and protection — though not to an age when she could dispense with their love and society — their father endeavored to gain pos- GEORGE SAND. 139 session of them, appealing to the law to enforce his claims. This proceeding was a most unwise one on his part. Since he was not, content with the wealth she had be- stowed freely on him, but wanted also these, her only remaining wealth, she was roused into defiance of him, and determined that she would also deprive him of her property. She also appealed to the law, and after many years of litigation, at a time when she was no longer in need, gained her suit, and with it her estate at Nohant, together with the sole charge of her children. This decision did not save her from the many toilsome years of poverty, but it restored to her her own, and granted to her the privilege of spending the last years of her life, where she had spent the first, amid the memories and memorials of that dreamy, lonely, yet not wholly unhappy childhood. There she has ever since made her home, and there she still lives, mature in years, but still strong in spirit, and spends hours with her pen, which has not 140 GEORGE SAND. yet lost its point or vigor, albeit she is somewhat near seventy years of age. When I say that George Sand to-day is estimated at her highest worth, I do not mean to say that there are not still many who look upon her life and writings with disfavor, but only that all that is best in her writings has come to be acknowledged and admired ; whereas the time has been when it would have been considered trea- son to literature to have admitted that there was, underneath all the wickedness of her warmth of description anything what- ever to admire. That some critics already rate her as a pure moral writer, rather than as one who has done more evil than good, let the following extracts from Justin Mc- Carthy's " Modern Leaders " attest : " George Sand's genius has been felt as a power in every country of the world where people read any manner of books. It has been felt as Rousseau's once was felt ; it has aroused anger, terror, pity, or wild and rapturous excitement ; it has rallied around GEORGE SAND. 141 it every instinct in man or woman which is revolutionary; it has ranged against- it all that is conservative." " Her influence on French literature has been on the whole a purifying and strength- ening power. The cynicism, the reckless- ness, the wanton licentiousness ; the disre- gard of any manner of principle ; the de- basing parade of disbelief in any higher purpose or nobler restraint — which are the shame and curse of modern French fiction writers, finds no sanction in the pages of George Sand. I remember no passage in her works which gives the slightest encour- agement to the ' nothing new, and nothing true, and it don't signify ' code of ethics. I find nothing in George Sand which does not do homage to the existence of a prin- ciple and a law in everything." " I claim for her at least four great and special merits. First, she insisted on call- ing public attention to the true principle of marriage ; that is to say, she put the ques- tion as it had not been put before. . . . 142 GEORGE SAND. Secondly, her works are an exposition of the tremendous reahty of the feelings which people who call themselves practical are apt to regard with indifference or contempt, as mere sentiments. . . . Thirdly, she insists that man can and shall make his own ca- reer, not whine to the stars, and rail out against the powers above, when he has weakly or wantonly marred his own des- tiny. . . . Fourthly, she has tried to teach people to look at Nature with their own eyes, and to invite the true love of her to flow into their hearts." " There is in her nothing unmeaning, nothing untrue ; there is in her much error, doubtless, but no sham." In the last sentence quoted McCarthy touches the key-note of this woman's whole character. She is true to what she knows of herself throughout, at whatever expense of fortune, of reputation, of friendship, or of love. She may be misunderstood, de- famed, disgraced ; but she stands erect and defiant through all, " armed so strong with GEORGE SAND. 143 honesty" that she can dispense with all these until such time as she can win them without sacrificing that which she holds dearest — her liberty of conscience, of thought, and of action. The critic of a well-known Chicago jour- nal says of her : " But with all that may be excepted, George Sand is a great name in current literature. No candid critic can deny that she has written with consummate skill, and merely as a writer has hardly an equal in the world. To appreciate this, recourse must be had, of course, to the original of her works. But a translation will show another point, in which, undoubtedly, this singular personage has lifted a torch of wonderful light above the path of modern society, in her delineation of the workings of the human soul under the influence of the passion of love. And it is pure love, the purest and the truest, which Madame Dudevant has most delighted to paint, and the picture of which in her writings will 144 GEORGE SAND. make her best known to lovers of wisdom and masters of knowledge in this and in the coming time. . . History will name this woman among the truly illustrious per- sons of this century." A genius so determinately truthful as hers ; which did not ignore, but rather brought out in the strongest light, all emo- tions and feelings ; which dared to be, and to live, that which others only dreamed of — drew around her, as a matter of course, the choicest of original minds in the world of letters. Even those who denounced were not content not to know this singular wo- man, who had had the temerity to think independently, and to boldly express that thought, however much she might thereby seem to differ from the old standards of opinion. Her very defiance and carelessness of the world have been the means of bring- ing that world to acknowledge and bend to her. But that would be a dangerous ex- periment for one to try whose genius was not equal and all-sufficient for the occasion, GEORGE SAND. 145 as hers has been. Without her broad, com- prehensive mind, her wide range of study, her persevering energy of character, which added culture and knowledge to the lux- uriant vividness and fervid strength of her imagination, it may be that her defiance and independence would have availed little in winning for her the reputation which is now hers. Men could not treat her with the con- tempt they would have liked to, so long as she proved herself in so many respects their superior. The master mind conquered as ever, not by accident of birth, or of circumstances, but by skilful direction of the force of her genius. In marking out a path in life for herself, she bent every energy to fitting herself thoroughly for the work to which she had determined to devote herself. Independent and self-reliant in all things else, it cannot be a matter of surprise that she is independent in her religious opinions, nor that those opinions are far from being 146 GEORGE SAND. what are deemed orthodox. Perhaps her own words will best express her religious faith, or, rather, her lack of any religious faith. She says : " If I make use of the ex- pression ' God,' it is only to refer to one of the loveliest of hypotheses which the hu- man mind has ever conceived, and which expresses only the complete good which we all seek. I appreciate and respect your faith (Theism), but cannot share it with you. In the future, my friend, make up your mind to respect those who love the truth, even if they seek it in a light that you consider deceptive." I do not seek to make out that George Sand is either a perfect or a pattern wo- man, but since her genius and her truthful- ness place her somewhat beyond the reach of our poor criticism, let us do her the eas}^ justice of forbearing to judge her from our own standpoint of orthodoxy and pro- priety, and take her advice regarding those who love the truth ; for that she does love it, so far as she understands it, her course GEORGE SAND. 147 of action has amply testified, since she has valued it so much more highly than she has valued public opinion. So, although it is doubtless quite true that she has done, and does, many of those things of which she is accused, and for which she is censured, such as having worn male apparel, smoked cigarettes, left her husband in defiance of law, and even now, it is said, although nearly seventy, sets Nature's laws at naught b)- devoting the hours from midnight till morning to her writing, in defiance of all the principles of hygiene — still, let us refrain from troubling our mind about these things, which are nothing to us, and let us rather learn to emulate the virtues of her character, her truthfulness, sincerity, faith in humanity, and love of Nature. George Sand has been a prolific writer. Each }'car since her first introduction to the reading public she has written one, sometimes two or three, novels or novel- ettes. The titles of her works, even if I 148 GEORGE SAND. possessed a complete list, would be found too numerous to be reproduced here. " In- diana" and " Consuelo," among her earlier works, are those by which she is best known. Of these the last-mentioned is by far the most powerfully written and interest- ing. Of one of her latest novels the Golden Age thus speaks: " ' Nanon ' has all the finest qualities of her best writings. It is an historical novel, and more philosophical in spirit than most histories of the French Revolution. No line of this interesting work betrays the slightest diminution of the author's intellectual powers, or the wither- ing of her large, genial sympathies." After the foregoing sketch was written and ready for the press came the news of the death of George Sand, on the 8th of June, 1876. In accordance with her wishes, no religious ceremonies were performed over her remains save a short prayer, which was insisted upon by the Catholic priest of the diocese, as essential to his permission to GEORGE SAND. 149 allow the body to be buried ii: consecrated ground. Victor Hugo delivered the funeral oration over her grave, in the course of which he thus eulogized her ; " She is the oJie great woman in this century Avliose mission it was to finish the French Revolution, and commence the rev- olution of Humanity. Equality of the sexes being a branch of the equality of men, a great woman was necessary. It was for a woman to prove that her mind might pos- sess all gifts, without losing a particle of her angelic nature — might at once be strong and gentle. George Sand was that woman. She is one of the glories of our age and country. She had a great heart like Bar- bes, a great mind like Balzac, and a great soul like Lamartinc. She was good, and accordingly she had detractors, but the in- sults to her were of that kind which pos- terity will count as glories." With this tribute from one great mind to another, I close my imperfect testimony to her worth. HARRIET MARTINEAU. F HARRIET MARTINEAU.- EELING, as I do, daily comfort in the knowledge of some things which I should once have shrunk from supposing, it would be weak — as foolish as cowardly — ever again to shrink from knowing anything that is true, or to have any preferences whatever among unascertained matters of speculation or fact." (" Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development," page 12.) " From the moment a man desires to find the truth on one side rather than another, it is all over with him as a phil- osopher." i^Ibid, page 11.) In these brave utterances may be found the keynote of Harriet Martineau's life and character : a life which has been from phys- l54 HARRIET MARTJNEAU. ical causes necessarily isolated and reflec- tive ; a character which, naturally rarely sympathetic and womanly, from these same causes has been made almost masculine in its intellectual scope and pursuits. Harriet Martineau was born in 1802, one of the youngest of the eight children of a Norwich (England) silk manufacturer. Her brother, the Rev. James Martineau, whose name has attained a celebrity nearly equal to her own, is the nearest to her in age. The silk manufactory of which her father was proprietor was established in Norwich soon after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, which drove the Martineaus, with thousands of their fellow Huguenots, from France to England. The same stern, unyielding love of truth, the same strict integrity of conscience, which caused her progenitors to give up home, friends, and wealth, and led them to try their fate in a foreign and uncongenial land, appears again in a somewhat different form in this brave, conscientious woman, their de- HARRIET MARTINEAU. l55 scendant, who has dared "for conscience' sake " to avow in the face of a shocked Christianity her disbelief of an unproven revelation, her honest doubts of the so- called " proofs " of a creative, designing, and constantly interfering power called God. At the time of Harriet's birth the Mar- tineaus, though not wealthy, were in com- fortable and easy circumstances. The educa- tion given to the children was solid rather than showy, though the accomplishments fitted to their station in life were not over- looked or neglected ; and Harriet, in spite of her increasing deafness, was sent to sing- ing-schools, and was an accomplished per" former upon the piano until her growing infirmity caused her to lose all relish for the amusement. Her parents seem to have always encouraged a taste for all useful and scientific knowledge in their children, and to have cultivated in them a love for the beautiful in Nature, judging from fragment- ary instances given incidentally by Miss 1 5 6 IIARRIE T MAR TINEA I : Martineau in relating her own childish ex- periences. Harriet was a delicate, ailing child from birth, but possessed of a deeply reflective in- tellect, and strong, intense feelings. It may- be that the strong mind proved too heavy a strain upon the weaker physical system, and so caused some of her later ailments. "I have never," she says, "had the sense of smell, nor, therefore, much sense of taste ; and before I was twenty I had lost the greater part of my hearing. When my com- panions give me notice of distant objects by means of any of these senses — when they tell me what is growing in an invisible field or garden, or where there is music, or what people are saying on the farther side of a reach of the lake on a calm summer even- ing, I feel a sort of start, as if I were in company with sorcerers." With these drawbacks upon social inter- course and enjoyment, combined with her natural taste and inclination for study, she necessarily gave free play to her reflective HARRIET MARTINEAU. 15/ and imaginative faculties, finding in them her chief source of recreation and enjoyment. Such an unusual set of conditions must yield, of course, some results of unusual ex- perience. She says, speaking of this phase of her life : "It seems to me that for want of the 'distraction' commonly enjoyed through the play of the senses, there is too little relief to the action of the busiest parts of the brain." It was, perhaps, owing to the lack of this "distraction" made by the full exer- cise of all the senses that many of her strange experiences in mesmerism and clair- voyance are due. That even as a child her state of mind was in some respects a strangely peculiar and abnormal one is evi- denced by several circumstances related by herself, among them the following : "Let me tell you a curious thing which happened twice to me — the being unable by any effort to see a conspicuous object di- rectly before my eyes— I suppose because I I 5 8 HARRJE T MAR TINEA U. must have had a wrong notion of what I was to see. When I was near seven years old I was taken to Tynemouth in a passion of dehght because I was to see the sea. Aunt Margaret took me and an older and a younger one to the haven. There when standing on the bank we were expected to exclaim about the sea, which flowed up to the foot of the bank, directly before our eyes. The other two children were de- lighted, but I could not see it. When questioned I was obliged to say so, and I said it with shame and reluctance. I well remember the misery ; I believe it was thought affectation, like my indifference to scents. We were led down the bank, which was steep and difficult for children. Not till the gentle waves were at my very toes did I see the sea at all ; and then it gave me a start, and a painful feeling of being a sort of idiot not to have seen it before. The rev- elation at last was very like that of a lightning flash. It may be mentioned that my only previous • sight of the sea was of HARRIET MARTINEAU. I Sg something quite different. I was then under three years old — not strong on my feet — and my father led me along the old Yarmouth jetty, which was full of holes, through which I saw the swaying waters below, and was frightened — as I well remember. I may have been occupied with this idea on the second occasion. The other anecdote is yet more odd. When the great comet of 1811 ap- peared, I was nine years old. Night after night that autumn the whole family went up to the long range of windows in my fath- er's warehouse to see the comet. I was obliged to go with them, but I never once saw it ! My heart used to swell with dis- appointment and mortification. No effort was wanting on my part ; and parents, brothers, and sisters used to point and say : ' Why, there ! Why, it is as large as a saucer ! You might as well say you cannot see the moon ! ' I could not help it ; I never saw it, and I have not got over it yet. The only thing I can suppose is that I must have been looking for something I 60 HARRIE T MAR TINEA U. wholly different, and that no straining of the eyes avails if the mind is occupied with another image." A more probable explanation of these singular experiences may perhaps be found in the intense nature of the child, who was "in a passion of delight" at the thought of looking upon the sea, and whose baby-heart swelled to bursting with disappointment and mortification at her failure to see the rare phenomena of nature. The too eager desire defeated its own object, and she did not see because she strained her vision by her too intense effort and anxiety ; an experience not uncommon to us " children of a larger growth." It was almost a necessity of such a nature that it should find expression through the pen at a very early age, but for some years this mode of expression was followed only as an amusement and recreation. It was not until after her twentieth year that she thought of turning her talent at com- position to account. About that time her HARK IE T MAR T/XEA U. 1 6 I family met with reverses in business, which made it necessary for her to look around her for means by which to fielp them and provide for her own necessities. Then her literary abilities and likings occurred to her as affording the most congenial and fitting occupation, and she at once entered upon that literary career which is even yet not quite forsaken by her. In common with most young writers, her pecuniary success was not at first remarkable, and she did not hesitate to increase her earnings during these first years of introduction to the liter- ary world by her skill as needlewoman. Her religious education had been in the Unitarian faith, and in devout religious thought her conscientious nature took its deepest pleasure. The first work she gave to the world, published in 1823, was an outgrowth of her fervid piety, and was entitled " Devotions for Young People," while her next was a religious novel, en- titled "Christmas Day." In 1830, the Brit- ish and Foreign Unitarian Association offered 1 62 HARRIET MARTINEA U. prizes for the three best tracts " On the Introduction and Promotion of Christian Unitarianism among the Roman Catholics, the Jews, and Mohammedans." She com- peted for all three, and, singularly enough, won them all, though three separate sets of judges were appointed to compare the merits of the different essays. All through her literary career, theology and the basis of religious belief seem to have occupied the greater share of her attention and investi- gation, and to the thoroughness and fear- lessness of these investigations is due the advanced position she has taken on these subjects ; a position which is peculiarly hard for a woman to maintain, as she finds her- self arrayed against all but an infinitesimal minority of her own sex, and is thus de- prived of most of that affiliation and intel- lectual companionship which is peculiarly necessary to the feminine mind. So fearless a thinker as Mjss Martineau, as a matter of course, could not long re- frain from joining the ranks of radical re- HARRIE T MAR TINEA U. 163 form, and her trenchant pen could not long be withheld from teUing pertinent truths. So we find among even her earlier produc- tions hits at popular follies, and hints as to methods of overcoming some widespread public evils. Thus, in " The Rioters," " The Turnout," and other books written in 1827-8, she had in view illustrations of the workings of some political evils incident to the times, and the dissemination of her ideas as to the proper method of overcom- ing or avoiding them. In 1831, she conceived the plan of pub- lishing monthly tracts, illustrative of true and false political economy in regard to taxation, the poor laws, and paupers ; but she met with considerable difficulty in find- ing a publisher willing to accept the re- sponsibility of issuing the projected series. She tried one after another, undaunted by failures, until she succeeded in her search. These tracts, in the form of short tales, met with excellent success, and were, doubtless, the means of instructing many on I 64 HARRIE T MARTINEA U. these subjects, who otherwise would never have given any attention whatever to them. " Independent of their value as expositions of great principles," writes a reviewer, " some of these tales will always be read for their truthful pictures of life, and the ingenious construction of a story limited by its special purpose." There are very few reforms of any prominence whatever which have not found in Harriet Martineau a powerful pleader and effective ally. Slavery found in her "The Hour and the Man" a bitter denunciation and a vivid portrayal ; and during the American Slaveholders' Re- bellion Miss Martineau's pen supplied on the other side of the water the warmest, friendliest, and most earnest articles in be- half of the Union written by any one not a native-born American. In every department of life, however high or humble, her searching mind, fertile brain, and ready pen have done good and effective service. She has written on the forest and game laws, on household edu- IIARKIET MAKTINEAU. l65 cation, and on health, husbandry, and handi- craft. Even the needs of the httle ones have not been forgotten or overlooked by this woman, whom no baby-lips have ever called " mother," but who bears within her bosom as warm a heart as even maternity could bestow ; and her series of stories for children, entitled "The Playfellow," attests how rarely sympathetic is the nature of the translator of such works as " Comte's Positive Philosophy," and author of "The History of the Thirty Years' Peace." As early as 1834, she had by her unre- mitting literary labor won for herself a rep- utation which extended to America, and her profits were such as to enable her in the autumn of that year to make a visit to the young republic with whose boasted freedom of thought and liberty of action she had long wished to acquaint herself from per- sonal observation and experience. She re- mained in America for two years, and traveled during that time over nearly all sections of the country, acquainting herself 1 66 HARRIET MARTINBIAU. as minutely and thoroughly as possible with the habits, laws, politics, and even sectional prejudices, of the American people. Whoever has read her "Society in Amer- ica" — the literary result of her two years' sojourn here — cannot have failed to observe the fact that, while frankly stating her con- victions as to what she considered the mis- takes and exaggerations of this government " by the people, for the people," the whole book is yet permeated by a heartfelt, lov- ing admiration of the Americans and their country. The one great stain on the national character, slavery (which she has fortunately lived to see blotted out), she speaks against boldly and frankly ; but even here, where she felt so deeply and indig- nantly, she does not fail to speak justly and fairly, admitting that the Southern people — whose manifold good qualities she does full justice to — were misled by sophistical rea- soning on this point, and were mistaken in their policy, rather than intentionally doinsf wrong-. HARRIET MART/.VEAU. \67 Her detailed and circumstantial account of that memorable day — the 2 1st of Oc- tober, 1835 — when William Lloyd Garrison was mobbed in the streets of liberty-loving Boston for his brave efforts in behalf of Southern slaves, and when the Woman's Anti-Slavery Society, in defiance of the threats of that same mob, quietly met and transacted their business in a hall on Bos- ton's principal street, lends an air of prob- ability to the statement made by Henry C. Wright in his autobiography, that she was present at and participated in the business of that meeting. In her account of it, how- ever, she does not explicitly state, nor lead the reader to infer, that she was thus present. It would have been more than strange if a mind so comprehensive, so radical, so free- dom-loving as hers had been blind to the shortcomings, the needs, and the wfongs of her own sex ; but it is with a pleased sur- prise that we find, in the two chapters on woman in her " Society in America," views 1 68 HARRIET MARTINEAU. SO clear and advanced on the question, or questions, of " Woman's Rights." After a lapse of nearly forty years, during which time those rights have taken rapid strides toward recognition and adjustment, there can be found nothing in her statement of woman's demands and needs which is behind the most advanced ideas of the present day. And I very much doubt whether there can be found half a dozen other women who, at so early a stage of this progressive move- ment, put themselves so clearly and daringly on record as to their convictions on this subject as did Harriet Martineau. "I declare," she says, on the 151st page of the second volume of her "Society in America," "that whatever obedience I yield to the laws of the society in which I live is a matter between, not the community and myself, but my judgment and my will. Any punishment inflicted on me for a breach of those laws I should regard as so much gra- tuitous injury, for to those laws I have never actually or virtually assented. I know there HARRIE T MAR TINEA U. 169 are women in England who agree with me in this ; I know there are women in Amer- ica who agree with me in this. The plea of acquiescence is invalidated by us." The following few strong words, on page 231 of the second volume, places in its true light one of the most common and commonplace objections to woman's becom- ing interested in her own affairs : " The in- cessant outcry about the retiring modesty of the sex proves the opinion of the cen- sors to be that fidelity to conscience is in- consistent with retiring modesty. If it be so, let the modesty succumb. It can only be a false modesty which can thus be en- dangered." That life must be well worth living which is permitted to see its most advanced and cherished convictions realized. Such a life is likely to be Harriet Martineau's, and, when her " summons comes to join the in- numerable caravan," she will not need to cry in anguish, " all is vanity and vexation of spirit " ! for she has lived to see negro I 7 O HARRIE T MAR TINEA U. slavery abolished, and English women, un- der certain restrictions, entitled to vote. Let us dare also to hope that, old as she is, she may yet live to see American women entitled to the same privilege. I cannot forbear quoting from " Society in America " the following exquisite descrip- tion of American forests, as a specimen of Miss Martineau's delicacy of expression, and her skill in word-painting : " The English traveler finds himself never weary by day of prying into the forest from beneath its canopy ; or from a distance drinking in its exquisite hues ; and his dreams for months or years will be of the mossy roots, the black pine, and silvery birch stems, the translucent green shades of the beech, and the slender creeper. He will dream of the march of hours through the forest, the deep blackness of night broken by the dun forest fires. He will hear again the shrill piping of the whip- poorwill, and the multitudinous din from the occasional swamp. He will dream of HARRIE T MARTINEA U. 171 the deep silence which precedes the dawn ; of the gradual apparition of the haunting trees coming faintly out of the darkness ; of the first level rays instantaneously piercing the woods to the very heart, and lighting them up into boundless ruddy colonnades, garlanded with wavy verdure, and carpeted with glittering wild flowers. Or he will dream of the clouds of gay butterflies and gauzy dragon-flies that hover over the noon- day paths of the forest, or cluster about some graceful shrub, making it appear to bear all at once all the flowers of Eden. Or the golden moon will look down through his dream, making for him islands of light in an ocean of blackness. He may not see the stars but by glimpses ; but the winged stars of these regions — the gleaming fireflies — radiate from every sleeping bough, and keep his eye in fancy busy in following their glancing, while his spirit sleeps in the deep charms of the summer night." (Vol. I, page 91.) She returned to England in the autumn I 7 2 HAIUilE T MAK TINEA U. of 1836, and "Society in America" was pub- lished in 1837. About this time her health became so broken down as for a time to in- terrupt her continuous literary activity, but only for a time. In the intervals of phys- ical pain ard nervous prostration, she made use of every available hour in writing. "From 1839 to 1844, she was a confirmed invalid" — I quote from "Half-hours with Freethinkers" — "and perhaps the best proof of the indefatigable nature of her character that has been afforded is the fact that even when prostrated on a bed of severe sick- ness she could not be idle. She published at this time her series of essays entitled ' Life in the Sick-room.' She was restored to partial health by mesmeric agencies.'' "Life in the Sick-room" was not the only work she published during this pro- tracted illness. " Deerbrook " and the ".Play- fellow" were published in 1839; "The Hour and the Man" — a stor)- written as a tribute to and recognition of the bravery and services of the noble slave, Toussaint L'Ouverture — HARRIET MARTINEAU. I 73 1 841, besides three volumes of "Forest and Game Law Tales," " Feats on the Fiord," and " The Billow and Rock." This partial list of works, written by her while she was " a confirrried invalid," gives us something of an idea of the indomitable energy of this mar- velous woman. Of her cure by mesmerism I have been unable to obtain the particulars, although Miss Martineau refers to it often in her letters to Atkinson. It made her, at all events for many years, and for aught I know to this day, a firm believer in clair- voyance and mesmerism. And Mary Russel Mitford, in a letter written in the winter of 1845, says : "Everybody is talking of Miss Martin- eau's somnambtclisine. She writes to Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning), who forwards her letters to me. The last intelligence is that Lord Morpeth was on his knees, talking Greek and Latin and three modern lan- guages to the poor girl, the Miss Liddells being present. When Imitation was touched .174 HARRIE T MAR TINEA U. she translated what was said ; when Lan- guage, she repHed to it." During Miss Martineau's illness, in 1840, she was tendered the compliment of a pen- sion from the English Government, as an acknowledgment of her services as a polit- ical writer, and the good she had accom- plished by disseminating among the masses true views of political economy. But she was too sensitively just to be willing to ac- cept this alluring offer, averring as her reason for declining it that she " considered herself a political writer, and the offer did not proceed from the people, but from the Government, which did not represent the people." The spirit which dictated a reply like this to so tempting an offer may be con- sidered quixotic, but it is a quixotism which is, in these days, alas ! too rare for the good of the public, among our male poli- ticians, both writers and haranguers. Her health being in a good measure restored, in 1846 she started with a com- N HARRIE T MAR TINEA U. 175 pany of friends on an Eastern tour of pleasure and observation. The trip included Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia. What good use she made of her eyes and ears — or perhaps I ought to say ear-trumpet — during that tour is attested by the charming and interesting book of travel which she wrote and published after her return, entitled "Eastern Life, Past and Present," a book of which a writer (C. W. S.), in a recent number of the Toledo Index, says : " The book of all others that has seemed nearest to a revelation to me is Miss Martineau's "Eastern Life,'' a work which would prob- ably have made a profound sensation in the literary world if it had not been published some thirty years ago, before that world was ripe for its reception. It contains a charm- ing account of the author's travels with some highly cultivated friends in Egypt and Palestine, with a most instructive essay on the life and purposes of Moses, and his dealings with the Israelites of old, and a wonderful history of ancient Egypt. I took I 7 6 HARRIE T MAR TINEA U. pains about a year ago to attend a course of lectures on this subject by Dr. Thompson, of New York, and was astonished to find how httle that able man, who is said to have made it the chief study of his life, had to add to the knowledge imparted by Miss Martineau." But at the time (1848) when "Eastern Life " was published, it created among Miss Martineau's friends and admirers an alto- gether different sort of " sensation " from that to which this writer refers. It was a sensation made up of consternation and re- gret at its publication. Her theological opinions had for some years been slowly undergoing a radical change, but until the publication of this work she had never given open expression to that change ; and when her former ad- mirers found that in its pages she did not hesitate to avow her heterodo.x; opinions, they were excessively shocked. "Her work," says a Christian reviewer, "is exceedingly interesting, but it is marred IIARKIE T MAR TINEA U. 177 by the mocking spirit of Infidelity whicli she allows for the first time to dari disciple ■ of Theodore Parker, has placed her- self, by her "Intuitive - Morals "■ and: " Dar- winism ■ in Morals," ^ so- completely outside of churches and creeds; that "I could not feel as though justice had- been done to a brave, true . woman if she were not here given the recognition she deserves — a place among those of her sex who stand on the same plane of advanced thought -as her- self, although some of these 'are doubtless far more radical' in their views than she has yet professed herself to be : her posi- tion, as I understand it, being that of the most liberal phase of Unitarianism ; or, per- haps, more correctly, that of a Free Relig- 286 FRANCES POWER COB BE. ionist ; for Miss Cobbe, in spite of her ad- vanced Liberalism, is a most reverent Theist. It is so recently that her name has become conspicuous in literature, that the press has not yet given that publicity to all the minor details of her previous life which it will probably yet give, and which is necessary to make even a condensed biographical sketch of any interest to the general public ; but in this, I shall be only able to embody the odds and ends which have heretofore floated into various news- paper and magazine notices concerning her. From these I have gleaned that she is a finely-educated, large-hearted, genial-na- tured Irish gentlewoman. What the influ- ences were, outside of her own good sense and discriminating intellect, which led her to discard sectarianism in religion, I have had no means of finding out. The writings of Theodore Parker seem to have first pro- duced a deep effect upon her mind by their broad, large-hearted views concerning God and humanity. From them she learned FRANCES POWER COBBE. 287 to look upon the Christ as an Exemplar, rather than as a Mediator, and to dare to believe in God as all-powerful, and to see that Devil and Hell were words only, hav- ing no basis in reality. For this teacher of morals, whom she had never seen. Miss Cobbe conceived a deep and worshipful reverence and tender regard. She sought by correspondence with him to understand and define more fully his broad, liberal, loving views, concerning the relations between God and man. This correspondence was continued at intervals for several years, and was only broken by the death of Mr. Parker. Although a meeting with Theodore Par- ker was greatly desired by Miss Cobbe, and she was traveling through Europe about the same time that he was, yet circumstances constantly thwarted this desire until he was on his deathbed. Miss Cobbe arrived in Florence, Italy, just a few days previous to his death. She, however, ventured to call on him. Their meeting was, under the cir- 288 FRANCES POWER COBBE. cumstances, deeply affecting. The disciple, however, thus gained a glorious opportunity of seeing for herself how sincere the teacher's faith was in that which he had taught. Much conversation was impossible, from Par- ker's weakness, but she found him calm, serene, peacefully happy — not desirous of death, but resigned to the inevitable. She remembered his well known passion for flowers, and brought him a lovely bouquet of fresh tea-roses and lilies, with which he was very much pleased. He presented her in return with a beautiful bronze inkstand, from whose depths the inspiration which guided her "Intuitive Morals" may possibly have arisen. I think she had only that one interview with him ; he failed rapidly, and, within a few days, the active mind, the large heart, of the earnest teacher were at rest forever. Miss Cobbe was among those who followed him — sincere mourners, all — to his grave in the Protestant burial-ground at Flor- ence. She afterward evidenced her great FRANCES POWER COBBE. 289 esteem for him by editing his Life and Letters. In these letters he mentions Miss Cobbe often and favorably, seeming to appreciate her intellectual and moral qualities highly, as they deserved. \\\ a letter addressed to George Ripley, he speaks thus enthusiast- ically concerning her : " Thank you for the kind and just things you say about Miss Cobbe. My friends the Hunts and Apthorps almost worship the maiden. I keep her birthday as one of my domestic holidays, and honor the fourth of December with unusual libations." Indeed, Miss Cobbe seems to have the faculty of inspiring and keeping friendship in an extraordinary degree. Her own cor- dial warm-heartedness and sunny disposition is probably largely the cause of this. Moncure D. Conway, in a letter to the Round Tabic, thus describes her personal appearance : " The first impression she makes is that of a great mass of merry flesh and tlood. 290 FRANCES POWER COB BE. weighing nearly three hundred and fifty pounds. She too often has to walk on crutches, which gives one a sad feeling that this enormous size is far from being the result of, or accompanied by, health. But when one converses with Miss Cobbe, he finds that the chief characteristic of her face and expression is delicacy. There is a lambent humor about her mouth, a subtle pcrceptiveness blended with sweetness about the eye, a sensitiveness and sensibility in her manner, under which — as conversation and acquaintance go on — the corpulency seems to shrink and the most charming physiognomy to be unsheathed. Miss Cobbe has an extraordinary power of conversation, is one of the wittiest of mortals, and where- ever she appears has about her a group of fascinated young people — particularly of her own sex — by whose bursts of merriment one may know on entering a company where the authoress of 'Intuitive Morals' is seated." Kate Field says of her: "Miss Cobbe is the embodiment of genial philanthropy ; FRANCES rOWEK COB BE. 29 1 as delightful a companion as she is heroic in her great work of social reform." I hope that she may live to do yet more effective work in liberalizing public sentiment than she has done even by her " Intuitive Morals," though I am far from underestimating the value of this excellent work. It has done, and is destined to do, a great work in awakening thought in that great multitude who, though loving the light better than darkness, have yet been content to accept their faith second-handed from those who have set themselves up as their teachers, without inquiry from the taught as to the validity of such self-as- serted claims. It does not lead entirely out of the darkness of Biblical theology and religious prejudice, but it is a long step toward the light. It needed a large amount of moral courage in any one professing to be a believer in Christianity, much more in a woman belonging to refined and cultivated Christian circles, to make the daring avowals contained in this book. The intellect which 292 FRANCES POWER COB BE. has reasoned itself so far out of the in- tricacies and bewilderments of the Christian faith has certainly within it the force to probe much deeper than even this book goes into the reason of things. We con- fidently expect Miss Cobbe, if she lives, to take a yet more daring and advanced stand as a liberal thinker than even "Darwinism in Morals " shows, of which hope that title is suggestive, as indicative of development in thought as in all things else. From "Intuitive Morals" we extract the following thoughts, as demonstrating Miss Cobbe's ability as a writer, and the pure, true humanitarianism of her religious con- clusions : "Like the clown, who believes that cold and darkness are something positive, and not merely the negations of caloric and light, we give to evil an affirmative exist- ence — nay, a personified one. We believe that the universe contains not only One absolutely good, but also One absolutely evil ; not only a God, but a Devil. But FRANCES POWER COB BE. 293 these are visions of the night. The universe has indeed a sun of light and heat, but it has no sun with rays of darkness and frost." " Let us do justice to humanity. The removal of all fear for the future destiny of our fellow-creatures is the removal of a nightmare. It was not only while the thun- der-cloud hung over our own heads that it darkened our sky. Some natures are so hopeful and loving that they never know fear of hell for themselves. But it is when the lurid gloom has rolled utterly away from our horizon that we know how it blackened the Universe ; and then only can we see the true splendor of the sun, throned, not in ' clouds and darkness,' but in a heaven of unshadowed light." " Morality may exist in an Atheist with- out any religion, and in a Theist with a religion quite unspiritual." " Were the boasted logic of Calvin really carried out to its practical conse- quences, his disciples could recognize no law ; for to the Elect, obedience is involun- 294 FRANCES rOlVEli COB BE. tary, and to the Reprobate impossible. They could adore no God, for the character they ascribe to the Creator is one which the nature the true God has given them forces them to abhor.' " What ! Shall we despise a man who acts justly or benevolently, merely for the sake of admiration, and shall we dare to attribute such a motive to the infinitely Pure .' Shall we contemn a man (a man who has equals for admirers) if he build an almshouse for the sake of applause .' and shall we venture to affirm that He, whose ineffable happiness could not be increased by the united hallelujahs of the created Universe, has yet designed and built the starry heavens for no more noble a pur- pose } " GEORGE ELIOT. GEORGE ELIOT. (Mrs. Lewes.) IT is with a feeling of considerable depre- cating delicacy that I venture to write of this woman, Avhom I so much admire. She has been heretofore so persistently re- served and reticent as to her past life that I cannot avoid feeling as if this sketch were almost an unwarranted infringement upon the personal privacy she so evidently courts. But this series of sketches would not be anything like what I wish it to be with this eminent name omitted ; and although my materials for the sketch are necessarily scant and incomplete, yet I feel assured that the little I have been able to glean in regard to her antecedents will be of in- 298 GEORGE ELIOT. tcrest to all those who care at all to read these brief- biographies. "Who was licr father? Wlio was her mother? Had she a sister? Ilail she a brother?" — are questions which I am wholly unprepared to answer. Of her birth and }-outh I have been unable to glean any definite informa- tion. One newspaper paragraph states that she is the only daughter of a poor but learned clergyman, who educated her him- self thoroughly in the classics and sciences. Another, with less appearance of reliability, declares her to be the ward and adopted daughter of her warm friend and admirer Herbert Spencer, and that it is to his tuition and companionship that she owes her thorough education. Neither of these stories is, perhaps, correct. All that we do know certainly of her youth are the facts that her maiden name was JNIarian Evans, and that she has a thorough and classical education ; and so must have enjoyed from GEORGE ELIOT. 299 childhood superior advantages to obtain such education, in addition to her wonderful natural genius and philosophical bent of mind ; for although genius is a gift of nature, yet without opportunity, industry, and perseverance, it is a gift thrown away upon its possessor. " Few indeed are the beings who have ever combined so many high qualities in one person as Mrs. Lewes does," says Jus- tin McCarthy, in his sketch of her in his "Modern Leaders": "she is an accom- plished linguist, a brilliant talker, a musician ■of extraordinary skill. She has a musical sense so delicate and exquisite that there are tender, simple, true ballad melodies which fill her with a pathetic pain almost too keen to bear ; and yet she has the firm, strong command of tone and touch without which a really scientific • musician cannot be made. I do not think this ex- ceeding sensibility of nature is often to be found in combination with a genuine mas- tery of the practical science of music. But 300 GEORGE ELIOT. Mrs. Lewes has mastered many sciences, as well as literatures. Probably no other novel- writer, since novel-writing became a busi- ness, ever possessed one tithe of her scien- tific knowledge.- . . . Mrs. Lewes is all genius and culture. Had she never written a page of fiction, nay, had she never written a line of poetry or prose, she must have been regarded with wonder and admiration by all who knew her, as a woman of vast and varied knowledge — a woman who could think deeply and talk brilliantly, who could play high and severe classical music like a professional performer, and could bring forth the most delicate and tender aroma of nature and poetry, lying deep in the heart of some simple, old-fashioned Scotch or English ballad." Some fourteen or sixteen years ago I re- member .taking up Feuerbach's " Essence of Christianity," and noting the name of Miss Marian Evans as the English translator thereof My curiosity was at once aroused as to who this woman was, whose name GEORGE ELIOT. 30 1 I had never before heard. It seemed almost marvelous that any woman could feel interested enough in this deep philo- sophical German work, with its boldly- avowed Atheism, and its mysticism of ex- pression, to translate it into our blunt, direct English language. Few men at that time would have dared or proved equal to the task, and it was certainly strange work for a woman to choose, from a feeling of fitness for the work, or from a sense of pleasure in her undertaking. I looked eagerly for some further mention of this unknown Marian Evans, and found it a few days later on the title-page of another heterodox German work, Strauss' " Life of Jesus," of which she is the translator. But this meager mention only whetted, without in the least alleviating, my curiosity in regard to her. I wished so much to know more of her. Was she young } Did she compose as well as translate .-' Was Marian Evans her real name .' Was she known any- where as a writer .'' These were the ques- 302 GEORGE ELIOT. tions I asked over and over, but it was some years later before I fo.und any reply to them. She was evidently, from her unpopu- lar choice of works to translate into EngHsh, a Freethinker herself, as well as a thinker. I had known and admired the novelist George Eliot for several years, as the author of " Adam Bede," and " The Mill on the Floss," before I came to know that George Eliot and Marian Evans, my un- known translator, were one and the same person. Marian Evans had been to me the greater mystery. Why I had never heard more of her than as the translator of these two philosophical German books puzzled me. I felt that she must have a strong in- dividuality, from the fact that she had dared to make her public appearance as a trans- lator of heretical and unorthodox works ; and it was with a sense of supreme satis- faction that I found her at last — a woman — one of my own sex — and a George Eliot ! I gloried in the reality of her literary power, and in her grandeur of genius, as if GEORGE ELIOT. 303 she had been a near and personal friend, instead of an entire stranger, whom I had neither seen, nor ever expected to see. And because she is a woman, and has proved herself so great, and in proving herself so has demonstrated the capabilities of her sex to all the world, I have continued to glory in every fresh triumph she has since achieved. And I am the more proud of her that she has dared to throw off those shackles of superstition and bigotry which weigh so much heavier on women than on men ; and has with quiet, unassuming strength of character dared to own herself a Positivist and a Freethinker. Miss Evans began her literary career as translator and essayist. Her first contribu- tions to magazine literature appeared in the Westminster Review, edited by Dr. John Chapman, and awakened considerable atten- tion from their force and polish. After awhile she became assistant editor of that magazine, residing in the family of the editor-in-chief Here she was necessarily 304 GEORGE ELIOT. brought into personal acquaintance with many literary people as well as philosophical writers. It was in Dr. Chapman's home that she first formed that acquaintance with George Henry Lewes, already a well-known and popular writer, which finally deepened into love, and culminated in their union for life. Here, too, she met Herbert Spencer, and other radical and earnest thinkers. Miss Evans' first attempts at fiction- writing were the series of short stories and sketches, now known under the title of " Scenes of Clerical Life," published in serial form in magazines. Previous to this she had been known only as a translator and writer of essays and reviews. Of her original writings she seems to have hacl no very high opinion. "For }'cars," she remarked to a friend, "I wrote reviews because I knew so little of humanity." It was not until the publication of "Adam Bede " by the Harpers, a little more than a dozen years ago, that a new GEORGE ELIOT. 3o5 writer, whose nom dc plume was George Eliot, began to attract the attention of American readers. In England, Thackeray had already spoken of her as " a literary star of the first magnitude just risen on the horizon " ; but her fame was not assured until after the publication of " Adam Bede," which she sold to the publishers of Black- wood's Magasinc for £'}fio j '^"d, to their credit be it told, when they found that it Mas for them a successful venture, and likely to remain such, they presented her with ^1,500 more, as her share of the pro- ceeds of its sale. The pseudonym of " George Eliot," un- der which she first appeared as a novelist, and the careful assumption of masculinity throughout the pages of "Adam Bede," while it puzzled and led astray the public as to her identity, did not long deceive as to her sex. The woman's tender heart and keen sense of injustice made palpable the true woman's nature all through her book. Theodore Parker, writing to Frances 306 GEORGE ELIOT. Power Cobbe, in 1859, remarks : " I am reading ' Adam Bede,' a quite extraordinary book. But I wonder that any one should have doubted that a woman wrote it. Strange is it that we tell the universal part of our history in all that we write ! "j Since the publication of " Adam Bede," every successive work from the pen of George Eliot has intensified the interest excited by that work, and strengthened public opinion in its first estimate of her literary ability. Her late effort, " Middle- march," is causing her name to occupy the chief place in literary reviews, and sets the seal upon her as the greatest of living novelists. Even previous to its appearance, the Chicago Evening Journal, in an elabo- rate and carefully-prepared editorial on wo- man's genius, gives her this high praise : "It is undoubtedly in the genius of George Eliot that Enghsh womanhood has its largest and most wonderful illustration. There are no novels in English literature which can be compared Avith hers for that GEORGE ELIOT. 307 which is by far the best feature of a good novel — thorough appreciation of the deeper meaning of human life, of the divine laws which underlie, and penetrate, and over- shadow, human experience. It would not be easy to name anything written since Shake- speare and Milton more thoroughly alive with great moral passion, more instinct with the consciousness that righteousness is the soul of the Universe, than George Eliot's sketches of human life as we have them in her novels. She is a preacher greater than any in the Established pulpits of England, and will be remembered and read after men shall have ceased to preserve the recollections of the discussions and con- troversies which now fill the English ecclesi- astical State." George Wm. Curtis says of her that, "for all the higher qualities of the story-teller ; for sustained imagination, insight, knowledge, and exquisite skill of narration — the woman who writes under the name of George Eliot is the master of all living men." 3o8 GEORGE ELIOT. Mr. John Morley says that "no woman has ever impressed him so profoundly as George EHot ; there is something almost apostolic in her moral character, while her intellect is of the first order." Richard Grant White finishes a critique of " Middlemarch " thus: " Of George Eliot herself our final and summary judgment is that in her the introspective spirit of the age has become incarnate, and attained its completest development." How much of passionate pain her life has held ; what disappointments, what sorrows, what baulked aims, what unsatisfied desires, what hopeless loves, what terrible struggles — we do not know, and may not even guess. But that these things have been in her life her writings bear ample witness. However sN'mpathetic her nature may be, and how- ever observing her mind, no sympathy, nor any power of observation, can supply, with- out bitter personal experience, the keen, sympathetic knowledge she displays in her portrayal of all these. She has been taught GEORGE ELIOT. 309 the shades of meaning in all these in the school of experience — a school \\hich to her high, grand nature, her keen susceptibilities, has been a thousandfold more thorough in its teachings than we duller scholars have found it. Does she not herself confess as much when in " Felix Holt " she says : " The poets have told us of a dolorous en- chanted forest in the under world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have human histories hidden in them ; the power of unuttered cries dwells in the passionless-seeming branches, and the red, warm blood is darkly feeding the quivering nerves of a sleepless memory, that watches through all dreams. These things are a parable." The one romance in George Eliot's life which she has found it impossible to keep from the inquisitive world is the romance which culminated in her marriage to a kin- dred spirit, Mr. George Henry Lewes, him- self a power in the literary world. I say her marriage, although it is well known 3ro GEORGE ELIOT. that by force of circumstances it was for many years a marriage to which the law refused its sanction, though in every other respect a true, pure, honorable union — a union which demanded from both the par- ties higli courage and faith in each other to venture upon. If, however, marriage means anything more than a formula of words, theirs is one of the truest of marriages, which the legal ties that now unite them do not render one whit more binding. Until she had passed the first buoyancy, brightness, and bloom of youth, Mrs. Lewes was unknown. The world never knew the girl Marian Evans ; and what beauty, if any, she had ever possessed belonged not to the world's George Eliot, for she is described by many as being positively homely ; while even her friends and admirers soften the truth in loving phrase. The nearest ap- proach to praise of her personal appearance which I have ever seen I find in a letter of Moncure D. Conway to The Round Tabic, in which he says: "What Margaret GEORGE ELIOT. 311 Fuller's father said of her when she was a girl — ' inccdit rcgina ' — may be said of the mature woman who writes under the name of George Eliot. She is a finely-shaped woman, and quite large, though not in the sense in which Hawthorne describes English female largeness. She is by no means cor- pulent, nor are there any suggestions of steaks and sirloins about her, but she is of large skeleton. She is not meager, cither, but has the look of being made out of fine clay. She is blonde, with very light auburn hair ; clear, serene, smiling eyes ; beautiful teeth. She has also gracious and easy manners, with an undefinable air of un- worldliness— of having been made for large and fine societies, but never entered them. In a word, she is a woman who, though not handsome, would personally satisfy her most ardent admirers." A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1864 (Miss Kate Field, I think), who met Mrs. Lewes in Italy, describes her thus : 312 GEORGE ELIOT. " It was at Villino TroUope that we first saw that wonderfully clever author, George Eliot. She is a woman of forty, perhaps, of large frame, and fair Saxon coloring. In heaviness of jaw, and height of cheek-bone, she greatly resembles a German ; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and amiable, and her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In conversation Mrs. Lewes is most entertain- ing." It is asserted that she is nervously sensitive as to her lack of beauty, and will not on that account consent to sit for any kind of picture ; but I am inclined to doubt as to her refusal being in consequence of -this feeling; it, more probably, is the result of that modesty which is so charming and beautiful a trait in her character, a modesty which will not permit her to do anything which may appear like self-glorification ; which lets the world seek her out, if so be it thinks her worthy of being sought after, GEORGE ELIOT. 313 but which will always prevent her from try- ing to make herself in any way conspicu- ous, save by those works which are the natural expression and outlet of a deep, grand, philosophical nature, the emanations of a true genius. It was that same modesty which prevented her from avowing her sex or name until success crowned her work, and genuine admiration inquisitively ferreted her out, through all disguise. Her position on the Wcstminsta- Rcvinv, and residence in the family of its chief, rendered her accessible to those who fre- quented Dr. Chapman's house. Among those who availed themselves of the privilege was George Henry Lewes, whose philosophical writings had previously won her respect. The intimate friendliness into which their mutual likings drew them resulted first in his hearty admiration of her as a thinker ; then in his ardent love and tenderness for her as a pure, grand woman. But there were obstacles to their union even when he found that she reciprocated his passion. He was 314 GEORGE ELIOT. peculiarly situated : He was a married man, although for long- years he had not lived with his wife. His wife was living with another man, for the marriage had been an uncongenial one, and the first Mrs. Lewes had proved false to her mar- riage vows; "but," says a writer in the Golden Age, " Mr. Lewes himself was equally guilty of infidelity to his wife, and the law of England does this equal justice to man and woman, viz., it absolves neither from a marriage bond, on account of the infidelity of the other, unless the one who asks freedom can claim to have been faith- ful to his or her own vow. The marriage tie between this disloyal husband and wife was broken in fact, but not in law. They had long lived separate lives, when Mr. Lewes met and loved Miss Evans. It was her mind and heart which first won Mr. Lewes' love, and the nobility of this ■most pure spirit lifted that love into a reverence he had never before felt for wo- man. His love was returned, and the ques- GEORGE ELIOT. 3i5 tion of their future was discussed by these loving friends and friendly lovers. They asked the advice of the wisest and best of their friends in this emergency, and at last, after much thought and discussion, it was decided by themselves and their counsellors that this being an exceptional case, it must be dealt with in an exceptional manner. A legal marriage between them was impos- sible, but since the affection which united them was no mere youthful passion, but the stable bond of a love founded on mutual congeniality and respect, they would be justified in uniting their lives outside of the law, if they were strong enough to bear the social consequences which must nat- urally follow from the infraction of the law. " This they resolved to do, and from that time they have lived happily, contentedly, and helpfully together. All their friends ap- prove of their course, and no truer wife to her -husband, no more tender mother to his children — for she has none of her own — ; 3l6 GEORGE ELIOT. is to be found in all England than this brave and true woman." Thus far testifies the nameless writer in the Golden Age concerning their marriage. But other and later writers in regard to this matter, writing since the death of the first Mrs. Lewes and the legal marriage of George Eliot to Mr. Lewes, give a different version of the story ; averring that after Mr. Lcwcs had, with rare generosity, forgiven his former wife's first sin against him and taken her back to his heart and home, she again eloped with another lover, and the Eng- lish law debarred him from a divorce. The Golden Age writer may be mistaken as to the children of George Lewes, as no- where else have I ever seen any mention of children by cither marriage, though there can be no doubt that one who can portray so vividly as she does the true depths of maternal love would make a de- voted mother, or stepmother, even. When they thus joined their fates to- gether, both were mature in years and in GEORGE ELIOT. 317 experience of the world ; both in the pos- session of their ripest genius. That she, at least, thinks this riper love as rich in bless- ing as the vaunted love of youth, witness this question occurring in "Adam Bede": "How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love ? Are their first poems their best ? or, are not those which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections ? The boy's flute-like voice has its own Spring charm ; but the man's should yield a deeper, richer music." Mr. and Mrs. Lewes have not, since their marriage, sought, or cared for, recog- nition by society. Indeed, on the contrary, Mrs. Lewes shrinks from any overflow of the outside world into her quiet, busy, lov- ing home. The few who know and love them thoroughly, who have largeness enough of heart and brain to make them forget that in their union there is anything but obedience to that which is fittest, in whose 3i8 GEORGE ELIOr. society complete oneness of aim is felt, and that aim self-improvement and the happiness of others — these true, congenial friends are the only ones admitted or welcomed to their home circle, and these are all-sufficing for their need of friendship. If there be outside sneerers at their marriage, world- people who feel that a marriage such as this is an outrage upon and a detriment to "society," they keep themselves too far apart from such to be hurt or annoyed by what they may say or think. Of George Henry Lewes, Justin McCar- thy speaks as follows : "What man of our day has done so many things, and done them so well .'' He is the biographer of Goethe and Robes- pierre ; he has compiled the " History of Philosophy," in which he has something really his own to say of every great phil- osopher, from Thales to Schelling ; he has translated Spinoza ; he has published vari- ous scientific works ; he has written at least two novels ; he has made one of the GEORGE ELIOT. 319 most successful dramatic adaptations known to our stage ; he is an accomplished the- atrical critic. . . . Mr. Lewes was always remarkable for a frank and fearless self- conceit, which by its very sincerity and audacity almost disarmed criticism." Mr. Lewes, having been born in 18 17, is, at the present time, about fifty-nine years of age, while George Eliot is not more than two or three years his junior, perhaps not even so much, and he is said to be even less favored in the matter of personal beauty than she is — so that in these respects they are on an equal footing. That their union is a happy one no one seems to doubt. I have called George Eliot a Free- thinker. In the best sense of that much- abused word, I think she can truly be called so ; but her freedom of thought has not raised within her mind any desire to curtail or circumscribe the thoughts or opinions of any one else. She is no image- brcakLT ; rather by sweet persuasiveness, or the gentlest of ridicule, does she endeavor 320 GEORGE ELIOT. to show US that our images are senseless, hideous daubs of clay, instead of the im- mortal gods we had taken them for ; and so shame us into putting them aside, of our own free-will. She evinces none of that animosity toward religionists or the clergy which is, unhappily, too often a trait of those who dissent from the doctrines and dogmas of orthodoxy. For the clergy, in- deed, she shows often a tender, reverent feeling of pity, as toward a misunderstood, much-abused class of men, rather than any disposition to brand them as willful hypo- crites, and wolves in sheep's clothing. She aims ever to show the folly and weakness of the belief, instead of the sins and short- comings of the believers. What a writer says of Mr. Lewes is equally true of his wife, viz., " that he is a thorough skeptic and disputer of the supernatural ; and we have little doubt that he has done more than any other two men living in his time in England to diffuse skepticism — especially among the refined and GEORGE ELIOT. 321 cultivated classes. This he has effected by the inferential, as distinguished from the explicit, character of his teachings." While there i§ in the writings of George Eliot no direct attack upon the Christianity of to-day, no outright declaration of antipathy toward its teachings, such as would shock or hurt the feelings of any sincere believer, yet there runs through them all an under- current of liberal and inquiring thought, calculated to suggest and encourage inquiry. Perhaps she makes Felix Holt express her views in regard to this matter better than I could hope to, in his reply to Esther Lyon's retaliatory queries, after he had taken her to task for the uselessness of her life : " Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example .' " he said, snatching up ' Rene,' and running his eye over the pages. "Why don't you always go to Chapel, Mr. Holt, and read Howe's " Living Tem- ple," and join the church .' " 32 2 GEORGE ELIOT. " There's just the difference between us — I know why I don't do these things. I distinctly see that I can do better. I have other principles, and should sink myself by doing what I don't recognize as the best." All through her works we can open the pages at random, and find passages ex- pressive of her lack of faith in churches and creeds, similar to these quiet sarcasms, from " Felix Holt " : "There was no sign of superstition near, no crucifix or image to indicate a misguided reverence ; the inhabitants were probably so free from superstition that they were in much less awe of the parson than of the overseer. Yet they were saved from the excesses of Protestantism by not know- ing how to read. They were kept safely in the via media of indifference, and could have registered themselves in the census by a big black mark as members of the Church of England." And again : " He did not grapple with the paradox ; he let it pass with all the GEORGE ELIOT. 323 discreetness of an experienced theologian or learned scholiast ; preferring to point his whip at some object which could raise no questions." Her portrayal of Bulstrode's character and religion in " Middlemarch " is emi- nently characteristic of her charitable judg- ment, and of her keen insight into human nature. I give two or three extracts : " There may be coarse hypocrites who consciously affect beliefs and emotions, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretid beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future per- fection of the race, or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the world ; whether we regard the earth as a purifying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves, 324 GEORGE ELIOT. or have a passionate belief in the soHdarity of mankind." . . . " His behef in these moments of dread was, that if he spontaneously did some- thing right, God would save him from the consequences of wrongdoing. For religion can only change when the emotions which fill it are changed, and the religion of per- sonal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage." . . . " Does any one suppose that pri- vate prayer is necessarily candid — necessarily goes to the roots of actions .■" Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representa- tive. Who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections." One of George Eliot's critics has said that "her nature is decidedly religious," and I am inclined to agree with him in this opinion. But the religion of a nature like hers is not the religion which is usually understood by that word — it is the higher, broader, profounder "religion of hu- manity " ; which cares nothing for sects, or GEORGE ELIOT. 326 forms, or creeds ; which ignores priesthoods and dogmas, and cares only for the moral and physical welfare of her fellow-men. Both herself and Mr. Lewes are said to be followers of Auguste Comte, but they arc of those who can never become "followers." of any one man or creed, though it is doubtless true that in the philosophy of Comte they find the nearest assimilation to their own philosophical conclusions. George Eliot's literary success has been remarkably rapid. Wonderfully so, when we consider the multitude of new novelists who demand attention, and the long list of romance writers whose names we forget from year to year. To make so decided an impression on the public mind in such an era of fiction-writing speaks volumes for her fitness for her chosen work. Yet hers has not been an easily won, easily earned fame. For years before her success, she had served a long, faithful, and apparently ill- paid apprenticeship to her vocation as writer for the press ; but at last came her reward 326 GEORGE ELIOT. and appreciation, and, if she is not already, she soon will be placed above the need of writing for pecuniary gain. Let us hope that her love for her work will prevent competence from paralyzing her ready pen, and active, vigorous brain. The following list comprises her pub- lished works up to this date : " Scenes of Clerical Life." "Adam Bede." "The Mill on the Floss." "Fehx Holt, the Radical." " Romola." "The Spanish Gypsy." (A poem.) "The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems." " Middlemarch." The last-mentioned work is thought by her critics to be her best, also. For my- self, I think "Romola" shows her varied genius in the strongest light. She is yet in -the prime of her intellectual life, and capable of giving her admirers new les- sons and new delisrht. GEORGE ELIOT. 327 The foregoing sketch was so far written before "Daniel Deronda" was begun. That novel, now completed, shows no falling off in strength or literary merit. It is destined to be even more popular than " Middlemarch." Every sentence is polished and freighted with meaning. The critical sense is soothed and satisfied by the perfection in the smallest details of the pen-pictures drawn by this greatest of living novelists. This is a re- sult in part of her careful writing, "She writes slow or fast, according to her in- tellectual temper,'' says the London corre- spondent of the New York Herald, " but never without frequent revision. She does not permit a hne, proof, or autograph to leave her, until she has made it precisely what she wants. In addition to composition, she studies hard, and is constantly in pur- suit of knowledge. CHARLES P. SOMERBY'S PUBLICATIONS. S*roinetBieus* " To Destroy you mtist Beplace.^' Prometheus is a Journal clesignecl as an aid to the Reconstruction of Society on tlie basis of tile Pliilosophy of Science. It plvcs prominence to tlie i>est efforts of Constructive Tlionght in Europe. It is also a Weolvly Ke- cord and Review of tlie best and latest Philosopliical, Seientifle, Oriental, and Rationali-t^c Literature, and contains a Select List of these works. An octavo weekly. $3 per year, in advance, postpaid ; single copy, 10 cents. Xfce Martyrdom of iTIan. By Winwood Reade. Extra cloth, 12mo, 643 pp. Second edition. Postpaid, $3. It is really a remarkable book, in wliich universal liistory is " boiled down " with surprising skill. — [Literary World. The sketch of early Egyptian history, in the first chapter, is a master- piece of historical wnting. Ho lias a style that reminds us of Macaulay. — [I^enn JMonthly. Nathaniel Vauglian. A Novel. By Puederika Macdonald, author of the " Iliad of the East," etc. 3 vols, in 1, extra cloth, black and gold side stamp, 12mo, 404pp. Postpaid, $1.50. An independent and respectable study of character in the law of cir- cumstance such as even George Eliot might not have been ashamed to own. . . . It is a really artistic composition, with a sound moral ex- pressed, though not obtruded, on the canvas. — [Westminster Review. A Few "Words About tlie nevil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays. By Charles Bradlauqh. Portrait, 2d ed., extra cloth, gold side stamp, 12mo, 260 pp. Postpaid, $1.50. In a handsome volume before us Charles Bradlaugh has "A Pew Words" to say "About tin Devil." Mr. Bradlaugh has a right to liis Few Words, and the Uevil will, we presume, at no distant day, have a " few words " to say to Mr. Bradlaugh, and will doubtless get tha best of the argument.— [Chicago Interior. Issues oC tlte Agre ; Or, Consequences Involved iu Modern Thought. By Henry C. Pedder. Extra cloth, beveled, gold back and side stamp, 12mo. Postpaid, $1.50. The author of this volume has evidently kept company with many of the finer spirits of the age, until h's mind has become imbued with the fragrance of their thought. Ho has exce lent tendencies, elevated tastes, and sound aspirations.— [iSTew York Tribune. Xlie Politics of tlie Gospels ; Or, The Socialistic Element in the Early Christian Movement. By Austin Bierbower. Extra cloth, 12mo. Postpaid, $1.50. An interesting statament of the Socialistic ideas, tendencies, and purposes of the primitive Christians. Heroines of FreetliougUt. By Sara A. Underwood. Large new type, heavy tinted paper, broad margins. Extra cloth, 12mo, 32T pp. Postpaid, $1.60. A series of brief biographies of the most distinguished Froethinking women of the past and present centuries, includmg Madame Roland, Mary Wollstonecraft Uodivin, Harriet Martineau, Frances Power Cobbe, George Ehot, and half a dozen others. Send for Complete Bescriptive l.ist. CHARLES P. SOMERBY, Publisher, /J9 Eig/tlA Street, Neio York. CHARLES P. SOMERBY'S PUBLICATIONS. Xlic Clirist of Paul ; Or, the Enigmas of ChriBtianity. St. Tohn never in Asia Minor ; Iripneus the author of the Fourth Gospel ; the Frauds oC the Churchmen of the Second Century Exposed. By George Rebeb. Extra cloth, 12mo, 400 pp. Postpaid, $2. The purpose of this book is to convince the world that the greater part of the New Testament, as at present received hy Christians, was fahricated by the dogmatists of the second century, to enforce doctrines which were not warranted by the original teachings of Christ and the Apostles. — [New York Daily World. £^ersona.l ImLmortalityf and Other Papers. By Josie OrrEN- UEiM. Extra cloth, 12mo, about 100 pp. Postpaid, $1. A woman's modest and considerat'S statement of her dissent from cur- rent theological ideas— in which Immortality and Prayer arj discussed A\'ith ability, from a standpoint of pure Rationalism. 'I'Sic fiHistorical Jesias of Nazaretli* ByM. SonLESTNOEn, Ph. D., Kabbi of the Cougi-egation Anshe Emeth, Albany, N. Y. Extra cloth, 12mo, 9S pp. Postpaid, $1. This little volume of less than a hundred pages contains what a con- ecieutions and learned Jew of the nineteenth centuiy has to say about Jesus Christ as an historical figure and character. — [St. Louis Republican. TIic Ultimate Crcneralization. An Effort in the Philosophy of Science. Extra cloth, 12mo, 50 pp. Postpafd, T5 cents. The statement, accompanied by strong evidence, of a new law named *' Correlation," larger or more inclusive than that o£ Evolution ; claimed to be the ultimate inductive basis of the Philosophy of Science, and by implication to have a bearing more or less direct upon all the great ques- lious of the time. 'J'lic Case Agfainst tl»e dEkurcSia A Summary of the Argu- ments against Chrislianity. "Aot giviiic} heed to Jewish fables. — Titus i, 14. Extra cloth, l*2rao, 72 pp. Postpaid, 75 cents. An attempt is here made to apply the principles oC scientific material- ism to the investigation of the myths ana legends of Christianity. Essays on ITlind, JTIatter, Forces, I'lieolog-y, Etc. l!y Charles E. Townsend. Extra cloth, 12mo, 404 pp. Postpaid, $i. The author advances some novel theories on theological and scientific questions, leading to somewhat original conclusions. Xlie Cultivation of Art, and its Relations to Religious Puritan- ism and Money-getting. By A. R. Coofek. Postpaid, Fancy Pa- per, 25 cts.; Flexible Cloth, 50 cts. ■JTIie Essence of ICcIi^iou. God the Image of Man. Man's Dependence upon Nature 1 he last and only Source of Religion. By L. Feuerbach, author of ''Essence of Christianity." Cloth, 12mo. Postpaid, 75 cents. 'J'Sbc CUiJdhood off IBse "World. A Simple Account of Man in Early Times. By Edward Clodu, F. R. A. y. Postpaid, papsr, 50 cents ; cloth, 75 cents. Soul ProlbScnis. With Papers on the Theological Amendment and tlie State Personality Idea. By Joseph E. Peck. Postpaid, paper, 50c. Send for Complete Descriptive r.ist. CHARLES P. SOMERBY, Publisher, ijg Eighth Street, A'cza York. CHARLES P, SOMERBY'S PUBLICATIONS. Advancement ot Science. Tyiidall't) Belfast Inaugural Acl- dresB, and the FamouB Articlcp of Professor Tyndall and Sir Henry Thompson ON PKAVER. With Portrait and Biographical Sketch of Profe?8or Tyndall. And. opinions of his services by the emincntscientistProfessorH. Hclmholtz. Postpaid, paper, 35ceuts ; cloth, 75 cents. Inaugural and portrait, paper, 15 cents. ProfesBor Tyndall has inaugurated a new era in scientific development, and has drawn the sword in a battle whose clash of arms will presently resound through tho civilized world.— [New York: Tribune. 'I'Ue Safest Dreed, and Twelve other Recent "Disconr^es of Rcn-on. By O. B. Frotuingham. Cloth, beveled, black side stamp, 12mo, 238 pp. Postpaid, $1.50. "To cherish no illusion" might bo the text of every one of them. There is cverywhera a resolute attempt to adjust thought and life to w hue is really known, to accept the facts and th'^n see what siistenauce can be extracted from them.— [Liberal ChriBtiau. Scripture Speculations, With an Introduction on the Creation, Stars, Earth, Primitive Man, Judaism, Etc. By Halsey R. Stjjvbns. Extra cloth, 12mo, 419 pp. Postpaid, %l. XIo approaches his subject with all reverence, with a mind well stored with the facts of modern speculation and discovery, and in a modest and independent spirit. He writes wlt'i great candor and free- dom, and makes it his honest endeavor to remove all stumbling blocks out of the beaten path. — [Chicago Inter-Ocean. Percy Bysshe Slaelley as a Philosopher and Reformer. By CHARLEa HoTHERAN. Iiicludiug an Original Sonnet by C. W. FreI)eiiickson, Portrait of Shelley and View of his Tomb. CO pp. Postpaid, octavo, paper, $1 ; cloth, $1.25. This is a paper read by its author before the New York Liberal Clnb. It is designed to take a philosophical view of Shelley's works, and prj- sciit in regularity scientific form the philosophy which the poet taught, it may be almost unconsciously to himself.— [St. Louis Globe-Democrat. <);eneral Introduction to Social Science. iSociolotjical A'flnes, A'o. 1 .] Part I. Introduction to Fourier's Theory of Social Orgarnzation. By Albert Brisbane. Part II. Social Destinies. By Charles Fourier. 8vo, cloth, 272 pp. Postpaid, $1. The first of a series of Sociological works in which Fourier is taken up as the great Pioneer izi the science. It contains both Mr. Brisbane's In- troduction and Fourier's own Prospectus or outline sketch of his whole doctrine. 'JTlieory of Social Orgpanization. [Sociological Series, Xo. 2.] By Charles Fourier. Withan Introduction, by Albert Brisbane. Cloth, 12rao, 612 pp. Postpaid, $1.50. This contains Fourier's Theory of Social Unity, and comprises essays upon the Social Destiny of Man, and a large variety of Sociologicai sul3- jects. Mr. Brisbane claims that Fourier's theory is radically misunder- stood by the general public, and that no true test of it has ever yet been made in practice. This and the preceding volume will do much toward f lU'uishing a knowledge of the man and his teachings. JBpidcmic Delusions. By F, R. !Marvin. Flexible cloth, 50 cts. Send for Complete Descriptive List* CHARLES P. SOMERBY, Publisher, ijg Eighth Street, Nrtu York. CHARLES P. SOMERBY'S PUBLICATIONS, £»<»ence of diristia,iiity. By L. Fbuerbach, Translated by Geokge Eliot. Clo,, gold side and back, 12m.o, 340 pp. Postpaid, $3. Pliiilosopliy" of Spiritualism, and the Pathology and Treat- ment of ]\lediomania. By F. R. Marvin, M. D., Protessorof Psy- chological Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence in the New York Free Medical College for 'Women. Cloth. Postpaid, 75 cents. There is no way of getting r!d of Infidelity till some way is devised of abolishing the doctors. And here is another point: he says the special indulgence in religious exercises undermine the fabric of morality. Ag:e of Keason, and li^xamination of the Prophe- cies. Being an invest'gation of Ti-ue and Fabulous Theoloy^y.. By Thomas Paine, author of " The Rights of Man," "Crisis," "Com- mon Hense," etc. With an Essay on hi3 character and Services, by G. J. HoLYOAivE. 12mo, 130 pp. Postpaid, paper, 50c. ; cloth, 60c. SeciBlarists' JYIaiiual of Song's and Ceremonies, for use at Marriages, Funerals, ttc. Edited by Austin Holyoake and Chas. Watts. Flexible cloth, l2mo, 128 pp. Postpaid, 50 cents. IScrbert Spencer's First Principles. A Summary. By Wm. a. Leonakd. Paper, l'2mo, 4S pp. Postpaid, 50 cents. music in the "Western Church. A Lccturo on the Hi?tory of Psalmody, illustrated with examples of the Music of various periods. By Wm. A. Leonard, author of "The Christmas Festival," etc. Flexible cloth, 12mo, 89 pp. Postpaid, 75 cents. Xhe Cliristmas Festival : Its Origin, History and Customs. Together with a selection of Caro!s. By Wm, A. Lbonakd. Cloth, 12mo, GfTpp. Postpaid, 60 cents. The Antiquity of Christianity. By John AiSERGER. 12mo. Postpaid, paper, 35 cents ; cloth, T5 cents. The Divine Origin of Christianity Disproved by its Early History. The Confessions of the Church Fathers as to the Paganism of their Creed. Positivist Primer. Conversations on the Religion of Humanity. Dedicated to the only Supreme Being man can ever know — the Grent, but Imperlect, God, Humanity, in whose image all other Gods were made, for whose service all other Gods exist, and to whom all the Children of Men owe Labor, Love and Worship. Cloth, 12mo. Postpaid, 75 cents. Keligious Positivism. A Brief Exposition of the System of Worship, of Faith, and of Life, Propounded by Auguste Comte. "Love onr Principle, Order our Basis, Progress our End." By n. EuGER. Paper, 12mo. Postpaid, 50 cents. Health Fragments ; Or, Steps Toward £. True Life. Embracing Health, Disease, and the Science of Keproduction. Part I, by George H. Everett, M. D. Part II, by Susan Everett, M. D. : Dress, Heredity, Child-Training, etc. Wide margins, tinted paper, large new type. 125 humorous illustrations. Extra cloth, gold and black side-stamp, 8vo, $2. Sermons. By J. W. Chadwick. Postpaid, 6c. "Higher Reverence"; "God on Our Side"; "Man and the Bible"; "Best Use of Sunday." Send for Complete Descriptive JList. CHARLES P. SOMERBY, Publisher, ijg Eighth Street^ New York.