Vindication (68 page)

‘almost impossible'
:
AR
, iv (1792),
MWCW
, vii, 424–30. Cited Jacobs,
Her Own Woman
, 111.

MW on Paris as a prison seen from the barriers
:
FR
, 215–16.

‘the french had undertaken…'
: Ibid., 219–20.

‘a Lady of…Understanding'
: Adams, marginalia,
FR
. Quoted in Durant's Supplement, 267.

thousands…lost their heads
: Different historians give different estimates, ranging from 2650 (Steel,
Vive la Révolution
) to Schama,
Citizens
, 791–2, who challenges a conservative estimate of loss of life during the Terror, and points to the near quarter million massacred in the Vendée.

Revolution…active in her own blood
: Woolf, ‘Mary Wollstonecraft', 195.

MW's relationship with GI
: Tomalin, ‘Fallen Woman', comments on this kind of semi-formal relationship as the most difficult to conduct.

‘We are soon to meet…'
:
MWL
, 233–4, follows WG in giving Aug. 1793 as a conjectural date. MW was at Neuilly when she wrote this letter (she talks of the barrier).

‘Why cannot we meet…'
: MW to RB (Friday afternoon [summer 1793]). Internal evidence shows she was still at Neuilly: ‘I do not wish to spend a whole day in Paris.'

Chinese Baths
: Morton,
Americans in Paris
, 103–4.

MW's foot slipped on blood
: This story circulated at the time, and found its way into Amelia Opie's novel,
A Wife's Duty
. According to Holmes,
Footsteps
, 112–13, it was seen as a symbol of MW's courage during the Terror.

the Maison de Bretagne
: Now an antique shop. The York Hotel is still at no. 56, towards the rue de l'Université and the rue du Bac.

‘barbarous' marital laws
: Imlay,
Emigrants
, 46.

‘I have so many books…'
: I have kept to the sequence of letters set out by WG in 1st edn of
Letters to Imlay
in Wollstonecraft,
Posthumous Works
, and followed by Wardle in
MWL
. Todd,
MWletters
, shifts this letter to an earlier, pre-Neuilly date, April–May, even though the letter refers to returning to Saint-Germain and needing a carriage for all the books, which would fit the August move. I'm not convinced that there is sufficient evidence to justify the shift of this letter. Its effect is interpretative: its intimacy, its sense of MW's life bound up domestically with that of GI, bolsters a long-held idea of MW's quick plunge into sexual intimacy. This is an idea I question, especially as it leads to accusations that MW was inconsistent, throwing off the chastity expressed in
RW
. The myth of MW as reckless wanton (discussed below, ch. 15) was reinforced by a parallel history of misreading her attachment to HF.

soon was pregnant
: It is assumed too literally that sex took place at the barrier since the child, Fanny, was later called ‘the barrier child'. MW would have used the phrase metaphorically–it was where desire stirred. Conceivably, it was at one of their meetings at the barrier that she and G I first spoke of having children.

‘Tant pis pour vous
…
': Recorded in Crabb Robinson,
Diary
(2 Sept. 1817), after he visited HMW, who repeated MW's friend von Schlabrendorf's report of the exchange. Crabb Robinson,
Books and their Writers
, i, 209.

10
RISKS IN LOVE

Uncited quotations from MW's letters to GI, RB and EW from Nov. 1793 to Sept. 1794 are in
MWL
, 237–62;
MWletters
, 232–63.

The prisoners
: The four Williamses were arrested on 12 Oct. The Frenchman who intervened was Athénèse Coquerel, who later married Cecilia Williams.

GI's news and MW's faint
: MW described this scene to Amelia Alderson, recorded in Brightwell,
Memorials
, 49. I change ‘suppose' to the American ‘guess' in order to rectify the transmission through an English vocabulary.

closed women's clubs
: Proposed in the Convention of 30 Oct. Hufton,
History of Women
, 479; Schama,
Citizens
, 802. Their precise dates do not agree, but this happened between the end of Oct. and early Nov. 1793.

executed Mme Roland
: JJ subsequently published her memoirs, which MW may have helped to edit in 1795. The work on Mme Roland's
Appeal to Impartial Posterity
(1795) was suggested by Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft
, 179, followed by Todd,
Wollstonecraft
, 482, who notes similarities in opinion and tone with MW's
Travels
.

rising cost of soap
: Schama,
Citizens
, 708.

GI to Le Havre
: JB's friend Nathaniel Cutting was appointed US consul there in Mar. 1793. Morris, Papers.

Wheatcroft's safety
: He travelled on a passport issued by the Committee of Public
Safety in 1795. His destination was Scandinavia and the purpose was to give evidence in a case to do with one of GI's ventures, the silver ship. See below, ch. 12.

alum
: A whitish transparent mineral salt used for printing and tanning, and an ingredient in potash, soda, ammonia and iron.

‘money-getting face'
;
‘honest countenance'
: c. Dec 1793.

GI on commerce
: Imlay,
Topographical Description
, 75.

Wentworth taking prizes
: This was the most accepted way for those without a fortune to make one.

‘Speculation'
: Jane Austen,
Mansfield Park
, ch. 25. Appropriately, it is the player (in every sense) Henry Crawford who inducts the uninitiated–the incorruptible Fanny Price and stupid Lady Bertram–into the game. Incidentally, WG attended a play called
Speculation
on 7 Nov. 1795.

‘We know not…'
: Appropriated from Hardyment's fascinating chapter (
Perfect Parents
, 29) on the medical and domestic applications of ‘Nature and Reason 1750–1820'.

‘The way to my senses…'
: Soon after they began living together, c. Sept. 1793.

truth and facelessness
: Truth versus face exerts a similar moral power in the facelessness of Fanny Price in
Mansfield Park
, but only if the reader can resist the amoral allure of the siren Miss Crawford.

GI on the soul's sympathy
: See above, ch. 9. He promised a society in which ‘sympathy was regarded as the essence of the human soul'.

‘I do not want…'
: 2 Jan. 1794.

glassware
: A letter to GI and Leavenworth in Paris (22 Mar. 1795) from William Jackson (1759–1828), once a major in the Continental army, now Secretary to the Federal Convention and President Washington, asks GI why the glassware he has ordered and paid for in advance has not arrived. He argues that there must be numerous vessels sailing from France to Philadelphia. (
Collector
, lxiii (Feb. 1950), item D358 (dealer's catalog: 4207).)

public sales
: Another took place at Marly between 6 Oct. and 25 Nov.; another at Saint-Cloud beginning on 29 Mar. 1794; and yet another at Fontainebleau beginning in June of that year, with similar sales in Paris.

Swan unprincipled
: Monroe, then American Minister in France, to James Madison (30 June 1795). Swan, born in Scotland, fought at Bunker Hill, and then married a wealthy Bostonian who kept him in some comfort in prison. He refused to pay the debt against his release.

Swan and JB
: Swan advised Washington on 21 Dec. 1793 that the present American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, was unpopular with the French. Swan proposed JB as the person to replace him. One of Swan's agendas had to do with the failure of Morris to effect an end to the embargo of American ships at Bordeaux (see above, ch. 9). Swan wrote similarly to General Henry Knox, US Secretary for War (21 Dec. 1793): ‘Should there be virtue enough left, to respect merit & talents in the election of diplomatick men, altho' they are not rich, Mr Barlow
…
possesses every quality, that could render an agent usefull to the United States & this Republique, and who in the highest degree has the esteem of all[, ] but in daring to give you this hint, I can assure you that it did not originate in me, nor come from him; for I believe the last thing he thinks of is that.' (Knox, Papers, reel 35/2.)

GI and Copenhagen
: Another contact was Christer Skaarup Blacks Enke & Co.

A member of the Paris conspiracy
: His name was Lyonnet.

Genêt denounced
: On 11 Oct. 1793 the Committee of Public Safety had recalled Genêt (who had the sense to save his neck by remaining in America).

renewed plan, November 1793
: Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Espagne, vol. 636, f. 391.

the generals
: Another general, Clark, was co-opted for the abortive Genêt Affair.

‘expatiating'
: Imlay,
Emigrants
, 69.

‘the hard-hearted savage romans'
:
FR
, 160.

American Minister as spy
: A letter from JB to Abraham Baldwin in Congress (4 Mar. 1798) offers his opinion that the highly conservative Morris ‘acted as a secret agent & spy' for the British and Austrian Cabinets after their ambassadors left Paris. (JB's Letterbook (1797–1803), Houghton: bMS Am 1448 (4), 86.) After Morris left office, the French intercepted a 1795 letter from Washington to Morris as secret agent to the Cabinet in London.

Paine's arrest and petition
: Paine, Dossier. The agents of the Terror included Doilé, another Commissioner called Gillet, and a policeman; an admirer, Achille Audibert, who had invited Paine to represent Calais in the French National Convention; and citizens Jean-Baptiste Martin and Lamy from the Committee of Public Safety.

Paine languished in prison
: See his plea to the American Minister. Morris, Papers.

Americans' petitions to Morris
: On 18 Nov. 1793 Angelica Church in London appealed to Morris on behalf of her imprisoned friend, Miss Catharine Herring of Albany, who had gone to France to learn the language in order to improve her credentials as governess. Morris was repeatedly asked to verify such prisoners' claims to having been born in America.

von Schlabrendorf's escape of the guillotine
: Crabb Robinson, Diary,
Books and their Writers
, i, 300.

von Schlabrendorf recalled MW
: Notes in his copy of
Memoirs
. Relayed by his friend Carl Gustav Jochmann and trans. in Durant's edition of
Memoirs
, xxvii, 251–2.

‘every brute'
;
‘haunted'
: BW to EW (5 Nov. and 4 Dec. 1793). Abinger.

‘I am grieved…'
:
FR
,
MWCW
, vi, 444.

‘Alas!'
…:
FR
, book I, ch. 3.

Havre-Marat
: JB's description of Le Havre a few years earlier in his diary. He had a sharp eye. Houghton: bMS Am 1448(9).

lodgings
: Address discovered by Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft
, ch. 14.

‘I could not sleep'
: GI was in Paris briefly in March.

‘View' vs institutional history
: Gary Kelly,
Revolutionary Feminism
, 154–5; Moore,
Mary Wollstonecraft
, 52–3.

Jane Austen's attack on institutional history
: In the innocent voice of Catherine Morland in
Northanger Abbey
(completed in 1799; published posthumously in 1817). Virginia Woolf, a century on, also questions history's focus on war, and caricatures the staginess of kings with golden teapots on their heads (in her feminist treatise
A Room of One's Own
(1929)). See also her early fable, unpublished in her lifetime, ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn' (1906), which questions a male bias in historical record.

Clarissa vs lusty
,
conniving woman
: Hufton,
History of Women
, 445.

MW on the French character
:
FR
, 213.

‘sober matron graces'
;
‘maternal wing'
: Ibid., 115, 22. MW overlooks the violence of the
American Revolutionary War in favour of the welcome to immigrants and America's more benign political system. This is close to what Henry Adams would write in his chapter on ‘American Ideals' and their transformative effect on immigrants in his
History of the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison
. The second President John Adams (Henry Adams's great-grandfather) didn't find the mother bird over the top. See Adams, marginalia,
FR
: ‘I thank you Miss W.'

MW on servility and the retaliation of slaves
: Ibid., 126, 234.

Grande Terreur: Began in June, and lasted until Robespierre's fall on 27 July 1794.

Paine condemned
: On 24 July, three days before Robespierre met his end. The fall of Robespierre may not be unconnected with a French naval defeat in June (as the fall of the Girondists in the first six months of 1793 had been connected with earlier defeats).

‘My God…'
: 8 July [17]94.

registration of Fanny Imlay's birth
: Discovered by Tomalin,
Mary Wollstonecraft
, ch. 14. The witnesses were Wheatcroft and his wife, Marie Michelle.

MW's letter to RB about childbirth and breast-feeding
: Carried by hand, as so often in this time of war, by an unnamed Imlay contact who presumably was to intercept the Barlows. The latter are hard to place at this time, shifting between Amsterdam and Hamburg. Ruth may have returned briefly to London, but it's unlikely that Joel could have joined her, given his reputed sedition.

‘The suckling of a child'
: ‘The Nursery',
Education
, 7. I infer that she watched Fanny before MW hired a wet-nurse for Fanny's baby, since she is unlikely to have watched anyone else. Possibly, she recalls her mother, though her mother was not a figure of tenderness.

statistic on breast-fed babies in the 1780s
: Schama,
Citizens
, 145–8.

Galen and wet-nursing
: Hardyment,
Perfect Parents
, 4–5, 16–17.

‘raven mother'
: MW told this to von Schlabrendorf on her return to Paris. Relayed by his friend, Jochmann. Repr. in Durant's Supplement, 251–2.

Dr Haygarth on smallpox
:
An Enquiry How to Prevent Small-Pox
(London: Johnson, 1784).
MWletters
, 263, notes his sequel,
A Sketch of a Plan to Exterminate the Casual Small-Pox from Great Britain
(1794), but it's unlikely to have reached MW.

11
THE SILVER SHIP

Uncited quotations are from MW's letters to GI, EW, BW and Archibald Hamilton Rowan from Sept. 1794 to May 1795.
MWL
, 262–89;
MWletters
, 263–94.

newly discovered letter
: To Danish Prime Minister, Bernstorff (5 Sept. 1795), written in Copenhagen. Discovered by Gunnar Molden in 2003 in the Danish National Archives. I am grateful to him for sending a photocopy for verification. Transcribed in ch. 12.

JB the only American in Europe…honorary French citizen
: I exclude Paine, a naturalised American, because the French treated him as English.

JB's dealings
: Woodress,
Yankee Odyssey
, 145.

export of luxury goods from France under the Terror
: Pierre Verlet,
French Royal Furniture
(New York, 1963), 56–7, and Gerald Reitlinger,
The Economics of Taste
, ii (1963), 130. Cited by Fraser,
Marie Antoinette
, 393.

Elias Backman
: Came from Lovisa in Finland, which had been under Swedish dominion before it was taken by Russia. Having spent much time in France, his brother Pehr Backman was suspected of being a French spy when he settled in Gothenburg. Nyström,
Scandinavian Journey
, 29.

Backman's petition to the Crown
: To the Swedish Regent, Carl. (Riksarkivet, Stockholm: Biographica.) Dated 21 Mar. 1794. Enclosed is a letter to Baron Carl Bonde (15 Mar. 1794), who is to present the petition. On 16 June, Backman took the oath as a burgess which gave him a licence to trade. Landsarkivet, Gothenburg.

English cutter
…Rambler: Obtained secretly by a French consul in Sweden.

Backman as owner
: EB was the formal owner. As Molden puts it in an email (July 2004), ‘who was the real owner is of course another question'. Is that GI in the shadows?

secrecy and GI's approach to EB
: Their association at this point is speculative, a matter of circumstantial evidence. Because of the secrecy, proof is difficult. Scandinavian sources for the
Rambler
are confirmed by British letters (originally in cipher) which can't as yet be cited.