We searched our pockets for three halfpence to have a paper of our own. By now Johnson had heard the racket on the street and come out to find us gathered round Darwin, reading as fast as he could, skipping ahead, going back, all of us agog. “‘The Comte d’Artois is fled! Messenger dispatched by the Queen stopped by the populace! The Opera House cleared! The Bastille broken open, all prisoners at liberty!’” We listened with hands on our heads or across our mouths. “‘Here, scenes as novel as history ever recorded! Friends long lost again met each other! Captivity regained its freedom and despair found instant consolation! A national revolution with no parallel in the history of the world!’”
We embraced, all of us, one to one, and then together. We stomped our feet, shouted “Liberté! Fraternité! Egalité!” till it transformed from a chant to a chorale on the street, everyone joining in. We raised our fists to the newborn sky. Johnson scrambled back upstairs and found a hidden reserve of French champagne we drank straight from the bottle, handing it around to anyone who passed, even the one-eyed beggar and his friend. None of us could believe that we were witness to the first turning, the surest sign that this might usher in a new chapter in the history of mankind, a freedom long imagined but not thought possible—the birth of a new age of rights for all. We laughed, cried, pressed our hands to our hearts, breathless and giddy.
In the midst of that madness compounded by joy, Fuseli came to me, put his hands on my waist, and pulled me close. His lips grazed my cheek as he leaned in to whisper, “We shall go to Paris, Mary, don’t you feel it?”
I felt everything—I feel it even now, that vivid moment—his warm breath on my neck, the strong grip of his fingers at my waist, the music in his voice. “I feel it, Fuseli. I do.”
The French prisoners were free, and I could not help but feel my own freedom tied to theirs.
At last we retreated to our houses to sleep, but how could one sleep? Soon we were back at Johnson’s table, where we were often in those heady, dizzying days that followed. Johnson, Fuseli, and I would stay up long after everyone had retired, well past the port, the sherry, the return of the cold veal, the shriveled potatoes, the finger-licking of plates. We plotted that we three would go to Paris together, stay such-and-such place, visit so-and-so, use our contacts and calling cards. We would bear witness. And when Johnson could keep his eyes open no longer, Fuseli and I drew our chairs next to each other, occupying one end of the great oval table, near enough that his knee brushed mine.
“What will become of all the fashionable women of Paris,” he asked me, “from whom Englishwomen often take their cues?”
“They will have equality. Be citizens. Same as the fruit and vegetable sellers.”
He drained the last drop from his glass. “I wonder sometimes if there isn’t a certain self-disdain in your view of women. If you don’t feel excluded in some way.”
I looked at him, bemused.
“You, who grew up with nothing,” he went on, “who suffered being born a girl, with no reward in it for you, no love, no warmth, no tender hand on your face. Would it be so bad to be Sophia Rawlins? I think she quite enjoys being exactly as she is.”
“I want more than a tender hand on my face,” I said.
“Does anyone want more than that, really?”
“Men want power. They have power. Over women especially.”
“So women should want power over men?”
“They should have the same power men have.”
“How can they, when you yourself say they aren’t governed by reason?”
“I seek a poetics of change. For women and men. That joins sense with sensibility. But a sensibility governed by reason.”
“There’s no such thing as reason between women and men. You fool yourself.”
“Then what governs you?”
“Sex!” he said. “Isn’t that obvious? The pursuit of it, thrill of it, its pleasures in all possible variations, with pistils and stamens alike, ending with transcendent satisfaction, and then begin again, with pursuit. The world would be a better place, for both men and women, if we just came out with it.”
I looked at the painting looming over his head. Fuseli was a master of light and shadow, but the light was fleeting, ephemeral; it was in the shadows that his true genius lay.
He always offered to drop me home in his carriage, but I remained a proud solitary walker, trundling home between brief stretches of darkness and oil lamps, the occasional clop of horses or call of a night watchman to keep me company, and thoughts swirling in my head. I knew the danger of saying yes to even a carriage ride. Not since Fanny had I felt anything like it. For the first time in years, I wanted someone to touch me.
The glad course of events across the Channel took a turn in October when a starving mob from the markets, mostly women, advanced on the king and queen, invading their apartments at Versailles, demanding bread. We all went to hear my old mentor Price preach at the Meeting House in the Old Jewry soon after. He was in his late sixties now, more frail than I’d seen him, but never with more power in his tremulous voice. “Behold kingdoms … starting from sleep, breaking their fetters, and claiming justice from their oppressors!” He bade us all remember that our country owed its people the same liberties. It was a call for England to throw off its own fetters. And moved us all greatly.
But when Edmund Burke, that vain, verbose, self-interested climber of a politician, attacked our beloved Price in print, our anger was unleashed. How dare he turn the fight for liberty in France into a warning against mob rule and a breakdown of civilization that must never darken English shores! How dare he say there can be no new genus, in person or country, since our identity can come only from our past—an unbroken contract between generations across time, as if the Church and the monarchy alone reserved the right to tell us who we are! How dare he defend Marie Antoinette, and not the starving French people! But his greatest sin was his florid fakery—heaping words on words, dodges of rhetoric that I knew to be the most dangerous enemy of truth and justice.
Scores of writers set out to answer Burke, but no one expected me to send my pen darting across the page. I was a lady-author, essayist, reviewer, not a writer. But, like them, I wanted to take Burke head-on.
When Johnson caught wind of it, he printed each page as frantically as I wrote it, hoping that my “Letter to Burke” might be the first.
“‘Where are Burke’s tears for men taken by violence to fight wars, or people who hang for stealing five pounds?’” Johnson read aloud to the group gathered at dinner, the day we published. “‘No, he thinks the poor must respect the property of which they cannot partake and look for justice in the afterlife! His tears are reserved for the downfall of queens!’”
“‘In mourning the plumage, he forgot the dying bird!’” read Darwin, from his own copy. “Nicely done, Wollstonecraft.”
Though we’d agreed it should be printed without my name on it, my Vindication of the Rights of Men made me, among the dinner goers, an overnight philosophical peer. Suddenly I was no Miss or Mrs., just “Wollstonecraft” to them.
“You’ve spoken for all of us,” said Johnson, with pride in his eyes, amid clinking glasses and raucous toasts. Fuseli sat back, yet to say a word, though I could feel it stirring inside him.
“The thing I cannot understand,” he said, with an elbow on the table and his temple resting on one finger—his thinking posture—“well, you write like a man, or something, certainly not like a woman at all. I cannot place it, not according to class or gender. What are you, then, Wollstonecraft?”
I couldn’t sleep that night, couldn’t think of anything else. What was I, and to what end? I paced, looked out the window at nothing, tried not to think of Fuseli in the arms of his wife, and finally picked up my pen by the small light of my candle, and wrote the biggest thought I could conjure: “A wild wish has just flown from my heart to my head, and I will not stifle it, though it may excite a horselaugh. I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex conf
ounded in society.”
Confounded, ended, debunked. I knew that I’d only said half of what I’d wanted to, that I was ready, finally, to explain to Fuseli—to everyone—what I was, but more, what all women could be, if they had the education that men had. If revolution was in the air, why not one that would restore our lost dignity and make us part of the human species as we were meant to be? I would throw down my gauntlet: No, Fuseli, I don’t want women to have power over men, but power, at last, over themselves.
I closed myself in my study for days, words tumbling out that had long festered inside me, but now, given light and air and ink, blossomed into fullness. Even when I struggled, I reveled in the glowing colors of my imagination, gleams of sunshine and tranquility, right there at my desk. How rare it was to feel happy, all by myself. But I was, gloriously so.
I finally sent a batch of pages to Johnson with a note saying I had begun my second, bolder vindication, this one clearer and sharper. He devoured the pages as I sent them; in a month, I’d finished. I told him I wanted my name on it from the very first printing. I’d been told to be silent all my life, and this would be an end on it once and for all: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft. My thoughts, my voice, my words, my name.
Johnson demanded I come to dinner soon after the book appeared to meet his friend Thomas Paine, fresh from America and his own Rights of Man, newly bailed out of jail by Johnson, and thinking of leaving for Paris. Paine wanted to meet the “hyena in petticoats” who had dared challenge Edmund Burke. The guest list included William Godwin, a little-known journalist I’d heard of, but never met, who, according to Johnson, had pestered him for an invitation. A few others, and Fuseli, of course.
We all seemed to arrive straight from our writing desks, heads hot with our own words, parrying for a match if not a duel. I didn’t like Godwin on first sight. He was slight, pale, with a high forehead and thinning hair, a long, Roman nose. Whatever mild handsomeness he conveyed was diminished by a mouth that seemed in a perpetual pout. He bristled whenever I opened mine, which I did often, trying to draw out the quiet guest of honor we had all imagined as “fiery Tom Paine,” who spoke so little we hardly noticed him.
“Mr. Paine,” I said. “I found your ‘Occasional Letter on the Female Sex’ so to my own thinking, I wished I’d written it myself.”
“But you didn’t, did you?” said Godwin, irritated, while Paine finished chewing his bite.
Fuseli jumped into the fray. “Have you read her new Vindication?” he asked Godwin.
“Oh,” said Godwin. “Was another necessary?”
“Only for the half of all human creatures who’ve been denied their God-given rights by the other half,” I said.
“God-given? I am more or less an atheist, Miss Wollstonecraft,” said Godwin.
“We just call her ‘Wollstonecraft,’” said Johnson, trying to create some amity between us.
“You cannot be ‘more or less’ an atheist, Mr. Godwin,” I said. “And don’t blame me for taking refuge in a deity, when I despair of finding sincerity or equality here on earth. I’ve seen enough to know that civilization, run by men, has utterly failed us.”
“All of us? Or just you?”
“All women. All men.” I was incensed. “But don’t worry, my aim is to redeem us both.”
“I do hope marriage is not in the bargain. It is a tyranny for all parties,” said Godwin.
“Finally something we agree on! ‘Except tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered,’” I said, quoting Paine to the room but aiming daggers at your future father.
“She explodes a whole system of gallantry!” said Johnson.
“That oppresses women!” I said. “That makes them nothing more than the object of male sexual desire.”
“I’m afraid Godwin still believes the ideal female is a delicate bird that warbles unmolested in its native groves,” said Darwin.
“That’s it exactly!” I said. “The problem isn’t women, but how men want women to be.”
“Then how are we to know what to do?” Godwin asked.
“You mean, with a woman interested neither in sex nor in men?”
Godwin pulled at his collar and blushed. I felt Fuseli’s eyes on us both. As always, he drew strength from disagreement, energy from enmity.
“Our Wollstonecraft is in the business of denying desire, which is the business I am in.”
“We all know your business, Fuseli,” said Godwin, dropping his knife and fork with a clank.
“Desire is delusion, leading to disappointment, leading to misery,” I said.
“You see?” said Fuseli. “A hopeless case.”
“And yet I’ve never been more full of hope,” I said. “That my sex too will breathe the invigorating air of freedom that tears down walls and breaches gates. Shouldn’t our liberty matter to you too, Mr. Godwin?”
Godwin looked flustered and frustrated, searching for an answer. I almost felt sorry for him.
“How much better the world would be,” Darwin intervened to save us, “if we could accept men and women, and plants too, as equal citizens, with the same feelings and desires—worship the pistils and stamens in all of us, according to Nature’s plan.”
“The most divine of all,” said Fuseli, putting a final point on it.
We emerged into a drizzling November night, the others still waiting for carriages, when Godwin and I found ourselves, walkers that we were, aimed in a similar direction.
“I should offer to escort you home, Wollstonecraft, but I fear you’d consider it gallantry.”
“I’m quite capable of watching out for my own welfare,” I said, putting up my hood.
“Well, then, I shall walk this other way.”
As he turned to go, I couldn’t help but call after him: “Why did you look irritated every time I opened my mouth?”
He turned back, and stepped closer. “I came in hopes of hearing the great Thomas Paine,” he said, “who never had a chance of opening his.”
“Because of me, you mean.”
“You do occupy quite a bit of space.”
“As a woman, you find me opinionated and domineering. If I were a man—”
“You are no Thomas Paine. I don’t mean to insult you.”
“Ah, but you have.”
We were nearly shouting over the rain, dripping off my hood, his hat.
“I’ve read your first Vindication. Frankly, I found it disheveled and rambling.”
“Says a thinker who sights a woman of no importance advancing on his territory.”
“I didn’t say you had ‘no importance.’ But like you, I’m trying to earn my living by my pen. Hardworking at my own ideas of political justice. Johnson believes in me.”
“Yes, I think Johnson described you as rational to the point of coldness. How I look forward to reading you. Good night, Godwin.”
It was my turn to steer away, when he nearly shouted to my back.
“I must say, in the matter of your welfare, that Fuseli is notorious. I would caution you to stay away.”
I stopped and turned, surprised he’d noticed whatever spark there was between us.
Godwin walked close to me. “The man is a rake. A seducer. With equality in mind, but not the sort either of us is fighting for.”
“I can take care of myself. I’ve been at table with him for months—”
“Not everything begins with you, Wollstonecraft, though I do think some things escape your keen attention.”
I stood still, never losing his gaze. “Do say, Mr. Godwin.”
He searched the wet darkness before he spoke. “You never wonder why Johnson saves a chair for him, sets his plate out, whether he comes or not? Don’t you see the look in his eyes when Fuseli arrives, as if the whole room just came alive? And the look in his eyes when he goes?”
I pulled my heavy cloak closer around me, stung. We stood silent under a gas lamp that threw shadows across our faces, the night sky spitting rain. I couldn’t bear
him telling me what to notice, how to behave, with whom to consort. I was exhausted by being told by men, and women too, what sort of person I was and ought to be. But I hadn’t seen it, he was right.
A coach rattled near us, then stopped at our shoulders. The door flung open, and Fuseli—of course, Fuseli—stuck his head out.
“Get in, for God’s sake!” he said to us. “You’ll both drown.”
Godwin waited for my answer, but when I said nothing, turned to Fuseli. I could see the sharp line of his proud jaw. “No, Fuseli,” he said. “Thank you just the same.”
He looked back at me. They both did. Godwin and Fuseli, awaiting my answer.
Even as I took Fuseli’s hand and climbed inside, I looked back over my shoulder to see Godwin turn and walk away. I knew mine was an act of defiance, of hurt feelings, a flash of anger. I couldn’t see that my own revolution was just beginning.
* * *
I remember it now, little bird, as a sort of watery dream lit by a single chandelier, standing before a large gold-framed mirror in the middle of Fuseli’s studio, green walls two stories high, dawn breaching the windows. I am drenched and worn out, but I want him to paint me. I need him to paint me. Without a single word between us, he lowers the hood of my cape, unties what ties I have, releases what clasps. I let him slide my wet wool cloak, limp clothes all the way to the floor. Let him dab my body dry with a towel, and drape a long indigo shawl loosely about my shoulders, push my hair from my face. I let him see me.
“You are a thing to behold, Mary Wollstonecraft,” he said, standing some few feet behind me, looking at my visage in the mirror. “A thing of rare beauty.”
Love and Fury Page 18
