Vindication (67 page)

MW's impressions of Frenchwomen
:
FR
, book iii.
MWCW
, vi, 148.

I
.
B
.
Johnson's recollections of MW in Paris
: WG, composing
Memoirs
, approached I.B. Johnson. His reply is in Abinger. An extract is quoted in
SC
, i, 125–6.

MW dining with Paine and militant female
: Ibid. No. 63 Faubourg Saint-Denis is now 142, near the Gare de l'Est.

Théroigne de Méricourt
: Hufton,
History of Women
, 478–9; Schama,
Citizens
, 462–4, 530, 611, 873–4; Linda Kelly,
Women
, 49.

‘the lowest refuse…'
:
FR
,
MWCW
, vi, 196–7.

‘–here you cannot return'
: RB to JB (1 Jan. 1793). Houghton: bMS Am 1448 (538).

RB's wish to return to America
: RB to JB (7 Jan. 1793) Houghton.

JB's letters to RB
: Houghton, bMS Am 1448 (64–330).

JB in
Savoy: A new department of France on its border with Italy. While JB had been away, the Convention had ratified a proposal of 7 Nov. to grant him French citizenship and admit him to its rights (‘
on a proposé…d'inscrire Joel Barlow sur la liste des Étrangers à qui on doit accorder le titre & les droits de Citoyen Français')
, a reward for his advice on transforming a constitutional monarchy into a republic on the American model (in his
Letters to the National Convention of France
, 1792). JB's letter to RB from Savoy is dated 13 Feb.

a tall
,
handsome American
: EW to BW, reporting James Wollstonecraft's meeting GI in London.

first mention of GI to RB
: Houghton: bMS Am 1448 (210).

GI's family background
: I've been unable to trace the exact relation of the most successful member of the family, James Henderson Imlay, born in Imlaystown in 1764–Gilbert's junior by ten years–who taught classics at Princeton and was admitted to the bar in 1791; Speaker in the New York Assembly, 1793–6; then elected to Congress.

St Thomas
: Norwegian historian Gunnar Molden tells me that this island was Danish-Norwegian, and that many merchants in Copenhagen and in Arendal, Norway, had connections there. Could be relevant to GI's later connections in Scandinavia.

Imlay mansion
: It remains in Allentown, next to the library, now with downstairs rooms converted into shops. There was a public sale of its contents on 2–3 June 1936. I am grateful to Joan Ruddiman, member of the Historical Association of Allentown, for her ingenuity in finding details of the original contents of the house as set out in the announcement of this sale.

GI's war service
,
and that of other Imlays:
Imlay
, Index
, ii, 1416; Imlay, Records, Van Kirk Collection.

‘omitted'
: Casualty book of Forman's Regiment, MS 3777, 4.

Washington's spies
: Information is hard to find. There are disappointingly few details in Jeffreys-Jones,
Cloak and Dollar
, 17, and in Christopher Andrew,
For the President's Eyes Only
:
Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush
(London: HarperCollins, 1995, repr. 1996), 8. Not much luck, either, with Washington's papers or Internet investigation through the Library of Congress. What's always repeated is the Culper spy ring, set up in New York in July–August 1778, but one would like to know more of Washington's other set-ups.

GI as fashionable beau
:
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
, xxiv, 417–18, cited by Rusk, ‘Gilbert Imlay'.

dealings of Boone and GI
: Faragher,
Daniel Boone
, 246. Boone, trustingly, had endorsed the deal in August 1785: ‘I do hereby assign my right and title of the within survey to Gilbert Imlay and his heirs and assigns.' When GI couldn't pay his debt he assigned the tract to James Wilkinson, leaving Boone, it seems, the loser. Wilkinson used Boone's fame to advertise the land as ‘located and surveyed by Col. Daniel Boone'. Faragher thinks Imlay gained ‘an undisclosed sum' from Wilkinson for the Boone land.

GI's note to Lee
: Bullet is described by Wilkinson as a man of fortune but very changeable. Beinecke.

William
Cooper:
A Guide in the Wilderness
(1810). New York Historical Association, Cooperstown.

GI's speculations in Kentucky
: See the Internet site accompanying this book.

‘massacres'
;
‘safety'
: Imlay,
Topographical Description
, 16, 19.

code names of Wilkinson's agents
: Wilkinson, spy-letters to Miró. Col. Bullet is also listed amongst potential backers of separatism who are due for Spanish bribes (‘pensions'). The possibility that GI may have been a secret agent was raised by St Clair,
Godwins and Shelleys
, 159.

GI's deed of 1789
: May Papers, Filson Historical Society. This is one of three grants of deeds for Kentucky lands by GI: on 1 Aug. 1786 (2148 acres), on 27 Dec. 1789, and on 19 Nov. 1810 (3400 acres), listed in
Old Kentucky Entries and Deeds
. Only the 1786 entry gives a place of residence: Virginia.

Wilkinson's message to ‘Gilberto'
: From Louisville, Rapids of Ohio (19 Feb. 1789).

‘constitute a Barrier'
: Ibid. (17 Sept. 1789).

Colonel Conelly
: Mentioned in Wilkinson, spy-letters to Miró.

Wilkinson's advance on Spanish Florida
: Hammond to Grenville, PRO.

GI emerged in London
: Wilkinson too switches careers, appointed by Washington in Nov. 1791 to his army position. He led the frontier wars of the 1790s.

A Topographical Description: The London edition of 1792 was enlarged in 1795. Published in two volumes in New York in 1793, with a supplement by John Filson, a portrait of Boone. Another and further enlarged edition appeared in London in 1797. Seelye,
Beautiful Machine
, 89, notes the ‘anthology effect', especially in the 3rd English edn, which adds some fifteen documents. In this way, Seelye says, GI gave ephemeral publications additional circulation.

GI's secret plans for the Louisiana scheme
: ‘Observations du Cap Imlay', trans. in
Annual Report of the American Historical Association
, i (1896), 953–4; and the longer ‘Mémoire sur la Louisiane', trans. in
American Historical Review
(Apr. 1898). Includes JB's separate proposal. It is clear that GI intended to take an active part in this expedition, and JB's plan to travel to America with expenses paid suggests the same. See also Frederick Jackson Turner, ‘Policy of the French'. Was GI acting in concert with Wilkinson? See Emerson, ‘Notes on Imlay'. Faragher too,
Daniel Boone
, 247, suggests that Wilkinson ‘was connected with Imlay in a number of intrigues'.

Crèvecoeur
: Michel-Guillaume Jean de (1735–1813). In his youth had explored the Ohio River and Scioto frontier, and celebrated the pioneer farm in his
Letters from an
American Farmer
, calling himself Hector St John de Crèvecoeur. This early American classic was published in London in 1782, the year that its author's Loyalist alignment in the war had forced him to flee his adopted country. He and Otto returned to France. MW later alludes to GI's acquaintance with Crèvecoeur in her
Travels
.

Genêt's instructions
: Archives des Affaires Étrangères, États-Unis, xxxix, f. 144. Archives Nationales, Paris.

Cooper's defence of MW
:
A Reply to Mr Burke's Invective
(London: 1972), 98–9, cited in Miriam Brody Kramnick, Introduction to
RW
. Cooper's dates (1759–1840) make him an exact contemporary of MW. Connected as he was with JJ's circle, he almost certainly knew her. In 1794 he published, with JJ,
Some Information Respecting America
. Later, migrated to America; in 1816 was appointed Professor of Mineralogy and Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania; eventually became president of the University of South Carolina. President Adams referred to him as ‘a learned, ingenious, scientific, and talented madcap'.

JB chosen as thinker
: Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Espagne, vol. 635, doc. 313.

‘Miss W
.
is massacred…'
: BW to EW (24 Apr. 1793). Abinger.

GI's belief in America
: Imlay,
Topographical Description
, 20, 28, 29, 168, 179. GI makes one of the first contrasts of American simplicity with corruption, suggests Seelye,
Beautiful Machine
, 91.

GI averse to standing armies
:
Topographical Description
, 16.

GI on slavery
: Ibid., letter viii. Imlay,
Emigrants
, 61.

The Emigrants: There are repeated suggestions that MW was the author of this book (Robert R. Hare's edition of 1963; Faragher,
Daniel Boone
; and John Cole, ‘Imlay's Ghost: Wollstonecraft's authorship of
The Emigrants
', in
Eighteenth-Century Women
:
Studies in Their Lives
,
Work
,
and Culture
, ed. Linda V. Troost (New York: AMS Press, 2001), 263–98). Janet Todd considers the argument in her notes to
MWletters
, 222–3, yet though she is not finally persuaded, she does re-order letters to allow MW to have met GI at an earlier date, and influenced him. This takes away his own initiative in writing polemical passages on the victimisation of women and the possibly more complex basis of his appeal for MW. The strongest reason for MW's not being the writer of GI's novel is that if she were, it would not be so tedious.

Jefferson's response to Louisiana schemes
: Jefferson–Genêt letters are enclosed in Jefferson's instructions to Morris (especially letter of 16 Aug. 1793). Morris, Papers.

asked for his recall
: M. Fauchet had replaced Genêt by March 1794.

rhyme quoted by Adams
: Abigail and John Adams, MS correspondence (6 Jan. 1794): microfilm reel 377.

Hichborn's proposal
: Hichborn intended to explore possibilities with a ship and cargo broker called Henry Bromfield of 1 Size Lane, London–a dangerous proposal given the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (1793) which named anyone supplying France with goods a traitor and punishable by death. Hichborn travelled incessantly between Paris and London, carrying diplomatic letters between Pinckney, the American Minister in London, and Morris, his counterpart in Paris.

British navy's retaliation
: Pinckney to Grenville (1793). PRO: F05/3 and 7.

MW's four letters to RB
: Lost, but mentioned in JB to RB (7 May 1793). The boat service between Dover and Calais had been suspended. It is likely that these letters, like others MW wrote at the time, did not reach their destination. She was aware of the
problem, and sometimes followed up one letter with another in quick succession, in the hope one of the two would make it. When possible, letters were carried by Americans. Another method was to send letters via EW in Ireland.

‘great book'
: MW to BW (13 June [1793]),
MWL
, 231;
MWletters
, 226.

‘to trace the hidden springs…'
: Book 1, ch. 4. Relevant ideas of history may be found in historians of the 1770s and 1780s which MW excerpted for
The Female Reader
: Robertson and Jardine, whom she had reviewed. Rendall, ‘History and Revolution'.

‘How silent is now
Versailles
!
':
MWCW
, vi, 84–5, 328.

the history of the present
: Taken from the title of essays by Timothy Garton Ash.

JB and the
Hannah: Correspondence between Captain Parrot and JB, showing JB's involvement from 15 May 1793. Beinecke: MS Vault Shelves: Pequot (Barlow) M992.

the
Cumberland: Letter from W. Harrison in London, an agent of Bromfield, to JB in New York (18 Sept. 1805), after Leavenworth in Paris asked Bromfield's firm to seek compensation for losses in 1793. Beinecke: MS Vault Shelves: Pequot (Barlow) M982.

a hundred foreign ships
: Stephen Cathalan, US consul at Marseilles, to Morris (22 Feb. and 15 Apr. 1794). Morris, Papers. The embargo remained until Apr. 1794.

£20 from JJ
: MW cashed the bill through Christie. On 2 May, she had received a draft of £30 from JJ. This could have been money mentioned in her sisters' correspondence, which they planned to send her with a view to an exchange favourable to the pound. BW contributed £10 to the sum in the hope that MW would find her a post in Paris or Geneva, which, as we saw, MW tried to do–it was BW who decided against Geneva. (
SC
, i, 121–3, 127–30.) One common aspersion of MW is that she helped herself to her poor sisters' money (it has even been suggested that her sisters funded her month by month), but an unpublished letter from BW to EW (29 Feb. 1793) seems to make it clear that the money was for Bess's profit: MW, she says, ‘wishes to take advantage of the exchange that would be greatly in
my favor
(meaning me) at present' (Abinger: Dep b. 210/7). Ch. 8 above gives instances of MW's taking responsibility for the money troubles of all members of her family.