William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. VII. 1791-1796
Eliza Wollstonecraft Bishop to Everina Wollstonecraft, 10 February 1793
“Upton Castle, February 10, ’93.
“. . . I should like to know what you felt on first
hearing Louis’s death. I own I was
shocked, but not deluged in tears. In short, I could bear to hear it read, and
hoped they had some motive for such an act of cruelty that our newspapers did
not explain. But to hear him cried up as the best of
men, and that no man’s sufferings or fortitude
equalled the King of France’s, is to me quite novel. The depth of his
understanding and the ![]()
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goodness of his heart, is all the
men here can talk of. Was he really that innocent kind of man they here
represent him? The military men at Pembroke, who have left the service, furnish
opinions for the people, who declare, with one voice, that the French are all Atheists, and the most bloody Butchers the world
ever produced. Rees is pale with passion if the subject is
introduced, declaring the world is going to be at an end; that the Assassins are Instruments in the
hands of Providence. I can hardly tell you, then, with what delight I read
Fox’s manly speech, or how clear
and replete with good sense it appeared to me; in short, every word carried
conviction with it; yet this man is condemned, with Paine, as an unworthy wretch. I was obliged to sit up till
three this morning, to read the debates; for a gentleman had lent the paper to
R., and I could not have it
“God bless you.—Yours affectionately,
Charles James Fox (1749-1806)
Whig statesman and the leader of the Whig opposition in Parliament after his falling-out
with Edmund Burke.
Louis XVI, king of France (1754-1793)
King of France 1774-1793; the husband of Marie Antoinette, he was guillotined 21 January
1793.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
English-born political radical; author of
Common Sense (1776),
The Rights of Man (1791), and
The Age of
Reason (1794).
