| Chapter 1: | The Early Years |
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Of the latter she says, ‘Her sweet looks, and the delightful tone of her voice, whether in speaking or singing, were so bewitching that I used to run to get a sight of her as she walked from her house to the theatre in the mornings’ (53). The principal attraction of the social life in Richmond was the French émigrés who had escaped the Revolution. With them, especially at the house of Madame Achard, Maria learned French. At another house, the members of a family represented the plays of Molière, and apart from the pleasure of the performances, Maria was able to meet important personages like the Prince of Wales who was later George IV, the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Bessborough, ‘and many other of the beauties and wits of the time’ (57).
These interactions are significant because they formed the basis of Maria Graham’s character and explain some of the choices she made later in her life. She remembers that her ‘dear uncle’ used to encourage her to read ‘many books of history…some portions of Natural history…and books of travels into all parts of the world’ (59). In a passage that encompasses the plight of so many nineteenth-century female intellectuals, Maria recounts the pleasures and the anxieties of her childhood and youth, and finds herself
Maria does not state exactly when she left school, but it must have been when she was seventeen years old, around 1802. At that time, she reports with some bitterness, she stopped being welcome (if she ever was) at her uncle’s house in Richmond: