| Chapter 1: | The Early Years |
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But it was not only the external circumstances that played against Maria; she herself lacked beauty and style, she recalls, perhaps ironically, and those qualities could be an advantage to young women in situations similar to hers. ‘I have some notion’, she adds, ‘that the plainness of my person, and the want of fashion in my address, rendered me rather less presentable than suited the very aristocratic society of Richmond at that time’ (62–63). Maria was disposed of quickly: first she was sent to Bideford, north Devon, to help in the school of an acquaintance, Miss Barbara Seton, for six months, and on her return to Richmond it was decided that she would go to other relatives in Edinburgh. She would travel with her father, who had just arrived in the country from the West Indies and whom Maria had not seen since she was eight years old. She was eighteen in the winter of 1804 when she set off to meet her Scottish relations. In Scotland she was met with warmth and affection from her relatives and had opportunity to read the classics and to be in close contact with the great minds of the Scottish Enlightenment. It was there also that she suffered the start of an illness that would stay with her the rest of her life.
At the beginning of her visit Maria spent some time getting acquainted with her extended family, but soon afterwards she became integrated into the social and intellectual life of Edinburgh. She recalls that at the home of her uncle James Dundas she met eminent figures such as Professors Dugald Stewart and John Playfair. Her previous unsystematic education had awakened in her a love of learning, so that she seized
Maria herself did not escape this atmosphere of philosophical disquisitions. Although she claims to have been daunted by the term ‘metaphysics’, she discovered during a social function at Dugald Stewart’s house that the professor of philosophy Thomas Brown had christened her ‘metaphysics in muslin’.