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Helen Maria Williams

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HelenMariaWilliams

Helen Maria Williams (1762-1827), 1816 engraving. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Helen Maria Williams (1762 - 15 December 1827)[1] was an English poet, novelist, letter writer, and translator of French-language works.

Life[]

Overview[]

A religious dissenter, Williams was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution; she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror, but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France.

Youth and education[]

Williams was born in London, the daughter of Charles Williams, secretary to the island of Minorca, and his 2nd wife, Helen (Hay) (1730-1812). Her family included a sister and step-sister.[2]

After her father's death in 1762,[2] while she was still a child, her family moved to Berwick-on-Tweed, "where her sole instruction was derived from a virtuous, amiable, and sensible mother" (Kippis).[3]

Career[]

In 1781 she came to London, bringing with her Edwin and Eltruda, a legendary tale in verse, which Dr. Andrew Kippis, an old family friend, undertook to see through the press, himself writing a short introduction. It was published in 1782, and was successful enough to induce her to continue a literary career.[3]

During the next few years she produced several poems – including An Ode on the Peace (1783), which celebrated the end of the American Revolution, and Peru (1784), a poem in six cantos detailing the results of Spanish colonialism on the indigenous people of South America – which were published by subscription and brought in considerable profit. These, with other pieces, were included in her Poems published in 1786 (2nd edition 1791), in which was also an epistle to Dr. John Moore (1729-1802), expressing her gratitude for his friendship and his attention to her during a serious illness. She was at this time living at Grange Hill, Essex.[3]

In 1788 she went to France on a visit to her elder sister, Cecilia, who married Athanase Coquerel, a protestant minister; and from that time she for the most part lived there, intermittently at first, but afterwards continuously. She adopted with enthusiasm the principles and ideas of the revolution, and wrote of it with a fervour that amounted almost to frenzy. She became acquainted with many of the leading Girondists, was on terms of intimacy with Madame Roland, was thrown into prison by Robespierre (from October 1793 she was in the Luxembourg), and narrowly escaped the fate of so many of her friends.[3]

Both before her arrest and after her release she freely wrote her impressions of the events which she witnessed or heard of, impressions frequently formed on very imperfect, one-sided, and garbled information, travestied by the enthusiasm of a clever, badly educated woman, and uttered with the cocksureness of ignorance. It was in the nature of things that such writings should make her many enemies; and while some of these contented themselves with denouncing her works as unscrupulous fabrications, others attacked her reputation as a woman, and accused her of carrying her love of liberty to a detestation of all constraint, legal or social.[3]

She was apparently living at Paris from 1794 to 1796 under the protection of John Hurford Stone, who had deserted his own wife for her. Wolfe Tone met them walking through the Tuileries on 19 July 1796, and 3 days later dined with them. "Miss H.M. Williams," he wrote, "is Miss Jane Bull completely" (Autobiogr. 1893, ii. 86-7).[3]

She was on terms of close friendship with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, of whose Paul et Virginie she issued a version in 1795 (numerous editions); and she translated other works, including the Travels of Von Humboldt and one of the tales of J. de Maistre.[4]

In spite of her intrigue with Stone and (it is said) another with Captain Imlay, Williams retained, with her religious sentiment, her association with the protestant set of her sister's family; and the tradition of her which remained to the younger members of it was as of one to admire and love. And in fact her writings are very much what might be expected from a warm-hearted and ignorant woman. The honesty with which she wrote carried conviction to many of her readers; and there can be little doubt that her works were the source of many erroneous opinions — as to facts, which have been largely accepted as matters of history, instead of as they really were, in their origin — the wilful misrepresentations of interested parties.[3]

In 1817 she and Stone took out letters of naturalisation in France, it being then officially (but erroneously) noted that she was born in London in 1769, a date contrary to all available evidence, and shown to be absurd by the publication of Edwin and Eltruda in 1782. During her later years she resided much at Amsterdam with her nephew, Athanase Laurent Charles Coquerel, pastor there of a congregation of French protestants.[3]

She died in Paris on 15 December 1827, and was buried beside Stone in Pere-Lachaise.[3]

Writing[]

Besides her collected poems and several occasional pieces in verse, Miss Williams wrote Julia: A novel (1790, 2 vols. 12mo), and the story, said to be from life, of Perourou, the Bellows-mender (1801), now best known in its adaptation for the stage as The Lady of Lyons by the first Lord Lytton.[4]

But it was by her political writings that she was best known, and these, even now, are worth reading, not as history of events, but of a single – but important – phase of opinion and thought. They are: 'Letters written in France in the Summer of 1790,' 1790, 12mo. 'Letters containing a Sketch of the Politics of France from the 31st of May 1793 till the 28th of July 1794,' 1795, 2 vols. 12mo. 'Letters from France containing many New Anecdotes relative to the French Revolution and the present State of French Manners' 1792-6, 4 vols. 12mo. 'A Tour in Switzerland, or a View of the present State of the Governments and Manners of those Cantons, with comparative Sketches of the present State of Paris,' 1798, 2 vols. 8vo. 'Sketches of the State of Manners and Opinions in the French Republic towards the close of the Eighteenth Century,' 1801, 2 vols. 8vo. It is in this work that she has given a history of the revolution and counter-revolution at Naples in 1799, and a criticism on the conduct of Nelson, based on her history, which is distinctly false in every detail (a copy in the British Museum, Addit. MS. 34391, is enriched with several autograph notes by Nelson). 'The Political and Confidential Correspondence of Louis XVI,' 1803, 3 vols. 8vo. This called forth 'A Refutation of the Libel on the Memory of the late King of France, published by Helen Maria Williams under the title of "Political and Confidential Correspondence of Louis XVI," by A. F. Bertrand de Moleville; translated from the original manuscript by R.C. Dallas,' 1804, 8vo, in which not only the work thus specifically named, but all Miss Williams's earlier works are severely condemned; she herself is referred to as ' a woman whose lips and pen distil venom;' 'whose wretched pen has been long accumulating on itself disgrace after disgrace by writings of a similar nature' similar, that is, to the present * scandalous production.' 'A Narrative of the Events which have taken place in France from the landing of Napoleon Bonaparte on the 1st of March 1815 to the Restoration of Louis XVIII,' 1815, 8vo. 'Letters on the Events which have passed in France since the Restoration in 1815,' 1819, 8vo.[4]

Sonnet_on_Seeing_Miss_Helen_Maria_Williams_Weep_at_a_Tale_of_Distress_by_William_Wordsworth,_Day_32

Sonnet on Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress by William Wordsworth, Day 32

Recognition[]

Her portrait was painted by Ozias Humphry; another was engraved by R. Scott in 1786 (Bromley, p. 447). A lithographed portrait is said (Gentleman's Magazine 1828, i. 373) to have been published shortly before her death – 2 smaller ones of an earlier date are in the British Museum (print-room).[3]

In popular culture[]

As a young woman, Williams was favorably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth, "Sonnet on Seeing Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress."[5]


Publications[]

Poetry[]

Novels[]

Non-fiction[]

Translated[]

Anthologized[]

Letters[]


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[6]

See also[]

To_Mrs_K—,_On_Her_Sending_Me_an_English_Christmas_Plum_Cake_at_Paris_a_poem_by_Helen_Maria_Williams

To Mrs K—, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum Cake at Paris a poem by Helen Maria Williams

References[]

  • Blakemore, Steven, Crisis in Representation: Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, and the Rewriting of the French Revolution. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (June 1, 1997), ISBN 0-8386-3714-0.
  • Kennedy, Deborah, Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution. Bucknell University Press (June 2002). ISBN 0-8387-5511-9.
  •  Laughton, John Knox (1900) "Williams, Helen Maria" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 61 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 404-405  . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 17, 2017.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ Author and Book Info.com
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Biographical Note, Helen Maria Williams, Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive. Web, May 19, 2021.
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 Laughton, 404.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Laughton, 405.
  5. ↑ William Wordsworth, "Sonnet on Seeing Helen Maria Williams Weep at a Tale of Distress.
  6. ↑ Search results = au:Helen Maria Williams, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 13, 2013.

External links[]

Poems
Books
About

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Williams, Helen Maria

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