Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/89

Rh stone beside it seemingly marks the spot where Helen Williams was interred nine years later. It is now time to speak of the lady who shared his struggles and poverty, and who may have been secretly married to him by their friend Bishop Grégoire, though it is not easy to understand why they were not legally and publicly united. Helen Maria Williams, whose date and place of birth have puzzled biographers, but are cleared up by her letters of naturalisation, was born in London in 1769, and was consequently just of age when she went over with her mother and sisters to witness the Federation of 1790, "perhaps the finest spectacle the world had ever witnessed." A precocious girl, she had published a story in verse at twelve years of age, and an Ode on the Peace at thirteen, and she had been introduced to and flattered by Dr. Johnson. Enraptured with the Revolution, the Williams's settled in Paris in 1791, and Madame Roland, one of Helen's earliest acquaintances, used to take her to the Jacobin Club at the time when Brissot and Vergniaud harangued there. Madame Roland would fain have seen her married to her own admirer. Deputy Bancal, nineteen years Helen's senior; but she pleaded the recent death of her father, a retired officer, and evidently did not reciprocate his attachment. Yet Madame Roland wrote to Bancal:—

"Either I understand nothing whatever of the human