“This proved a very suitable and happy connection, my wife being a woman of an excellent understanding, much improved by reading, of great fortitude and strength of mind, and of a temper in the highest degree affectionate and generous; feeling strongly for others, and little for herself. Also, greatly excelling in everything relating to household affairs, she entirely relieved me of all concern of that kind, which allowed me to give all my time to the prosecution of my studies and the other duties of my station.”
All accounts we have of Mary Wilkinson are to the same effect. Her great-granddaughter, Madame Belloc, writes:—
“It is a tradition in the family that Mrs Priestley once sent her famous husband to market with a large basket, and that he so acquitted himself that she never sent him again! Mrs Priestley was extremely intelligent and original. Lord Shelburne once found her sitting on the top of a pair of steps, clad in a great apron, and vigorously pasting on a new wallpaper. She received him with calm composure. There is a good portrait of her as an elderly lady in a cap, curving her hand round her ear to assist her hearing. She must have herself insisted upon being painted in this unusual attitude. She looks like a person of excellent understanding, whose mind has been much improved by reading.”
Before he committed himself to matrimony Priestley took another step hardly less momentous.
What it was may be gleaned from the following extract of a letter dated May 1, 1762, to Seddon, who was away at the time on one of his frequent begging expeditions on behalf of the Academy:—
“I am seriously preparing for ordination. As all things in this world are uncertain, I think it a point of prudence not to omit anything that may possibly be of advantage to me, if ever it be my lot to be obliged to have recourse to the ministry for the whole or any part of my subsistence, particularly as I am going to have a dearer and more important stake in this world than I have ever yet had in it. I can sincerely say I never knew what it was to be anxious on my own account, but I cannot help confessing I begin to feel a good deal on the account of another person. The hazard of bringing a person into difficulties which she cannot possibly have any idea or prospect of affects me, at times, very sensibly.”
The earliest known portrait of Priestley is of this period. It represents him as a slender young man with sloping shoulders, with a keen, intelligent eye and an expression not unlike that caught by Fuseli at a later time; his long neck is swathed in the ample folds of a white neck-cloth, and he wears a full-bottomed wig.[10] During Priestley’s residence at Warrington an artist was employed in making silhouettes of the principal inhabitants. Many of these were published by Dr Kendrick in his Profiles of Warrington Worthies. In that of Priestley the features are delicate and almost feminine: the full-bottomed wig is very much in evidence.
Priestley brought his young bride to “the good dwelling-house neatly filled up, handsomely sashed to the front, with a flight of five steps to the entrance, three storeys high, four rooms on a floor, cellared under, with convenient kitchens, yards and out-offices,” over which she was to preside for the next five years. To add to her responsibilities she was promptly charged with the care of the gay but improvident Mr Ben Vaughan and his brother Bill, and “received the very moderate compensation of fifty pounds a year for each son.”
Priestley’s house in Academy Street still remains, and the fact that he occupied it until his removal in 1767 is commemorated by a bronze tablet affixed to its walls by the members of the Warrington Society on the hundredth anniversary of his death.
There is a local tradition that an adjoining building was used by him as a laboratory, although it is difficult to find any grounds for the belief. There is no mention of experimental work at this time in his memoirs or correspondence, and whatever he might have done in this direction for his own amusement or the instruction of his pupils needed no special apartment.[11]