Born: 24 October 1772, Ireland
Died: 29 January 1835
Country most active: Italy
Also known as: Mrs. Mason, Margaret King
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Frances Clarke. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Moore, Margaret Jane (‘Mrs Mason’) (1772–1835), Countess Mount Cashell and writer, was born 24 October 1772 in Dublin at the Henrietta St. residence of her parents; she was the eldest daughter of Robert King , Viscount Kingsborough, later 2nd earl of Kingston, of Mitchelstown Castle, Co. Cork, and his wife Caroline, only daughter and heiress of Richard Fitzgerald of Mount Ophaly, Co. Kildare. Soon after her birth she was brought to London, where the Kingsboroughs based themselves until December 1773, when they embarked on a continental tour, leaving their children behind. The family were not reunited until 1775, when they took up residence at the family seat in Mitchelstown. Reared for the most part, like her eleven siblings, by a series of servants and governesses, Margaret seems to have been affected deeply by the absence of any parental attention, leaving a vacuum that was filled by her governess Mary Wollstonecraft, who joined the Kingsborough household late in 1786. Though Wollstonecraft’s stay with the family was brief (she was dismissed the following year) she had a profound impact on Margaret, who by her late teens had rejected the values of her class in favour of Wollstonecraft’s advanced views on education and women’s rights. Similarly she became Wollstonecraft’s favourite and most promising pupil, and was fictionalised as ‘Mary’ in Wollstonecraft’s book Original stories from real life (1788).
Continuing to develop her unorthodox views, as a teenager she consciously scorned an interest in fashion, developing instead a passion for learning. Many years later she recalled how she ‘felt more flattered by a compliment to my understanding from an old clergyman than by any homage to my beauty from the most fashionable young men of the day’ (McAleer, 5). Despite these unconventional opinions, she entered into a highly conventional marriage (September 1791) with Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell, of Moore Park, near Kilworth, Co. Cork. However, marriage and motherhood (she had eight children with Mount Cashell) did not inhibit her political radicalism. She attended the treason trials of John Horne Tooke, John Thewall, and Thomas Hardy in London (1794), and in Dublin became known in United Irish circles. Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his wife were particular friends, and after his arrest she intervened to prevent the news reaching his wife, in the hope that with time his condition might have improved.
Her old connection with Wollstonecraft and reputation for radicalism led to an introduction to William Godwin in Dublin in the summer of 1800. This friendship proved both enduring and significant. They corresponded, and later met many times during her visit to London in the autumn of 1801. Godwin described her as a ‘democrat and a republican in all their sternness, yet with no ordinary portion of either understanding or good nature. If any of our comic writers were to fall in her company, the infallible consequence would be her being gibbeted in a play’ (McAleer, 66). In November 1801 she and her husband set out on a continental tour, accompanied by the lively Katherine Wilmot, who kept a journal of their travels. Provided with letters of introduction from Godwin to the exiled dramatist Thomas Holcroft, she counted among her extensive social circle Lord Cloncurry (Valentine Lawless), Thomas Paine, Charles Fox, John Kemble, Helen Williams, Matilda Tone, and Robert Emmet. In June 1802 she secured an invitation to dine with Napoleon. Moving to Italy that autumn, during her stay in Rome (1804) she was introduced to George William Tighe (1776–1837) of Rosanna, Co. Wicklow, an Anglo-Irish gentleman with an interest in agriculture and political views similar to her own. The two were instantly attracted and soon embarked on an affair, which led to her husband leaving her in Germany and returning to Ireland with their children (1805). After the breakup of her marriage she adopted the name ‘Mrs Mason’, the name Wollstonecraft gave to her governess in Original stories (1788). By 1807 she had returned to London, and was later joined by Tighe, with whom she had the first of two daughters in 1809. Cut off from her children with Mount Cashell and living on a drastically reduced income, she found herself isolated from her old ascendancy connections. She continued her close friendship with Godwin, however, and in 1807 contributed the first of her children’s tales, Stories of old Daniel, to his Juvenile Library series. Its popularity resulted in her adding new stories to subsequent editions, the last (and fourteenth) of which appeared in 1868.
In 1814 she and Tighe, by then known as ‘Mr and Mrs Mason’, moved to Italy and established themselves at Casa Silva in the Via Mala Gonella, Pisa. Though her own social circle consisted mainly of Italians, she is best remembered for her close friendship with Percy and Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont. She and Shelley first met, through Godwin, in London as early as 1812, and after renewing their acquaintance in 1819 met almost daily after Shelley and his family settled in Pisa in 1820. While Shelley was instantly drawn to her (his initial impressions of her are thought to have inspired his poem ‘The sensitive plant’), it was with Claire Clairmont that she became particularly close. She encouraged her to show less dependence on the Shelleys, arranged for her to stay with the Bojtis family in Florence, and in December 1822 made an unsuccessful attempt to secure financial provision for her from Lord Byron. In the years that followed she continued to provide both practical and emotional support for Clairmont, who lived with her family after her return to Pisa in 1832.
A close friend of the professor of surgery at Pisa University, Andrea Vacca, she was herself greatly interested in medicine. How she acquired her medical knowledge is uncertain (long after her death Clairmont claimed she had studied medicine at Jena disguised as a man); however, she is known to have conducted a dispensary for the poor in Pisa, and in 1823 published a very popular practical medical guide, Advice to young mothers on the physical education of children, by a grandmother, which went through numerous editions in several countries. Following its success she undertook to translate medical works from German. She also maintained her interest in literature, producing a novel, The sisters of Nansfield (1824), and from October 1827 becoming involved with the group of liberal patriots who formed the Academia dei Lunatici. Widowed in October 1822, she married Tighe in March 1826. She died 29 January 1835, most probably in Pisa, and was buried in the protestant cemetery in Leghorn. Among the portraits of her are a miniature, attributed to Charles Robertson, and an engraving by Edmé Quenedey (c.1801) and portrait (c.1833), both in the Carl H. Pforzheimer collection in the New York Public Library.