Fuseli, she may also be suspected of having caught the infection of some
of his faults. In early life Mr. Fuseli was ardently attached to
literature; but the demands of his profession have prevented him from
keeping up that extensive and indiscriminate acquaintance with it, that
belles-lettres scholars frequently possess. Of consequence, the
favourites of his boyish years remain his only favourites. Homer is with
Mr. Fuseli the abstract and deposit of every human perfection. Milton,
Shakespear, and Richardson, have also engaged much of his attention. The
nearest rival of Homer, I believe, if Homer can have a rival, is Jean
Jacques Rousseau. A young man embraces entire the opinions of a
favourite writer, and Mr. Fuseli has not had leisure to bring the
opinions of his youth to a revision. Smitten with Rousseau’s conception
of the perfectness of the savage state, and the essential abortiveness
of all civilization, Mr. Fuseli looks at all our little attempts at
improvement, with a spirit that borders perhaps too much upon contempt
and indifference. One of his favourite positions is the divinity of
genius. This is a power that comes complete at once from the hands of
the Creator of all things, and the first essays of a man of real genius
are such, in all their grand and most important features, as no
subsequent assiduity can amend. Add to this, that Mr. Fuseli is somewhat
of a caustic turn of mind, with much wit, and a disposition to search,
in every thing new or modern, for occasions of censure. I believe Mary
came something more a cynic out of the school of Mr. Fuseli, than she
went into it.
But the principal circumstance that relates to the intercourse of Mary,
and this celebrated artist, remains to be told. She saw Mr. Fuseli
frequently; he amused, delighted and instructed her. As a painter, it
was impossible she should not wish to see his works, and consequently to
frequent his house. She visited him; her visits were returned.
Notwithstanding the inequality of their years, Mary was not of a temper
to live upon terms of so much intimacy with a man of merit and genius,
without loving him. The delight she enjoyed in his society, she
transferred by association to his person. What she experienced in this
respect, was no doubt heightened, by the state of celibacy and restraint
in which she had hitherto lived, and to which the rules of polished
society condemn an unmarried woman. She conceived a personal and ardent
affection for him. Mr. Fuseli was a married man, and his wife the
acquaintance of Mary. She readily perceived the restrictions which this
circumstance seemed to impose upon her; but she made light of any
difficulty that might arise out of them. Not that she was insensible to
the value of domestic endearments between persons of an opposite sex,
but that she scorned to suppose, that she could feel a struggle, in
conforming to the laws she should lay down to her conduct.
There cannot perhaps be a properer place than the present, to state her
principles upon this subject, such at least as they were when I knew her
best. She set a great value on a mutual affection between persons of an
opposite sex. She regarded it as the principal solace of human life. It
was her maxim, “that the imagination should awaken the senses, and not
the senses the imagination.” In other words, that whatever related to
the gratification of the senses, ought to arise, in a human being of a
pure mind, only as the consequence of an individual affection. She
regarded the manners and habits of the majority of our sex in that
respect, with strong disapprobation. She conceived that true virtue
would prescribe the most entire celibacy, exclusively of affection, and
the most perfect fidelity to that affection when it existed.—There is no
reason to doubt that, if Mr. Fuseli had been disengaged at the period of
their acquaintance, he would have been the man of her choice. As it was,
she conceived it both practicable and eligible, to cultivate a
distinguishing affection for him, and to foster it by the endearments of
personal intercourse and a reciprocation of kindness, without departing
in the smallest degree from the rules she prescribed to herself.
In September 1791, she removed from the house she occupied in
George-street, to a large and commodious apartment in Store-street,
Bedford-square. She began to think that she had been too rigid, in the
laws of frugality and self-denial with which she set out in her literary
career; and now added to the neatness and cleanliness which she had
always scrupulously observed, a certain degree of elegance, and those
temperate indulgences in furniture and accommodation, from which a sound
and uncorrupted taste never fails to derive pleasure.
It was in the month of November in the same year (1791), that the writer
of this narrative was first in company with the person to whom it
relates. He dined with her at a friend’s, together with Mr. Thomas Paine
and one or two other persons. The invitation was of his own seeking, his
object being to see the author of the Rights of Man, with whom he had
never before conversed.
The interview was not fortunate. Mary and myself parted, mutually
displeased with each other. I had not read her Rights of Woman. I had
barely looked into her Answer to Burke, and been displeased, as literary
men are apt to be, with a few offences, against grammar and other minute
points of composition. I had therefore little curiosity to see Mrs.
Wollstonecraft, and a very great curiosity to see Thomas Paine. Paine,
in his general habits, is no great talker; and, though he threw in
occasionally some shrewd and striking remarks, the conversation lay
principally between me and Mary. I, of consequence, heard her, very
frequently when I wished to hear Paine.
We touched on a considerable variety of topics, and particularly on the
characters and habits of certain eminent men. Mary, as has already been
observed, had acquired, in a very blameable degree, the practice of
seeing every thing on the gloomy side, and bestowing censure with a
plentiful hand, where circumstances were in any respect doubtful. I, on
the contrary, had a strong propensity, to favourable construction, and
particularly, where I found unequivocal marks of genius, strongly to
incline to the supposition of generous and manly virtue. We ventilated
in this way the characters of Voltaire and others, who have obtained
from some individuals an ardent admiration, while the greater number
have treated them with extreme moral severity. Mary was at last provoked
to tell me, that praise, lavished in the way that I lavished it, could
do no credit either to the commended or the commender. We discussed some
questions on the subject of religion, in which her opinions approached
much nearer to the received ones, than mine. As the conversation
proceeded, I became dissatisfied with the tone of my own share in it. We
touched upon all topics, without treating forcibly and connectedly upon
any. Meanwhile, I did her the justice, in giving an account of the
conversation to a party in which I supped, though I was not sparing of
my blame, to yield her the praise of a person of active and independent
thinking. On her side, she did me no part of what perhaps I considered
as justice.
We met two or three times in the course of the following year, but made
a very small degree of progress towards a cordial acquaintance.
In the close of the year 1792, Mary went over to France, where she
continued to reside for upwards of two years. One of her principal
inducements to this step, related, I believe, to Mr. Fuseli. She had, at
first, considered it as reasonable and judicious, to cultivate what I
may be permitted to call, a Platonic affection for him; but she did not,
in the sequel, find all the satisfaction in this plan, which she had
originally expected from it. It was in vain that she enjoyed much
pleasure in his society, and that she enjoyed it frequently. Her ardent
imagination was continually conjuring up pictures of the happiness she
should have found, if fortune had favoured their more intimate union.
She felt herself formed for domestic affection, and all those tender
charities, which men of sensibility have constantly treated as the
dearest band of human society. General conversation and society could
not satisfy her. She felt herself alone, as it were, in the great mass
of her species; and she repined when she reflected, that the best years
of her life were spent in this comfortless solitude. These ideas made
the cordial intercourse of Mr. Fuseli, which had at first been one of
her greatest pleasures, a source of perpetual torment to her. She
conceived it necessary to snap the chain of this association in her
mind; and, for that purpose, determined to seek a new climate, and
mingle in different scenes.
It is singular, that during her residence in Store-street, which lasted
more than twelve months, she produced nothing, except a few articles in
the Analytical Review. Her literary meditations were chiefly employed
upon the Sequel to the Rights of Woman; but she has scarcely left behind
her a single paper, that can, with any certainty, be assigned to have
had this destination.
CHAP. VII.
1792–1795.
The original plan of Mary, respecting her residence in France, had no
precise limits in the article of duration; the single purpose she had in
view being that of an endeavour to heal her distempered mind. She did
not proceed so far as even to discharge her lodging in London; and, to
some friends who saw her immediately before her departure, she spoke
merely of an absence of six weeks.
It is not to be wondered at, that her excursion did not originally seem
to produce the effects she had expected from it. She was in a land of
strangers; she had no acquaintance; she had even to acquire the power of
receiving and communicating ideas with facility in the language of the
country. Her first residence was in a spacious mansion to which she had
been invited, but the master of which (monsieur Fillietaz) was absent at
the time of her arrival. At first therefore she found herself surrounded
only with servants. The gloominess of her mind communicated its own
colour to the objects she saw; and in this temper she began a series of
Letters on the Present Character of the French Nation, one of which she
forwarded to her publisher, and which appears in the collection of her
posthumous works. This performance she soon after discontinued; and it
is, as she justly remarks, tinged with the saturnine temper which at
that time pervaded her mind.
Mary carried with her introductions to several agreeable families in
Paris. She renewed her acquaintance with Paine. There also subsisted a
very sincere friendship between her and Helen Maria Williams, author of
a collection of poems of uncommon merit, who at that time resided in
Paris. Another person, whom Mary always spoke of in terms of ardent
commendation, both for the excellence of his disposition, and the force
of his genius, was a count Slabrendorf, by birth, I believe, a Swede. It
is almost unnecessary to mention, that she was personally acquainted
with the majority of the leaders in the French revolution.
But the house that, I believe, she principally frequented at this time,
was that of Mr. Thomas Christie, a person whose pursuits were
mercantile, and who had written a volume on the French revolution. With
Mrs. Christie her acquaintance was more intimate than with her husband.
It was about four months after her arrival at Paris in December 1792,
that she entered into that species of connection, for which her heart
secretly panted, and which had the effect of diffusing an immediate
tranquillity and cheerfulness over her manners. The person with whom it
was formed (for it would be an idle piece of delicacy, to attempt to
suppress a name, which is known to every one whom the reputation of Mary
has reached,) was Mr. Gilbert Imlay, native of the United States of
North America.
The place at which she first saw Mr. Imlay was at the house of Mr.
Christie; and it perhaps deserves to be noticed, that the emotions he
then excited in her mind, were, I am told, those of dislike, and that,
for some time, she shunned all occasions of meeting him. This sentiment
however speedily gave place to one of the greatest kindness.
Previously to the partiality she conceived for him, she had determined
upon a journey to Switzerland, induced chiefly by motives of economy.
But she had some difficulty in procuring a passport; and it was probably
the intercourse that now originated between her and Mr. Imlay, that
changed her purpose, and led her to prefer a lodging at Neuilly, a
village three miles from Paris.—Her habitation here was a solitary house
in the midst of a garden, with no other inhabitants than herself and the
gardener, an old man, who performed for her many of the offices of a
domestic, and would sometimes contend for the honour of making her bed.
The gardener had a great veneration for his guest, and would set before
her, when alone, some grapes of a particularly fine sort, which she
could not without the greatest difficulty obtain, when she had any
person with her as a visitor. Here it was that she conceived, and for
the most part executed, her Historical and Moral View of the French
Revolution[1], into which, as she observes, are incorporated most of the
observations she had collected for her Letters, and which was written
with more sobriety and cheerfulness than the tone in which they had been
commenced. In the evening she was accustomed to refresh herself by a
walk in a neighbouring wood, from which her old host in vain endeavoured
to dissuade her, by recounting divers horrible robberies and murders
that had been committed there.
Footnote 1:
No part of the proposed continuation of this work, has been found
among the papers of the author.
The commencement of the attachment Mary now formed, had neither
confidant nor adviser.—She always conceived it to be a gross breach of
delicacy to have any confidant in a matter of this sacred nature, an
affair of the heart. The origin of the connection was about the middle
of April 1793, and it was carried on in a private manner for four
months. At the expiration of that period a circumstance occurred that
induced her to declare it. The French convention, exasperated at the
conduct of the British government, particularly in the affair of Toulon,
formed a decree against the citizens of this country, by one article of
which the English, resident in France, were ordered into prison till the
period of a general peace. Mary had objected to a marriage with Mr.
Imlay who, at the time their connection was formed, had no property
whatever; because she would not involve him in certain family
embarrassments to which she conceived herself exposed, or make him
answerable for the pecuniary demands that existed against her. She
however considered their engagement as of the most sacred nature; and
they had mutually formed the plan of emigrating to America, as soon as
they should have realized a sum, enabling them to do it in the mode they
desired. The decree however that I have just mentioned, made it
necessary, not that a marriage should actually take place, but that Mary
should take the name of Imlay, which, from the nature of their
connection, she conceived herself entitled to do, and obtain a
certificate from the American ambassador, as the wife of a native of
that country.
Their engagement being thus avowed, they thought proper to reside under
the same roof, and for that purpose removed to Paris.
Mary was now arrived at the situation, which, for two or three preceding
years, her reason had pointed out to her as affording the most
substantial prospect of happiness. She had been tossed and agitated by
the waves of misfortune. Her childhood, as she often said, had known few
of the endearments, which constitute the principal happiness of
childhood. The temper of her father had early given to her mind a severe
cast of thought, and substituted the inflexibility of resistance for the
confidence of affection. The cheerfulness of her entrance upon
womanhood, had been darkened, by an attendance upon the death-bed of her
mother, and the still more afflicting calamity of her eldest sister. Her
exertions to create a joint independence for her sisters and herself,
had been attended, neither with the success, nor the pleasure, she had
hoped from them. Her first youthful passion, her friendship for Fanny,
had encountered many disappointments, and, in fine, a melancholy and
premature catastrophe. Soon after these accumulated mortifications, she
was engaged in a contest with a near relation, whom she regarded as
unprincipled, respecting the wreck of her father’s fortune. In this
affair she suffered the double pain, which arises from moral
indignation, and disappointed benevolence. Her exertions to assist
almost every member of her family, were great and unremitted. Finally,
when she indulged a romantic affection for Mr. Fuseli, and fondly
imagined that she should find in it the solace of her cares, she
perceived too late, that, by continually impressing on her mind
fruitless images of unreserved affection and domestic felicity, it only
served to give new pungency to the sensibility that was destroying her.
Some persons may be inclined to observe, that the evils here enumerated,
are not among the heaviest in the catalogue of human calamities. But
evils take their rank, more from the temper of the mind that suffers
them, than from their abstract nature. Upon a man of a hard and
insensible disposition, the shafts of misfortune often fall pointless
and impotent. There are persons, by no means hard and insensible, who,
from an elastic and sanguine turn of mind, are continually prompted to
look on the fair side of things, and, having suffered one fall,
immediately rise again, to pursue their course, with the same eagerness,
the same hope, and the same gaiety, as before. On the other hand, we not
unfrequently meet with persons, endowed with the most exquisite and
delicious sensibility, whose minds seem almost of too fine a texture to
encounter the vicissitudes of human affairs, to whom pleasure is
transport, and disappointment is agony indescribable. This character is
finely pourtrayed by the author of the Sorrows of Werter. Mary was in
this respect a female Werter.
She brought then, in the present instance, a wounded and sick heart, to
take refuge in the bosom of a chosen friend. Let it not however be
imagined, that she brought a heart, querulous, and ruined in its taste
for pleasure. No; her whole character seemed to change with a change of
fortune. Her sorrows, the depression of her spirits, were forgotten, and
she assumed all the simplicity and the vivacity of a youthful mind. She
was like a serpent upon a rock, that casts its slough, and appears again
with the brilliancy, the sleekness, and the elastic activity of its
happiest age.—She was playful, full of confidence, kindness and
sympathy. Her eyes assumed new lustre, and her cheeks new colour and
smoothness. Her voice became chearful; her temper overflowing with
universal kindness; and that smile of bewitching tenderness from day to
day illuminated her countenance, which all who knew her will so well
recollect, and which won, both heart and soul, the affection of almost
every one that beheld it.
Mary now reposed herself upon a person, of whose honour and principles
she had the most exalted idea. She nourished an individual affection,
which she saw no necessity of subjecting to restraint; and a heart like
her’s was not formed to nourish affection by halves. Her conception of
Mr. Imlay’s “tenderness and worth, had twisted him closely round her
heart;” and she “indulged the thought, that she had thrown out some
tendrils, to cling to the elm by which she wished to be supported.” This
was “talking a new language to her;” but, “conscious that she was not a
parasite-plant,” she was willing to encourage and foster the
luxuriancies of affection. Her confidence was entire; her love was
unbounded. Now, for the first time in her life, she gave a loose to all
the sensibilities of her nature.
Soon after the time I am now speaking of, her attachment to Mr. Imlay
gained a new link, by finding reason to suppose herself with child.
Their establishment at Paris, was however broken up almost as soon as
formed, by the circumstance of Mr. Imlay’s entering into business, urged
as he said, by the prospect of a family, and this being a favourable
crisis in French affairs for commercial speculations. The pursuits in
which he was engaged, led him in the month of September to Havre de
Grace, then called Havre Marat, probably to superintend the shipping of
goods, in which he was jointly engaged with some other person or
persons. Mary remained in the capital.
The solitude in which she was now left, proved an unexpected trial.
Domestic affections constituted the object upon which her heart was
fixed; and she early felt, with an inward grief, that Mr. Imlay “did not
attach those tender emotions round the idea of home,” which, every time
they recurred, dimmed her eyes with moisture. She had expected his
return from week to week, and from month to month; but a succession of
business still continued to detain him at Havre. At the same time the
sanguinary character which the government of France began every day more
decisively to assume, contributed to banish tranquillity from the first
months of her pregnancy. Before she left Neuilly, she happened one day
to enter Paris on foot (I believe, by the Place de Louis Quinze), when
an execution, attended with some peculiar aggravations, had just taken
place, and the blood of the guillotine appeared fresh upon the pavement.
The emotions of her soul burst forth in indignant exclamations, while a
prudent bystander warned her of her danger, and intreated her to hasten
and hide her discontents. She described to me, more than once, the
anguish she felt at hearing of the death of Brissot, Verginaud, and the
twenty deputies, as one of the most intolerable sensations she had ever
experienced.
Finding the return of Mr. Imlay continually postponed, she determined,
in January 1794, to join him at Havre. One motive that influenced her,
though, I believe, by no means the principal, was the growing cruelties
of Robespierre, and the desire she felt to be in any other place, rather
than the devoted city, in the midst of which they were perpetrated.
From January to September, Mr. Imlay and Mary lived together, with great
harmony, at Havre, where the child, with which she was pregnant, was
born, on the fourteenth of May, and named Frances, in remembrance of the
dear friend of her youth, whose image could never be erased from her
memory.
In September, Mr. Imlay took his departure from Havre for the port of
London. As this step was said to be necessary in the way of business, he
endeavoured to prevail upon Mary to quit Havre, and once more take up
her abode at Paris. Robespierre was now no more, and, of consequence,
the only objection she had to residing in the capital, was removed. Mr.
Imlay was already in London, before she undertook her journey, and it
proved the most fatiguing journey she ever made; the carriage, in which
she travelled, being overturned no less than four times between Havre
and Paris.
This absence, like that of the preceding year in which Mr. Imlay had
removed to Havre, was represented as an absence that was to have a short
duration. In two months he was once again to join her at Paris. It
proved however the prelude to an eternal separation. The agonies of such
a separation, or rather desertion, great as Mary would have found them
upon every supposition, were vastly increased, by the lingering method
in which it was effected, and the ambiguity that, for a long time, hung
upon it. This circumstance produced the effect, of holding her mind, by
force, as it were, to the most painful of all subjects, and not
suffering her to derive the just advantage from the energy and
elasticity of her character.
The procrastination of which I am speaking was however productive of one
advantage. It put off the evil day. She did not suspect the calamities
that awaited her, till the close of the year. She gained an additional
three months of comparative happiness. But she purchased it at a very
dear rate. Perhaps no human creature ever suffered greater misery, than
dyed the whole year 1795, in the life of this incomparable woman. It was
wasted in that sort of despair, to the sense of which the mind is
continually awakened, by a glimmering of fondly cherished, expiring
hope.
Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred, unhappy passion?
Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuate
itself. He does not love, who can resign this cherished sentiment,
without suffering some of the sharpest struggles that our nature is
capable of enduring. Add to this, Mary had fixed her heart upon this
chosen friend; and one of the last impressions a worthy mind can submit
to receive, is that of the worthlessness of the person upon whom it has
fixed all its esteem. Mary had struggled to entertain a favourable
opinion of human nature; she had unweariedly sought for a kindred mind,
in whose integrity and fidelity to take up her rest. Mr. Imlay undertook
to prove, in his letters written immediately after their complete
separation, that his conduct towards her was reconcilable to the
strictest rectitude; but undoubtedly Mary was of a different opinion.
Whatever the reader may decide in this respect, there is one sentiment
that, I believe, he will unhesitatingly admit: that of pity for the
mistake of the man, who, being in possession of such a friendship and
attachment as those of Mary, could hold them at a trivial price, and,
“like the base Indian, throw a pearl away, richer than all his
tribe.[2]”
Footnote 2:
A person, from whose society at this time Mary derived particular
gratification, was Archibald Hamilton Rowan, who had lately become a
fugitive from Ireland, in consequence of a political prosecution, and
in whom she found those qualities which were always eminently engaging
to her, great integrity of disposition, and great kindness of heart.
CHAP. VIII.
1795–1796.
In April 1795, Mary returned once more to London, being requested to do
so by Mr. Imlay, who even sent a servant to Paris to wait upon her in
the journey, before she could complete the necessary arrangements for
her departure. But, notwithstanding these favourable appearances, she
came to England with a heavy heart, not daring, after all the
uncertainties and anguish she had endured, to trust to the suggestions
of hope.
The gloomy forebodings of her mind, were but too faithfully verified.
Mr. Imlay had already formed another connection; as it is said, with a
young actress from a strolling company of players. His attentions
therefore to Mary were formal and constrained, and she probably had but
little of his society. This alteration could not escape her penetrating
glance. He ascribed it to pressure of business, and some pecuniary
embarrassments which, at that time, occurred to him; it was of little
consequence to Mary what was the cause. She saw, but too well, though
she strove not to see, that his affections were lost to her for ever.
It is impossible to imagine a period of greater pain and mortification
than Mary passed, for about seven weeks, from the sixteenth of April to
the sixth of June, in a furnished house that Mr. Imlay had provided for
her. She had come over to England, a country for which she, at this
time, expressed “a repugnance, that almost amounted to horror,” in
search of happiness. She feared that that happiness had altogether
escaped her; but she was encouraged by the eagerness and impatience
which Mr. Imlay at length seemed to manifest for her arrival. When she
saw him, all her fears were confirmed. What a picture was she capable of
forming to herself, of the overflowing kindness of a meeting, after an
interval of so much anguish and apprehension! A thousand images of this
sort were present to her burning imagination. It is in vain, on such
occasions, for reserve and reproach to endeavour to curb in the emotions
of an affectionate heart. But the hopes she nourished were speedily
blasted. Her reception by Mr. Imlay, was cold and embarrassed.
Discussions (“explanations” they were called) followed; cruel
explanations, that only added to the anguish of a heart already
overwhelmed in grief! They had small pretensions indeed to explicitness;
but they sufficiently told, that the case admitted not of remedy.
Mary was incapable of sustaining her equanimity in this pressing
emergency. “Love, dear, delusive!” as she expressed herself to a friend
some time afterwards, “rigorous reason had forced her to resign; and now
her rational prospects were blasted, just as she had learned to be
contented with rational enjoyments.” Thus situated, life became an
intolerable burthen. While she was absent from Mr. Imlay, she could talk
of purposes of separation and independence. But, now that they were in
the same house, she could not withhold herself from endeavours to revive
their mutual cordiality; and unsuccessful endeavours continually added
fuel to the fire that destroyed her. She formed a desperate purpose to
die.
This part of the story of Mary is involved in considerable obscurity. I
only know, that Mr. Imlay became acquainted with her purpose, at a
moment when he was uncertain whether or no it were already executed, and
that his feelings were roused by the intelligence. It was perhaps owing
to his activity and representations, that her life was, at this time,
saved. She determined to continue to exist. Actuated by this purpose,
she took a resolution, worthy both of the strength and affectionateness
of her mind. Mr. Imlay was involved in a question of considerable
difficulty, respecting a mercantile adventure in Norway. It seemed to
require the presence of some very judicious agent, to conduct the
business to its desired termination. Mary determined to make the voyage,
and take the business into her own hands. Such a voyage seemed the most
desireable thing to recruit her health, and, if possible, her spirits,
in the present crisis. It was also gratifying to her feelings, to be
employed in promoting the interest of a man, from whom she had
experienced such severe unkindness, but to whom she ardently desired to
be reconciled. The moment of desperation I have mentioned, occurred in
the close of May, and, in about a week after, she set out upon this new
expedition.
The narrative of this voyage is before the world, and perhaps a book of
travels that so irresistibly seizes on the heart, never, in any other
instance, found its way from the press. The occasional harshness and
ruggedness of character, that diversify her Vindication of the Rights of
Woman, here totally disappear. If ever there was a book calculated to
make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.
She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and
dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius
which commands all our admiration. Affliction had tempered her heart to
a softness almost more than human; and the gentleness of her spirit
seems precisely to accord with all the romance of unbounded attachment.
Thus softened and improved, thus fraught with imagination and
sensibility, with all, and more than all, “that youthful poets fancy,
when they love,” she returned to England, and, if he had so pleased, to
the arms of her former lover. Her return was hastened by the ambiguity,
to her apprehension, of Mr. Imlay’s conduct. He had promised to meet her
upon her return from Norway, probably at Hamburgh; and they were then to
pass some time in Switzerland. The style however of his letters to her
during her tour, was not such as to inspire confidence; and she wrote to
him very urgently, to explain himself, relative to the footing upon
which they were hereafter to stand to each other. In his answer, which
reached her at Hamburgh, he treated her questions as “extraordinary and
unnecessary,” and desired her to be at the pains to decide for herself.
Feeling herself unable to accept this as an explanation, she instantly
determined to sail for London by the very first opportunity, that she
might thus bring to a termination the suspence that preyed upon her
soul.
It was not long after her arrival in London in the commencement of
October, that she attained the certainty she sought. Mr. Imlay procured
her a lodging. But the neglect she experienced from him after she
entered it, flashed conviction upon her, in spite of his asseverations.
She made further enquiries, and at length was informed by a servant, of
the real state of the case. Under the immediate shock which the painful
certainty gave her, her first impulse was to repair to him at the
ready-furnished house he had provided for his new mistress. What was the
particular nature of their conference I am unable to relate. It is
sufficient to say that the wretchedness of the night which succeeded
this fatal discovery, impressed her with the feeling, that she would
sooner suffer a thousand deaths, than pass another of equal misery.
The agony of her mind determined her; and that determination gave her a
sort of desperate serenity. She resolved to plunge herself in the
Thames; and, not being satisfied with any spot nearer to London, she
took a boat, and rowed to Putney. Her first thought had led her to
Battersea-bridge, but she found it too public. It was night when she
arrived at Putney, and by that time had begun to rain with great
violence. The rain suggested to her the idea of walking up and down the
bridge, till her clothes were thoroughly drenched and heavy with the
wet, which she did for half an hour without meeting a human being. She
then leaped from the top of the bridge, but still seemed to find a
difficulty in sinking, which, she endeavoured to counteract by pressing
her clothes closely round her. After some time she became insensible;
but she always spoke of the pain she underwent as such, that, though she
could afterwards have determined upon almost any other species of
voluntary death, it would have been impossible for her to resolve upon
encountering the same sensations again. I am doubtful, whether this is
to be ascribed to the mere nature of suffocation, or was not owing to
the preternatural action of a desperate spirit.
After having been for a considerable time insensible, she was recovered
by the exertions of those by whom the body was found. She had fought,
with cool and deliberate firmness, to put a period to her existence, and
yet she lived to have every prospect of a long possession of enjoyment
and happiness. It is perhaps not an unfrequent case with suicides, that
we find reason to suppose, if they had survived their gloomy purpose,
that they would, at a subsequent period, have been considerably happy.
It arises indeed, in some measure, out of the very nature of a spirit of
self-destruction; which implies a degree of anguish, that the
constitution of the human mind will not suffer to remain long
undiminished. This is a serious reflection. Probably no man would
destroy himself from an impatience of present pain, if he felt a moral
certainty that there were years of enjoyment still in reserve for him.
It is perhaps a futile attempt, to think of reasoning with a man in that
state of mind which precedes suicide. Moral reasoning is nothing but the
awakening of certain feelings; and the feeling by which he is actuated,
is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with other
feelings, that should have force enough to counter-balance it. But, if
the prospect of future tranquillity and pleasure cannot be expected to
have much weight with a man under an immediate purpose of suicide, it is
so much the more to be wished, that men would impress their minds, in
their sober moments, with a conception, which, being rendered habitual,
seems to promise to act as a successful antidote in a paroxysm of
desperation.
The present situation of Mary, of necessity produced some further
intercourse between her and Mr. Imlay. He sent a physician to her; and
Mrs. Christie, at his desire, prevailed on her to remove to her house in
Finsbury-square. In the mean time Mr. Imlay assured her that his present
was merely a casual, sensual connection; and of course, fostered in her
mind the idea that it would be once more in her choice to live with him.
With whatever intention the idea was suggested, it was certainly
calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however
it produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have been
looked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind,
which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity of
bringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years to
roll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with an
extraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, in effect, as
follows: “If we are ever to live together again, it must be now. We meet
now, or we part for ever. You say, You cannot abruptly break off the
connection you have formed. It is unworthy of my courage and character,
to wait the uncertain issue of that connection. I am determined to come
to a decision. I consent then, for the present, to live with you, and
the woman to whom you have associated yourself. I think it important
that you should learn habitually to feel for your child the affection of
a father. But, if you reject this proposal, here we end. You are now
free. We will correspond no more. We will have no intercourse of any
kind. I will be to you as a person that is dead.”
The proposal she made, extraordinary and injudicious as it was, was at
first accepted; and Mr. Imlay took her accordingly, to look at a house
he was upon the point of hiring, that she might judge whether it was
calculated to please her. Upon second thoughts however he retracted his
concession.
In the following month, Mr. Imlay, and the woman with whom he was at
present connected, went to Paris, where they remained three months. Mary
had, previously to this, fixed herself in a lodging in Finsbury-place,
where, for some time, she saw scarcely any one but Mrs. Christie, for
the sake of whose neighbourhood she had chosen this situation;
“existing,” as she expressed it, “in a living tomb, and her life but an
exercise of fortitude, continually on the stretch.”
Thus circumstanced, it was unavoidable for her thoughts to brood upon a
passion, which all that she had suffered had not yet been able to
extinguish. Accordingly, as soon as Mr. Imlay returned to England, she
could not restrain herself, from making another effort, and desiring to
see him once more. “During his absence, affection had led her to make
numberless excuses for his conduct,” and she probably wished to believe
that his present connection was, as he represented it, purely of a
casual nature. To this application, she observes, that “he returned no
other answer, except declaring, with unjustifiable passion, that he
would not see her.”
This answer, though, at the moment, highly irritating to Mary, was not
the ultimate close of the affair. Mr. Christie was connected in business
with Mr. Imlay, at the same time that the house of Mr. Christie was the
only one at which Mary habitually visited. The consequence of this was,
that, when Mr. Imlay had been already more than a fortnight in town,
Mary called at Mr. Christie’s one evening, at a time when Mr. Imlay was
in the parlour. The room was full of company. Mrs. Christie heard Mary’s
voice in the passage, and hastened to her, to intreat her not to make
her appearance. Mary however was not to be controlled. She thought, as
she afterwards told me, that it was not consistent with conscious
rectitude, that she should shrink, as if abashed, from the presence of
one by whom she deemed herself injured. Her child was with her. She
entered; and, in a firm manner, immediately led up the child, now near
two years of age, to the knees of its father. He retired with Mary into
another apartment, and promised to dine with her at her lodging, I
believe, the next day.
In the interview which took place in consequence of this appointment, he
expressed himself to her in friendly terms, and in a manner calculated
to sooth her despair. Though he could conduct himself, when absent from
her, in a way which she censured as unfeeling; this species of sternness
constantly expired when he came into her presence. Mary was prepared at
this moment to catch at every phantom of happiness; and the gentleness
of his carriage, was to her as a sunbeam, awakening the hope of
returning day. For an instant she gave herself up to delusive visions;
and even after the period of delirium expired, she still dwelt, with an
aching eye, upon the air-built and unsubstantial prospect of a
reconciliation.
At his particular request, she retained the name of Imlay, which, a
short time before, he had seemed to dispute with her. “It was not,” as
she expresses herself in a letter to a friend, “for the world that she
did so—not in the least—but she was unwilling to cut the Gordian knot,
or tear herself away in appearance, when she could not in reality.”
The day after this interview, she set out upon a visit to the country,
where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March. It was, I
believe, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolary
communication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from her
mind, all remaining doubt as to the issue of the affair.
Mary was now aware that every demand of forbearance towards him, of duty
to her child, and even of indulgence to her own deep-rooted
predilection, was discharged. She determined to rouse herself, and cast
off for ever an attachment, which to her had been a spring of
inexhaustible bitterness. Her present residence among the scenes of
nature, was favourable to this purpose. She was at the house of an old
and intimate friend, a lady of the name of Cotton, whose partiality for
her was strong and sincere. Mrs. Cotton’s nearest neighbour was Sir
William East, baronet; and from the joint effect of the kindness of her
friend, and the hospitable and, distinguishing attentions of this
respectable family, she derived considerable benefit. She had been
amused and interested in her journey to Norway; but with this
difference, that, at that time, her mind perpetually returned with
trembling anxiety to conjectures respecting Mr. Imlay’s future conduct,
whereas now, with a lofty and undaunted spirit, she threw aside every
thought that recurred to him, while she felt herself called upon to make
one more effort for life and happiness.
Once after this, to my knowledge, she saw Mr. Imlay; probably, not long
after her return to town. They met by accident upon the New Road; he
alighted from his horse, and walked with her some time; and the
rencounter passed, as she assured me, without producing in her any
oppressive emotion.
Be it observed, by the way, and I may be supposed best to have known the
real state of the case, she never spoke of Mr. Imlay with acrimony, and
was displeased when any person, in her hearing, expressed contempt of
him. She was characterised by a strong sense of indignation; but her
emotions of this sort were short-lived, and in no long time subsided
into a dignified sereneness and equanimity.
The question of her connection with Mr. Imlay, as we have seen, was not
completely dismissed, till March 1796. But it is worthy to be observed,
that she did not, like ordinary persons under extreme anguish of mind,
suffer her understanding, in the mean time, to sink into listlessness
and debility. The most inapprehensive reader may conceive what was the
mental torture she endured, when he considers, that she was twice, with
an interval of four months, from the end of May to the beginning of
October, prompted by it to purposes of suicide. Yet in this period she
wrote her letters from Norway. Shortly after its expiration she prepared
them for the press, and they were published in the close of that year.
In January 1796, she finished the sketch of a comedy, which turns, in
the serious scenes, upon the incidents of her own story. It was offered
to both the winter-managers, and remained among her papers at the period
of her decease; but it appeared to me to be in so crude and imperfect a
state, that I judged it most respectful to her memory to commit it to
the flames. To understand this extraordinary degree of activity, we must
recollect however the entire solitude, in which most of her hours were
at that time consumed.
CHAP. IX.
1796–1797.
I am now led, by the progress of the story, to the last branch of her
history, the connection between Mary and myself. And this I relate with
the same simplicity that has pervaded every other part of my narrative.
If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, that could
impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. They could
have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are no
circumstance of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason,
could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that
needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon the
universe to judge them. An event of the most deplorable sort, his
awfully imposed silence upon the gabble of frivolity.
We renewed our acquaintance in January 1796, but with no particular
effect, except so far as sympathy in her anguish, added in my mind to
the respect I had always entertained for her talents. It was in the
close of that month that I read her Letters from Norway; and the
impression that book produced upon me has been already related.
It was on the fourteenth of April that I first saw her after her
excursion into Berkshire. On that day she called upon me in Somers Town,
she having, since her return, taken a lodging in Cumming-street,
Pentonville, at no great distance from the place of my habitation. From
that time our intimacy increased, by regular, but almost imperceptible
degrees.
The partiality we conceived for each other, was in that mode, which I
have always regarded as the purest and most refined style of love. It
grew with equal advances in the mind of each. It would have been
impossible for the most minute observer to have said who was before, and
who was after. One sex did not take the priority which long established
custom has awarded it, nor the other overstep that delicacy which is so
severely imposed. I am not conscious that either party can assume to
have been the agent or the patient, the toil-spreader or the prey, in
the affair. When, in the course of things, the disclosure came, there
was nothing, in a manner, for either party to disclose to the other.
In July 1796 I made an excursion into the county of Norfolk, which
occupied nearly the whole of that month. During this period Mary
removed, from Cumming-street, Pentonville, to Judd place West, which may
be considered as the extremity of Somers Town. In the former situation,
she had occupied a furnished lodging. She had meditated a tour to Italy
or Switzerland, and knew not how soon she should set out with that view.
Now however she felt herself reconciled to a longer abode in England,
probably without exactly knowing why this change had taken place in her
mind. She had a quantity of furniture locked up at a broker’s ever since
her residence in Store-street, and she now found it adviseable to bring
it into use. This circumstance occasioned her present removal.
The temporary separation attendant on my little journey, had its effect
on the mind of both parties. It gave a space for the maturing of
inclination. I believe that, during this interval, each furnished to the
other the principal topic of solitary and daily contemplation. Absence
bestows a refined and aërial delicacy upon affection, which it with
difficulty acquires in any other way. It seems to resemble the
communication of spirits, without the medium, or the impediment of this
earthly frame.
When we met again, we met with new pleasure, and, I may add, with a more
decisive preference for each other. It was however three weeks longer,
before the sentiment which trembled upon the tongue, burst from the lips
of either. There was, as I have already said, no period of throes and
resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting
into love. Previously to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured,
yet each felt a certain trembling anxiety to have assurance complete.
Mary rested her head upon the shoulder of her lover, hoping to find a
heart with which she might safely treasure her world of affection;
fearing to commit a mistake, yet, in spite of her melancholy experience,
fraught with that generous confidence, which, in a great soul, is never
extinguished. I had never loved till now; or, at least, had never
nourished a passion to the same growth, or met with an object so
consummately worthy.
We did not marry. It is difficult to recommend any thing to
indiscriminate adoption, contrary to the established rules and
prejudices of mankind; but certainly nothing can be so ridiculous upon
the face of it, or so contrary to the genuine march of sentiment, as to
require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that
which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most
sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment
when it has arrived at its climax.
There were however other reasons why we did not immediately marry. Mary
felt an entire conviction of the propriety of her conduct. It would be
absurd to suppose that, with a heart withered by desertion, she was not
right to give way to the emotions of kindness which our intimacy
produced, and to seek for that support in friendship and affection,
which could alone give pleasure to her heart, and peace to her
meditations. It was only about six months since she had resolutely
banished every thought of Mr. Imlay; but it was at least eighteen that
he ought to have been banished, and would have been banished, had it not
been for her scrupulous pertinacity in determining to leave no measure
untried to regain him. Add to this, that the laws of etiquette
ordinarily laid down in these cases, are essentially absurd, and that
the sentiments of the heart cannot submit to be directed by the rule and
the square. But Mary had an extreme aversion to be made the topic of
vulgar discussion; and, if there be any weakness in this, the dreadful
trials through which she had recently passed, may well plead in its
excuse. She felt that she had been too much, and too rudely spoken of,
in the former instance; and she could not resolve to do any thing that
should immediately revive that painful topic.
For myself, it is certain that I had for many years regarded marriage
with so well-grounded an apprehension, that, notwithstanding the
partiality for Mary that had taken possession of my soul, I should have
felt it very difficult, at least in the present stage of our
intercourse, to have resolved on such a measure. Thus, partly from
similar, and partly from different motives, we felt alike in this, as we
did perhaps in every other circumstance that related to our intercourse.
I have nothing further that I find it necessary to record, till the
commencement of April 1797. We then judged it proper to declare our
marriage, which had taken place a little before. The principal motive
for complying with this ceremony, was the circumstance of Mary’s being
in a state of pregnancy. She was unwilling, and perhaps with reason, to
incur that exclusion from the society of many valuable and excellent
individuals, which custom awards in cases of this sort. I should have
felt an extreme repugnance to the having caused her such an
inconvenience. And, after the experiment of seven months of as intimate
an intercourse as our respective modes of living would admit, there was
certainly less hazard to either, in the subjecting ourselves to those
consequences which the laws of England annex to the relations of husband
and wife. On the sixth of April we entered into possession of a house,
which had been taken by us in concert.
In this place I have a very curious circumstance to notice, which I am
happy to have occasion to mention, as it tends to expose certain
regulations of polished society, of which the absurdity vies with the
odiousness. Mary had long possessed the advantage of an acquaintance
with many persons of genius, and with others whom the effects of an
intercourse with elegant society, combined with a certain portion of
information and good sense, sufficed to render amusing companions. She
had lately extended the circle of her acquaintance in this respect; and
her mind, trembling between the opposite impressions of past anguish and
renovating tranquilly, found ease in this species of recreation.
Wherever Mary appeared, admiration attended upon her. She had always
displayed talents for conversation; but maturity of understanding, her
travels, her long residence in France, the discipline of affliction, and
the smiling, new-born peace which awaked a corresponding smile in her
animated countenance, inexpressibly increased them. The way in which the
story of Mr. Imlay was treated in these polite circles, was probably the
result of the partiality she excited. These elegant personages were
divided between their cautious adherence to forms, and the desire to
seek their own gratification. Mary made no secret of the nature of her
connection with Mr. Imlay; and in one instance, I well know, she put
herself to the trouble of explaining it to a person totally indifferent
to her, because he never failed to publish every thing he knew, and, she
was sure, would repeat her explanation to his numerous acquaintance. She
was of too proud and generous a spirit to stoop to hypocracy. These
persons however, in spite of all that could be said, persisted in
shutting their eyes, and pretending they took her for a married woman.
Observe the consequence of this! While she was, and constantly professed
to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the squeamish and
the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife, and that by a
marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered. Mary and myself,
ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements, supposed that our
marriage would place her upon a surer footing in the calendar of
polished society, than ever. But it forced these people to see the
truth, and to confess their belief of what they had carefully been told;
and this they could not forgive. Be it remarked, that the date of our
marriage had nothing to do with this, that question being never once
mentioned during this period. Mary indeed had, till now, retained the
name of Imlay, which had first been assumed from necessity in France;
but its being retained thus long, was purely from the aukwardness that
attends the introduction of a change, and not from an apprehension of
consequences of this sort. Her scrupulous explicitness as to the nature
of her situation, surely sufficed to make the name she bore perfectly
immaterial.
It is impossible to relate the particulars of such a story, but in the
language of contempt and ridicule. A serious reflection however upon the
whole, ought to awaken emotions of a different sort. Mary retained the
most numerous portion of her acquaintance, and the majority of those
whom she principally valued. It was only the supporters and the subjects
of the unprincipled manners of a court, that she lost. This however is
immaterial. The tendency of the proceeding strictly considered, and
uniformly acted upon, would have been to proscribe her from all valuable
society. And who was the person proscribed? The firmest champion, and,
as I strongly suspect, the greatest ornament her sex ever had to boast!
A woman, with sentiments as pure, as refined, and as delicate, as ever
inhabited a human heart! It is fit that such persons should stand by,
that we may have room enough for the dull and insolent dictators, the
gamblers and demireps of polished society!
Two of the persons, the loss of whose acquaintance Mary principally
regretted upon this occasion, were Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Siddons.—Their
acquaintance, it is perhaps fair to observe, is to be ranked among her
recent acquisitions. Mrs. Siddons, I am sure, regretted the necessity,
which she conceived to be imposed on her by the peculiarity of her
situation, to conform to the rules I have described. She is endowed with
that rich and generous sensibility, which should best enable its
possessor completely to feel the merits of her deceased friend. She very
truly observes, in a letter now before me, that the Travels in Norway
were read by no one, who was in possession of “more reciprocity of
feeling, or more deeply impressed with admiration of the writer’s
extraordinary powers.”
Mary felt a transitory pang, when the conviction reached her of so
unexpected a circumstance, that was rather exquisite. But she disdained
to sink under the injustice (as this ultimately was) of the supercilious
and the foolish, and presently shook off the impression of the first
surprize. That once subsided, I well know that the event was thought of,
with no emotions, but those of superiority to the injustice she
sustained; and was not of force enough, to diminish a happiness, which
seemed hourly to become more vigorous and firm.
I think I may venture to say, that no two persons ever found in each
other’s society, a satisfaction more pure and refined. What it was in
itself, can now only be known, in its full extent, to the survivor. But,
I believe, the serenity of her countenance, the increasing sweetness of
her manners, and that consciousness of enjoyment that seemed ambitious
that every one she saw should be happy as well as herself, were matters
of general observation to all her acquaintance. She had always
possessed, in an unparallelled degree, the art of communicating
happiness, and she was now in the constant and unlimited exercise of it.
She seemed to have attained that situation, which her disposition and
character imperiously demanded, but which she had never before attained;
and her understanding and her heart felt the benefit of it.
While we lived as near neighbours only, and before our last removal, her
mind had attained considerable tranquillity, and was visited but seldom
with those emotions of anguish, which had been but too familiar to her.
But the improvement in this respect, which accrued upon our removal and
establishment, was extremely obvious. She was a worshipper of domestic
life. She loved to observe the growth of affection between me and her
daughter, then three years of age, as well as my anxiety respecting the
child not yet born. Pregnancy itself, unequal as the decree of nature
seems to be in this respect, is the source of a thousand endearments. No
one knew better than Mary how to extract sentiments of exquisite
delight, from trifles, which a suspicious and formal wisdom would
scarcely deign to remark. A little ride into the country with myself and
the child, has sometimes produced a sort of opening of the heart, a
general expression of confidence and affectionate soul, a sort of
infantine, yet dignified endearment, which those who have felt may
understand, but which I should in vain attempt to pourtray.
In addition to our domestic pleasures, I was fortunate enough to
introduce her to some of my acquaintance of both sexes, to whom she
attached herself with all the ardour of approbation and friendship.
Ours was not an idle happiness, a paradise of selfish and transitory
pleasures. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to mention, that, influenced
by the ideas I had long entertained upon the subject of cohabitation, I
engaged an apartment, about twenty doors from our house in the Polygon,
Somers Town, which I designed for the purpose of my study and literary
occupations. Trifles however will be interesting to some readers, when
they relate to the last period of the life of such a person as Mary. I
will add therefore, that we were both of us of opinion, that it was
possible for two persons to be too uniformly in each other’s society.
Influenced by that opinion, it was my practice to repair to the
apartment I have mentioned as soon as I rose, and frequently not to make
my appearance in the Polygon, till the hour of dinner. We agreed in
condemning the notion, prevalent in many situations in life, that a man
and his wife cannot visit in mixed society, but in company with each
other; and we rather sought occasions of deviating from, than of
complying with, this rule. By these means, though, for the most part, we
spent the latter half of each day in one another’s society, yet we were
in no danger of satiety. We seemed to combine, in a considerable degree,
the novelty and lively sensation of a visit, with the more delicious and
heart-felt pleasures of domestic life.
Whatever may be thought, in other respects, of the plan we laid down to
ourselves, we probably derived a real advantage from it, as to the
constancy and uninterruptedness of our literary pursuits. Mary had a
variety of projects of this sort, for the exercise of her talents, and
the benefit of society; and, if she had lived, I believe the world would
have had very little reason to complain of any remission of her
industry. One of her projects, which has been already mentioned, was a
series of Letters on the Management of Infants. Though she had been for
some time digesting her ideas on this subject with a view to the press,
I have found comparatively nothing that she had committed to paper
respecting it. Another project, of longer standing, was of a series of
books for the instruction of children. A fragment she left in execution
of this project, is inserted in her Posthumous Works.
But the principal work, in which she was engaged for more than twelve
months before her decease, was a novel, entitled, The Wrongs of Woman. I
shall not stop here to explain the nature of the work, as so much of it
as was already written, is now given to the public. I shall only observe
that, impressed as she could not fail to be, with the consciousness of
her talents, she was desirous, in this instance, that they should effect
what they were capable of effecting. She was sensible how arduous a task
it is to produce a truly excellent novel; and she roused her faculties
to grapple with it. All her other works were produced with a rapidity,
that did not give her powers time fully to expand. But this was written
slowly and with mature consideration. She began it in several forms,
which she successively rejected, after they were considerably advanced.
She wrote many parts of the work again and again, and, when she had
finished what she intended for the first part, she felt herself more
urgently stimulated to revise and improve what she had written, than to
proceed, with constancy of application, in the parts that were to
follow.