vein of piety running through her arguments. Religion to her was as
important as it was to a Wesley or a Bishop Watts. The equality of
man, in her eyes, would have been of small importance had it not been
instituted by man’s Creator.... If women were without souls, they
would, notwithstanding their intellects, have no rights to vindicate.
If the Christian heaven were like the Mahometan paradise, then they
might indeed be looked upon as slaves and playthings of beings who are
worthy of a future life, and hence are infinitely their superiors.
But, though sincerely pious, she despised the meaningless forms of
religion as much as she did social conventionalities, and was as free
in denouncing them.
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary’s view of marriage.]
At this period a man whose name is now forgotten wished to make Mary
his wife. Her treatment of him was characteristic. He could not have
known her very well, or else he would not have been so foolish as to
represent his financial prosperity as an argument in his favor. For a
woman to sell herself for money, even when the bargain was sanctioned
by the marriage ceremony, was, in her opinion, the unpardonable sin.
Therefore, what he probably intended as an honor, she received as an
insult. She declared that it must henceforward end her acquaintance,
not only with him, but with the third person through whom the offer
was sent. Her letters in connection with this subject bear witness
to the sanctity she attached to the union of man and wife. Her view
in this relation cannot be too prominently brought forward, since,
by manifesting the purity of her principles, light is thrown on her
subsequent conduct. In her first burst of wrath she unbosomed herself
to her ever-sympathetic confidant, Mr. Johnson:
“Mr. ---- called on me just now. Pray did you know his motive for
calling? I think him impertinently officious. He had left the house
before it had occurred to me in the strong light it does now, or I
should have told him so. My poverty makes me proud. I will not be
insulted.... Pray tell him that I am offended, and do not wish to see
him again.... I can force my spirit to leave my body, but it shall
never bend to support that body. God of heaven, save thy child from
this living death! I scarcely know what I write. My hand trembles; I am
very sick--sick at heart.”
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her relations with Fuseli.]
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.... One of her principal inducements to this step [her visit to
France in 1792] 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.... 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.
WILLIAM GODWIN: ‘Memoir of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of
Woman,’ quoted in ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft,’ by E. R. Pennell.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: With Gilbert Imlay.]
The American community in Paris did not of course share the suspicion,
dislike and danger which were the lot of the English. One of these
Americans, Captain Gilbert Imlay, became acquainted with Mary in
the spring of 1793.... Imlay had entered into various commercial
speculations, of which the centre appears to have been Havre, and his
trade was with Norway and Sweden, presumably in timber, since that
industry had mainly attracted him in America. At the time of which we
speak he was successful in commerce, and he had considerable command
of money. The kindness he showed Mary Wollstonecraft disposed her to
look on him favorably; she soon gave him a very sincere affection, and
consented to become his wife.
I use this word deliberately, although no legal ceremony ever passed
between them. Her view was that a common affection was marriage, and
that the marriage tie should not bind after the death of love, if love
should die. It is probable, however, that only a series of untoward
circumstances made her act upon her opinions. A legal marriage with
Imlay was certainly difficult, apparently impossible. Her position as
a British subject was full of danger--a marriage would have forced
her openly to declare herself as such. It is a strong confirmation
of the view here taken to find that Madame de Staël, who, if any
one, knew the period of which we are speaking, makes a like fact the
sole obstacle to the marriage of Lord Nelvil and Madame D’Arbigny.
(‘Corinne, ou l’Italie,’ _vol. ii, p. 63_. 8th Edition. Paris: 1818.)
It may be doubted whether the ceremony, if any could have taken place,
would have been valid in England. Passing as Imlay’s wife, without such
preparatory declaration, her safety was assured, and as his wife she
was acknowledged by him. Charles Wollstonecraft wrote from Philadelphia
that he had seen a gentleman who knew his sister in Paris, and that he
was “informed that she is married to Captain Imlay, of this country.”
Long after the period at which we have now arrived, when Imlay’s
affection had ceased, and his desertion of Mary had practically begun,
he entrusted certain important business negotiations to her, and speaks
of her in a legal document as “Mary Imlay, my best friend and wife,”
a document which in many cases and countries would be considered as
constituting a marriage. She believed that his love, which was to her
sacred, would endure. No one can read her letters without seeing that
she considered herself, in the eyes of God and man, Imlay’s wife.
Religious as she was and with a strong moral sense, she yet made the
grand mistake of supposing that it is possible for one woman to undo
the consecrated custom of ages, to set herself in opposition to the
course of society, and not be crushed by it. And she made the no less
fatal mistake of judging Imlay by her own standard, and thinking that
he was as true, as impassioned, as self-denying as herself.
C. KEGAN PAUL: _Prefatory Memoir_ to ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters to
Imlay.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her farewell to Imlay.]
I never wanted but your heart--that gone, you have nothing more to
give. Had I only poverty to fear, I should not shrink from life.
Forgive me then, if I say, that I shall consider any direct or indirect
attempt to supply my necessities, as an insult which I have not
merited, and as rather done out of tenderness for your own reputation,
than for me.
My child may have to blush for her mother’s want of prudence, and may
lament that the rectitude of my heart made me above vulgar precautions;
but she shall not despise me for meanness. You are now perfectly free.
God bless you!
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: ‘Letters to Imlay.’ (London: November, 1795.)
* * * * *
[Sidenote: She meets Godwin.]
Godwin met her at the moment when she was deeply depressed by the
ingratitude of one utterly incapable of appreciating her excellence;
who had stolen her heart, and availed himself of her excessive and
thoughtless generosity and lofty independence of character, to plunge
her in difficulties and then desert her. Difficulties, worldly
difficulties, indeed, she set at nought, compared with her despair of
good, her confidence betrayed, and when once she could conquer the
misery that clung to her heart, she struggled cheerfully to meet the
poverty that was her inheritance, and to do her duty by her darling
child.
MARY SHELLEY: quoted in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and
Contemporaries.’
* * * * *
The partiality we conceived for each other was in that mode which I
have always considered 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 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. It
was friendship melting into love.
WILLIAM GODWIN: ‘Memoir of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of
Woman,’ quoted in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by
C. Kegan Paul.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary’s appearance.]
Like her mind, her beauty would appear to have ripened late. In
July, 1792, Mrs. Bishop says in a letter to Everina that Charles
[their brother] informs her “that Mrs. Wollstonecraft had grown quite
handsome.” [Mary “took the brevet rank of _Mrs._” after the issue of
‘The Rights of Woman,’ “which had made her in some degree a public
character.”] The grudging admission is more than confirmed by her
portrait by Opie, now in the possession of Sir Percy Shelley, which
was painted for Godwin during the brief period of her marriage; long,
therefore, after she had reached mature age, and when all the waves
and storms of her sorrows had gone over her. More than one print was
engraved of that portrait, in which is well preserved its tender,
wistful, childlike, pathetic beauty, with a look of pleading against
the hardness of the world, which I know in one only other face, that of
Beatrice Cenci. But those prints can give no notion of the complexion,
rich, full, healthy, vivid, of the clear brown eyes and masses of
brownish auburn hair. The fault of the face was that one eyelid
slightly drooped.
C. KEGAN PAUL: _Prefatory Memoir_ to ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters to
Imlay.’
* * * * *
Mr. Kegan Paul, in the spring of 1884, showed the author of this life a
lock of Mary Wollstonecraft’s hair. It is wonderfully soft in texture,
and in color a rich auburn, turning to gold in the sunlight.
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL: ‘Life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her conscientiousness.]
I return you the Italian manuscript; but do not hastily imagine that
I am indolent. I would not spare any labor to do my duty; that single
thought would solace me more than any pleasures the senses could enjoy.
I find I could not translate the manuscript well.... I cannot bear
to do anything I cannot do well; and I should lose time in the vain
attempt.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to Mr. Johnson_, in ‘Posthumous Works of
the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.’
London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72 St. Paul’s Churchyard; and G. G.
and J. Robinson, Paternoster Row, 1798.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Independent spirit.]
I long for a little peace and _independence_! Every obligation we
receive from our fellow-creatures is a new shackle, takes from our
native freedom and debases the mind, makes us mere earth-worms. I am
not fond of grovelling!
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to Mr. Johnson_, 1788, in ‘Posthumous
Works.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Craving for love.]
I have dearly paid for one conviction. Love, in some minds, is an
affair of sentiment, arising from the same delicacy of perception (or
taste) as renders them alive to the beauties of nature, poetry, etc.,
alive to the charms of those evanescent graces that are, as it were,
impalpable--they must be felt, they cannot be described. Love is a want
of my heart.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: ‘Letters to Imlay.’
* * * * *
I can not live without loving my fellow-creatures; nor can I love them
without discovering some merit.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to Mr. Johnson_, in ‘Posthumous Works.’
* * * * *
It is ... an affection for the whole human race that makes my pen dart
rapidly along to support what I believe to be the cause of virtue.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Dedication_ of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Tenderness.]
I will own to you that, feeling extreme tenderness for my little girl,
I grow sad very often when I am playing with her, that you are not here
to observe with me how her mind unfolds, and her little heart becomes
attached! These appear to me to be true pleasures, and still you suffer
them to escape you.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: ‘Letters to Imlay.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Inconsistency.]
She was, I have been told by an intimate friend, very pretty and
feminine in manners and person; much attached to those very observances
she decries in her works; so that if any gentleman did not fly to open
the door as she approached it, or take up the handkerchief she dropped,
she showered on him the full weight of reproach and displeasure; an
inconsistency she would have doubtless despised in a disciple.
MRS. ELWOOD (quoting a communication from “a well-known living
writer”): ‘Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England.’ London: Henry
Colburn, 1843.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Irritability]
Previous to your departure, I requested you not to torment me by
leaving the day of your return undecided. But whatever tenderness you
took away with you seems to have evaporated on the journey.... In
short, your being so late to-night, and the chance of your not coming,
shows so little consideration, that unless you suppose me to be a stick
or a stone, you must have forgot to think, as well as to feel, since
you have been on the wing.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (GODWIN): _Letter to Wm. Godwin_, in ‘William
Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Religious spirit.]
It gives me the sincerest satisfaction to find that you look for
comfort where only it is to be met with, and that Being in whom you
trust will not desert you. Be not cast down, while we are struggling
with care, life slips away, and, through the assistance of Divine
grace, we are obtaining habits of virtue that will enable us to relish
those joys that we cannot now form any idea of.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to George Blood_, 1785.
* * * * *
[After Fanny’s death:] Could I not look for comfort where only ’tis
to be found, I should have been mad before this, but I feel that I am
supported by that Being who alone can heal a wounded spirit.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Letter to her sister_, 1785. In ‘William Godwin,
His Friends and Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.
* * * * *
Love to man leads to devotion--grand and sublime images strike the
imagination--God is seen in every floating cloud, and comes from
the misty mountain to receive the noblest homage of an intelligent
creature--praise. How solemn is the moment, when all affections and
remembrances fade before the sublime admiration which the wisdom and
goodness of God inspires, when he is worshipped in a _temple not made
with hands_, and the world seems to contain only the mind that formed,
and the mind that contemplates it! These are not the weak responses of
ceremonial devotion.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Essay on Poetry, and our Relish for the Beauties
of Nature_, in ‘Posthumous Works.’
* * * * *
Few can walk alone. The staff of Christianity is the necessary support
of human weakness. An acquaintance with the nature of man and virtue,
with just sentiments on the attributes, would be sufficient, without a
voice from heaven, to lead some to virtue, but not the mob.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: _Hints_, in ‘Posthumous Works.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her character sketched by her daughter.]
Mary Wollstonecraft was one of those beings who appear once perhaps
in a generation, to gild humanity with a ray which no difference
of opinion nor chance of circumstances can cloud. Her genius was
undeniable. She had been bred in the hard school of adversity, and
having experienced the sorrows entailed on the poor and the oppressed,
an earnest desire was kindled within her to diminish these sorrows.
Her sound understanding, her intrepidity, her sensibility, and eager
sympathy, stamped all her writings with force and truth, and endowed
them with a tender charm that enchants while it enlightens. She was
one whom all loved who had ever seen her.... “Open as day to melting
charity,” with a heart brimful of generous affection, yearning for
sympathy, she had fallen on evil days, and her life had been one course
of hardship, poverty, lonely struggle, and bitter disappointment.
MARY SHELLEY: quoted in ‘William Godwin, His Friends and
Contemporaries,’ by C. Kegan Paul.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Appearance.]
Of all the lions or _literati_ I have seen here, Mary Imlay’s
countenance is the best, infinitely the best: the only fault in it
is an expression somewhat similar to what the prints of Horne Tooke
display--an expression indicating superiority; not haughtiness, not
sarcasm, in Mary Imlay, but still it is unpleasant. Her eyes are light
brown, and although the lid of one of them is affected by a little
paralysis, they are the most meaning I ever saw.... As for Godwin
himself, he has large, noble eyes, and a _nose_--oh, most abominable
nose! Language is not vituperatious enough to describe the effect of
its downward elongation.
ROBERT SOUTHEY: _Letter to J. Cottle, March, 1797_, in the former’s
‘Life and Correspondence,’ edited by Rev. C. C. Southey, M. A. London:
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mary and Godwin.]
Coleridge asked me if I had ever seen Mary Wollstonecraft, and I said,
I had once for a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off
Godwin’s objection to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy
air. He replied that “this was only one instance of the ascendency
which people of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.”...
He had a great idea of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s powers of conversation;
none at all of her talents for book-making.
WILLIAM HAZLITT: _My First Acquaintance with Poets_, in ‘Sketches and
Essays,’ edited by Wm. Carew Hazlitt. London: Bell and Daldy, 1869.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Their married life.]
And now Mary Wollstonecraft had a season of real calm in her stormy
life. Godwin for once only in his life was stirred by a real passion,
and his admiration for his wife equalled his affection. The very
slight clouds which arose now and then were of a transient character,
and sprang from Mary Wollstonecraft’s excessive sensitiveness and
eager quickness of temper. These were, perhaps, occasionally tried by
Godwin’s confirmed bachelor habits, and also by the fact that he took
_au pied de la lettre_ all that she had said about the independence
of women, when in truth she leant a good deal on the aid of others.
In some respects she was content to acquiesce in his bachelor ways;
they adopted a singular device for their uninterrupted student life.
Godwin’s strong view of the possibility that people may weary of being
always together, led him to take rooms in a house about twenty doors
from that in the Polygon, Somers Town, which was their joint home. To
this study he repaired as soon as he rose in the morning, rarely even
breakfasting at the Polygon, and here also he often slept. Each was
engaged in his and her own literary occupations, and they seldom met,
unless they walked out together, till dinner-time each day.
C. KEGAN PAUL: _Prefatory Memoir_ to ‘Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters to
Imlay.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: An ‘Alecto.’]
Adieu, thou excellent woman! thou reverse of that hyena in petticoats,
Mrs. Wollstonecraft; who to this day discharges her ink and gall on
Maria Antoinette, whose unparalleled sufferings have not yet stanched
that Alecto’s blazing ferocity.
HORACE WALPOLE: _Letters to Hannah More_, 1795, in the former’s
‘Letters,’ edited by Peter Cunningham. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1861.
* * * * *
Thank Providence for the tranquillity and happiness we enjoy in this
country, in spite of the philosophizing serpents we have in our bosom,
the Paines, the Tookes, and the Wollstonecrafts.
HORACE WALPOLE: _Letter to Hannah More_, 1792, in ‘Memoirs of Hannah
More,’ by W. Roberts. New York: Harper & Bros., 1834.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: An opposite view.]
I saw her three or four times when she was Mrs. Godwin, and never saw
a woman who would have been better fitted to do honor to her sex, if
she had not fallen on evil times, and into evil hands. But it is hardly
possible for any one to conceive what those times were, who has not
lived in them.
ROBERT SOUTHEY: ‘Correspondence with Caroline Bowles.’ Dublin: Hodges,
Figgis & Co. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1881.
* * * * *
Southey is said to have had her portrait hanging in his study; and he
wrote of her as one
“Who among women left no equal mind
When from the world she passed; and I could weep
To think that _she_ is to the grave gone down!”
FOOTNOTES:
[4] While denying herself gowns and wine-glasses Mary was, however,
generously assisting her father, brothers and sisters.
MARY W. GODWIN (SHELLEY).
1797-1851.
MARY W. GODWIN (SHELLEY).
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on the 30th of August, 1797. “Two
angels, one of Life and one of Death,” together entered the door of
William Godwin. Long after, Shelley wrote:
“They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,
Of glorious parents thou aspiring child:
I wonder not--for One then left this earth
Whose life was like a setting planet mild,
Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled
Of its departing glory.”
A spirit akin to that of Greek tragedy informs the double story of
mother and daughter. Mary Godwin inherited her fate. The peculiar
reverence in which she must necessarily have held the mother who had
died to give her life, the implicit confidence with which she must
have received that mother’s doctrines, as set forth in her life and
preserved in her books,--this was the strongest determining influence
in the life of the girl, Mary Godwin. When, at the age of seventeen,
she unhesitatingly plighted her faith to a man already bound by the
laws of society to another, there is significance in the fact that
their hands were clasped over her mother’s grave--the spot which a
woman of opposite traditions must have shunned with shame at such a
moment. That sacred place seemed fittest for the strange betrothal of
Mary Godwin, who had no doubt that the mother who there slept would
have smiled upon the lovers. Censure of this step has properly no place
in a sketch of Mary Godwin Shelley; the entire responsibility rests
with Shelley and her parents; her action was simply an inevitable
result.
From July 28, 1814, till the fatal 8th of the same month in 1822, her
life was one with Shelley’s. Immeasurably greater as he was, we may yet
claim for his wife that she influenced his genius in one respect and
in one instance: it was her persuasion that led him, in ‘The Cenci,’
closer to realities, and she regarded that work as a promise of the
warmer grasp of human interests on his part that might at last “touch
the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen.”
She was formally married to Shelley in 1816, on the death of Harriet
Shelley. Robbed of her husband by death in 1822, Mary returned to
London in the following year for the sake of Percy, her only surviving
child. Her own wishes would have led her to remain in Italy. For some
time she resided with her father, but subsequently removed to Kentish
Town, and then to Harrow, that she might be near her boy at school.
FRANKENSTEIN had been published in 1818; and Godwin saw in it that
power which induced him to advise her, in this her time of need, to
turn to literature as a resource. She worked hard with her pen to
meet the expenses of her son’s education, and also contributed to the
support of Godwin, now old and failing. She sent her father, at a time
when he was greatly embarrassed, her novel _Valperga_ in MS., begging
him to publish it and use the proceeds as his own. The generosity of
this gift reminds us of her dead mother. This novel was published in
1823; _The Last Man_, in 1824; _Perkin Warbeck_, in 1830; _Lodore_,
in 1835; and _Falkner_, in 1837. Mrs. Shelley also wrote most of the
Italian and Spanish lives in Lardner’s Encyclopedia, and two volumes of
travels entitled _Rambles in Germany and Italy_; and edited (1839-40)
Shelley’s works and his letters, by far her most important service
to literature. Her son became Sir Percy Shelley on the death of his
grandfather in 1844.
On the 21st of February, 1851, Mary Shelley closed a life that long
had “crept on a broken wing.” We may believe that she rejoiced at the
coming of the hour, when, in Shelley’s own words, “Life should no more
divide what death could join together.”