WILLIAM GODWIN.
William Godwin was one of those with whom Mary renewed her acquaintance.
The impression they now made on each other was very different from that
which they had received in the days when she was still known as Mrs.
Wollstonecraft. Since he was no less famous than she, and since it was
his good fortune to make the last year of her life happy, and by his love
to compensate her for her first wretched experience, a brief sketch of
his life, his character, and his work is here necessary. It is only by
knowing what manner of man he was, and what standard of conduct he
deduced from his philosophy, that his relations to her can be fairly
understood.
William Godwin, the seventh child of thirteen, was the son of a
Dissenting minister, and was born March 3, 1756, at Wisbeach,
Cambridgeshire. He came on both sides of respectable middle-class
families. His father's father and brother had both been clergymen, the
one a Methodist preacher, the other a Dissenter. His father was a man of
but little learning, whose strongest feeling was disapprobation of the
Church of England, and whose "creed was so puritanical that he considered
the fondling of a cat a profanation of the Lord's day." Mrs. Godwin in
her earlier years was gay, too much so for the wife of a minister, some
people thought, but after her husband's death she joined a Methodistical
sect, and her piety in the end grew into fanaticism. A Miss Godwin, a
cousin, who lived with the family, had perhaps the greatest influence
over William Godwin when he was a mere child. She was not without
literary culture, and through her he learnt something of books. But her
religious principles were severely Calvinistic, and these she impressed
upon him at the same time.
His first school-mistress was an old woman, who was concerned chiefly
with his soul, and who gave him, before he had completed his eighth year,
an intimate knowledge of the Bible. The inevitable consequence of this
training was that religion became his first thought. Thanks to his
cousin, however, and to his natural cleverness and ambition, he was saved
from bigotry by his interest in wider subjects, though they were for many
years secondary considerations. From an early age he had, as he says of
himself, developed an insatiable curiosity and love of distinction. One
of his later tutors was Mr. Samuel Newton, an Independent minister and a
follower of Sandeman, "a celebrated north country apostle, who, after
Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a
scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin."
Godwin remained some years with him, and was so far influenced by his
doctrines, that when, later, he sought admission into Homerton Academy, a
Dissenting institution, he was refused, because he seemed to the
authorities to show signs of Sandemanianism. But he had no difficulty in
entering Hoxton College; and here, in his twenty-third year, he finished
his religious and secular education. During these years his leading
inspiration had been a thirst after knowledge and truth.
This was in 1778. Upon leaving college he began his career as minister,
but he was never very successful, and before long his religious views
were much modified. His search for truth led him in a direction in which
he had least expected to go. In 1781, when he was fulfilling the duties
of his profession at Stowmarket, he began to read the French
philosophers, and by them his faith in Christianity was seriously shaken.
1783 was the last year in which he appeared in the pulpit. He gave up the
office and went to London, where he supported himself by writing. In the
course of a short time he dropped the title of Reverend and emancipated
himself entirely from his old religious associations.
His first literary work was the "Life of Lord Chatham," and this was
followed by a defence of the coalition of 1783. He then obtained regular
employment on the "English Review," published by Murray in Fleet Street,
wrote several novels, and became a contributor to the "Political Herald."
He was entirely dependent upon his writings, which fact accounts for the
variety displayed in them. His chief interest was, however, in politics.
He was a Liberal of the most pronounced type, and his articles soon
attracted the attention of the Whigs. His services to that party were
considered so valuable that when the above-mentioned paper perished, Fox,
through Sheridan, proposed to Godwin that he should edit it, the whole
expense to be paid from a fund set aside for just such purposes. But
Godwin declined. By accepting he would have sacrificed his independence
and have become their mouthpiece, and he was not willing to sell himself.
He seems at one time to have been ambitious to be a Member of Parliament,
and records with evident satisfaction Sheridan's remark to him: "You
ought to be in Parliament." But his integrity again proved a
stumbling-block. He could not reconcile himself to the subterfuges which
Whigs as well as Tories silently countenanced. Honesty was his besetting
quality quite as much as it was Mary's. He was unfit to take an active
part in politics; his sphere of work was speculative.
He was the foremost among the devoted adherents in England of Rousseau,
Helvetius, and the other Frenchmen of their school. He was one of the
"French Revolutionists," so called because of their sympathy with the
French apostles of liberty and equality; and at their meetings he met
such men as Price, Holcroft, Earl Stanhope, Horne Tooke, Geddes, all of
whom considered themselves fortunate in having his co-operation. Thomas
Paine was one of his intimate acquaintances; and the "Rights of Man" was
submitted to him, to receive his somewhat qualified praise, before it was
published. He was one of the leading spirits in developing the radicalism
of his time, and thus in preparing the way for that of the present day;
and the influence of his writings over men of his and the next generation
was enormous. Indeed, it can hardly now be measured, since much which he
wrote, being unsigned and published in papers and periodicals, has been
lost.
He was always on the alert in political matters, ready to seize every
opportunity to do good and to promote the cause of freedom. He was, in a
word, one of that large army of pilgrims whose ambition is to "make
whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight." In 1791 he wrote an
anonymous letter to Fox, in which he advanced the sentiments to which he
later gave expression in his "Political Justice," his principal work. In
his autobiographical notes he explains:--
"Mr. Fox, in the debate on the bill for giving a new constitution
to Canada, had said that he would not be the man to propose the
abolition of a House of Lords in a country where such a power was
already established; but as little would he be the man to recommend
the introduction of such a power where it was not. This was by no
means the only public indication he had shown how deeply he had
drank of the spirit of the French Revolution. The object of the
above-mentioned letters [that is, his own to Fox, and one written
by Holcroft to Sheridan] was to excite these two illustrious men to
persevere gravely and inflexibly in the career on which they had
entered. I was strongly impressed with the sentiment that in the
then existing circumstances of England and of Europe, great and
happy improvements might be achieved under such auspices without
anarchy and confusion. I believed that important changes must
arise, and I was inexpressibly anxious that such changes should be
effected under the conduct of the best and most competent leaders."
This brief note explains at once the two leading doctrines of his
philosophy: the necessity of change, and the equal importance of
moderation in effecting it. His political creed was, paradoxical as this
may seem, the outcome of his religious education. He had long since given
up the actual faith in which he was born and trained; after going through
successive stages of Sandemanianism, Deism, and Socinianism, he had, in
1787, become a "complete unbeliever;" but he never entirely outlived its
influence. This was of a twofold nature. It taught him to question the
sanctity of established institutions, and it crushed in him, even if it
did not wholly eradicate, strong passion and emotional demonstration. No
man in England was as thorough a radical as he. Paine's or Holcroft's
conceptions of human freedom were like forms of slavery compared to his
broad, exhaustive theories. But, on the other hand, there never was a
more earnest advocate of moderation. Burke and the French royalists could
not have been more eloquent opponents of violent measures of reform than
he was. Towards the end of the last century it was easier for a
Dissenter, who had already overthrown one barrier, than for the orthodox,
to rebel against existing social and political laws and customs. From the
belief that freedom from the authority of the Church of England was
necessary to true piety, it was but a step to the larger faith that
freedom from the restraints of government and society was indispensable
to virtue. Godwin, after he ceased to be a religious, became a political
and social Dissenter. In his zeal for the liberty of humanity, he
contended for nothing less than the destruction of all human laws. French
Republicans demanded the simplest possible form of government. But
Godwin, outstripping them, declared there should be none whatsoever. "It
may seem strange," Mrs. Shelley writes, "that any one should, in the
sincerity of his heart, believe that no vice could exist with perfect
freedom, but my father did; it was the very basis of his system, the very
keystone of the arch of justice, by which he desired to knit together the
whole human family."
His ultra-radicalism led him to some wise and reasonable, and other
strange and startling conclusions, and these he set before the public in
his "Political Justice," the first book he published under his own name.
It appeared in 1793, and immediately created a great sensation. It must
be ranked as one of the principal factors in the development of English
thought. A short explanation of the doctrines embodied in it will throw
important light on his subsequent relations to Mary, as well as on his
own character. The foundation of the arguments he advances in this book
is his belief in the efficacy of reason in the individual as a guide to
conduct. He thought that, if each human being were free to act as he
chose, he would be sure to act for the best; for, according to him,
instincts do not exist. He makes no allowance for the influence of the
past in forming the present, ignoring the laws of heredity. A man's
character is formed by the nature of his surroundings. Virtue and vice
are the result not of innate tendencies, but of external circumstances.
When these are perfected, evil will necessarily disappear from the world.
He had so successfully subordinated his own emotions, that in his
philosophical system he calmly ignores passion as a mainspring of human
activity. This is exemplified by the rule he lays down for the regulation
of a man's conduct to his fellow-beings. He must always measure their
respective worth, and not the strength of his affection for them, even if
the individuals concerned be his near relations. Supposing, for example,
he had to choose between saving the life of a Fenelon and that of a
chambermaid, he must select the former because of his superior talents,
even though the latter should be his mother or his wife. Affections are
to be forgotten in the calculations of reason. Godwin's faith in the
supremacy of the intellect was not lessened because he was forced to
admit that men often do not act reasonably. This is, he explains, because
they are without knowledge of the absolute truth. Show them what is true
or right, and all, even the most abandoned criminal, will give up what is
false or wrong. Logic is the means by which the regeneration of mankind
is to be effected. Reason is the dynamite by which the monopoly of rank
is to be shattered. "Could Godwin," Leslie Stephen very cleverly says,
"have caught Pitt, or George III., or Mrs. Brownrigg, and subjected them
to a Socratic cross-examination, he could have restored them to the paths
of virtue, as he would have corrected an error in a little boy's sums."
Men, Godwin taught, can never know the truth so long as human laws exist;
because when subject to any control, good, bad, or indifferent, they are
not free to reason, and hence their actions are deprived of their only
legitimate inspiration. Arguing from these premises, his belief in the
necessity of the abolition of all forms of government, political and
social, and his discouragement of the acquirement of habits, were
perfectly logical. Had he confined himself to general terms in expressing
his convictions, his conclusions would not have been so startling.
Englishmen were becoming accustomed to theories of reform. But always
just and uncompromising, he unhesitatingly defined particular instances
by which he illustrated the truth of his teaching, thus making the ends
he hoped to achieve clearer to his readers. He boldly advanced the
substitution of an appeal to reason for punishment in the treatment of
criminals, and this at a time when such a doctrine was considered
treason. He declared that any article of property justly belongs to those
who most want it, "or to whom the possession of it will be most
beneficial." But his objection to the marriage law seemed the most
glaringly immoral part of his philosophy. He assailed theoretically an
institution for which Mary Wollstonecraft had practically shown her
disapprobation. His reasoning in this regard is curious, and reveals the
little importance he attached to passion. He disapproved of the marriage
tie because he thought that two people who are bound together by it are
not at liberty to follow the dictates of their own minds, and hence are
not acting in accordance with pure reason. Free love or a system of
voluntary divorce would be less immoral, because in either of these cases
men and women would be self-ruled, and therefore could be relied upon to
do what is right. Besides, according to his ideal of justice in the
matter of property, a man or a woman belongs to whomsoever most needs him
or her, irrespective of any relations already formed. It follows
naturally that the children born in a community where these ideas are
adopted are to be educated by the state, and must not be subjected to
rules or discipline, but taught from the beginning to regulate their
conduct by the light of reason. Godwin, like so many other philosophers
of his times, based his arguments upon abstract principles, and failed to
seek concrete proofs. He built up a structure beautiful in theory, but
impossible in real life until man develops into a very much higher order
of being. An enthusiast, despite his calmness, he looked forward to the
time when death would be an evil of the past, and when no new men would
be born into the world. He believed that the day would come when "there
will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice, as it is called,
and no government." There will be "neither disease, anguish, melancholy,
nor resentment. Every man will seek with ineffable ardor the good of
all." Human optimism could go no farther.
It is not surprising that his book made a stir in the political world.
None of the Revolutionists had delivered themselves of such
ultra-revolutionary sentiments. Men had been accused of high treason for
much more moderate views. Perhaps it was their very extravagance that
saved him, though he accounted for it in another way. "I have
frequently," Mrs. Shelley explains, "heard my father say that 'Political
Justice' escaped prosecution from the reason that it appeared in a form
too expensive for general acquisition. Pitt observed, when the question
was debated in the Privy Council, that 'a three-guinea book could never
do much harm among those who had not three shillings to spare.'" Godwin
purposely published his work in this expensive form because he knew that
by so doing he would keep it from the multitude, whose passions he would
have been the last to arouse or to stimulate. He only wished it to be
studied by men too enlightened to encourage abrupt innovation. _Festina
lente_ was his motto. The success of the book, however, went beyond his
expectations and perhaps his intentions. Three editions were issued in as
many years. Among the class of readers to whom he immediately appealed,
the verdict passed upon it varied. Dr. Priestley thought it very
original, and that it would probably prove useful, though its fundamental
principles were too pure to be practical. Horne Tooke pronounced it a bad
book, calculated to do harm. The Rev. Samuel Newton's vigorous
disapproval of it caused a final breach between Godwin and his old tutor.
As a rule, the Liberal party accepted it as the work of inspiration, and
the conservative condemned it as the outcome of atheism and political
rebellion. When Godwin, after its publication, made a trip into
Warwickshire to stay with Dr. Parr, he found that his fame had preceded
him. He was known to the reading public in the counties as well as in the
capital, and he was everywhere received with curiosity and kindness. To
no one whom he met was he a stranger.
His novel, "Caleb Williams," established his literary reputation. Its
success almost realized Mrs. Inchbald's prediction that "fine ladies,
milliners, mantua-makers, and boarding-school girls will love to tremble
over it, and that men of taste and judgment will admire the superior
talents, the _incessant_ energy of mind you have evinced." He was at this
time one of the most conspicuous and most talked-about men in London. He
counted among his friends and acquaintances all the distinguished men and
women of the day; among whom he was in great demand, notwithstanding the
fact that he talked neither much nor well, and that not even the most
brilliant conversation could prevent his taking short naps when in
company. But he was extremely fond of social pleasures. His philosophy
had made him neither an ascetic nor an anchorite. He worked for only
three or four hours each day; and the rest of the time was given up to
reading, to visiting, and to the theatre, he being particularly attracted
to the latter form of amusement. His reading was as omnivorous as that of
Lord Macaulay. Metaphysics, poetry, novels, were all grist for his mill.
This general interest saved him from becoming that greatest of all bores,
a man with but one idea.
He was as cold in his conduct as in his philosophy. He maintained in the
various relations of life an imperturbable calmness. But it was not that
of a Goethe, who knows how to harmonize passion and intellect; it was
that of a man in whom the former is an unknown quantity. He was always
methodical in his work. Great as his interest in his subject might be,
his ardor was held within bounds. There were no long vigils spent
wrestling with thought, or days and weeks passed alone and locked in his
study that nothing might interfere with the flow of ideas, unless, as
happened occasionally, he was working against time. He wrote from nine
till one, and then, when he found his brain confused by this amount of
labor, he readily reduced the number of his working hours. Literary
composition was undertaken by him with the same placidity with which
another man might devote himself to book-keeping. His moral code was
characterized by the same cool calculation. He had early decided that
usefulness to his fellow-creatures was the only thing which made life
worth living. It is doubtful whether any other human being would have set
about fulfilling this object as he did. He writes of himself:--
"No man could be more desirous than I was of adopting a practice
conformable to my principles, as far as I could do so without
affording reasonable ground of offence to any other person. I was
anxious not to spend a penny on myself which I did not imagine
calculated to render me a more capable servant of the public; and
as I was averse to the expenditure of money, so I was not inclined
to earn it but in small portions. I considered the disbursement of
money for the benefit of others as a very difficult problem, which
he who has the possession of it is bound to solve in the best
manner he can, but which affords small encouragement to any one to
acquire it who has it not. The plan, therefore, I resolved on was
leisure,--a leisure to be employed in deliberate composition, and
in the pursuit of such attainments as afforded me the most promise
to render me useful. For years I scarcely did anything at home or
abroad without the inquiry being uppermost in my mind whether I
could be better employed for general benefit."
He was equally uncompromising in his friendships. His feelings towards
his friends were always ruled by his sense of justice. He was the first
to come forward with substantial help in their hour of need, but he was
also the first to tell them the truth, even though it might be
unpleasant, when he thought it his duty to do so. His unselfishness is
shown in his conduct during the famous state trials, in which Holcroft,
his most intimate friend, Horne Tooke, and several other highly prized
acquaintances, were accused of high treason. His boldly avowed
revolutionary principles made him a marked man, but he did all that was
in his power to defend them. He expressed in the columns of the "Morning
Chronicle" his unqualified opinion of the atrocity of the proceedings
against them; and throughout the trials he stood by the side of the
prisoners, though by so doing he ran the risk of being arrested with
them. But if his friends asked his assistance when it did not seem to him
that they deserved it, he was as fearless in withholding it. A Jew
money-lender, John King by name, at whose house he dined frequently, was
arrested on some charge connected with his business. He appealed to
Godwin to appear in court and give evidence in his favor; whereupon the
latter wrote to him, not only declining, but forcibly explaining that he
declined because he could not conscientiously attest to his, the Jew's,
moral character. There was no ill-will on his part, and he continued to
dine amicably with King. Engrossed as he was with his own work, he could
still find time to read a manuscript for Mrs. Inchbald, or a play for
Holcroft, but when he did so, he was very plain-spoken in pointing out
their faults. He incurred the former's displeasure by correcting some
grammatical errors in a story she had submitted to him, and he deeply
wounded the latter by his unmerciful abuse of the "Lawyer." "You come
with a sledge-hammer of criticism," Holcroft said to him on this
occasion, "describe it [the play] as absolutely contemptible, tell me it
must be damned, or, if it should escape, that it cannot survive five
nights." Yet his affection for Holcroft was unwavering. The conflicting
results to which his honesty sometimes led are strikingly set forth in
his relations to Thomas Cooper, a distant cousin, who at one time lived
with him as pupil. He studied attentively the boy's character, and did
his utmost to treat him gently and kindly, but, on the other hand, he
expressed in his presence his opinion of him in language harsh enough to
justify his pupil's indignation. It is more than probable that this same
frankness was one of the causes of his many quarrels--_demeles_, he calls
them in his diary--with his most devoted friends. His sincerity, however,
invariably triumphed, and these were always mere passing storms.
He was passionless even in relations which usually arouse warmth in the
most phlegmatic natures. He was a good son and brother, yet so
undemonstrative that his manner passed at times for indifference. Though
in beliefs and sentiments he had drifted far apart from his mother, he
never let this fact interfere with his filial respect and duty; and her
long and many letters to him are proofs of his unfailing kindness for
her. Men more affectionate than he might have rebelled against her
maternal sermons. He never did. But the good lady had occasion to object
to his coldness. In one of her letters she asks him why he cannot call
her "Honored Mother" as well as "Madam," by which title he addressed her,
adding naively that "it would be full as agreeable." He was always
willing to look out for the welfare of his brothers, two of whom were
somewhat disreputable characters, and of his sister Hannah, who lived in
London. With the latter he was on particularly friendly terms, and saw
much of her, yet Mrs. Sothren--the cousin who had been such a help to him
in his early years--reproves him for writing of her as "Miss Godwin"
instead of "sister," and fears lest this may be a sign that his brotherly
affection, once great, had abated.
He seems at one time to have thought that he could provide himself with
a wife in the same manner in which he managed his other affairs. He
imagined that in contracting such a relationship, love was no more
indispensable than a heroine was to the interest of a novel. He proposed
that his sister Hannah should choose a wife for him; and she, in all
seriousness, set about complying with his request. In a spirit as
business-like as his, she decided upon a friend, calculated she was sure
to meet his requirements, and then sent him a list of her merits, much as
one might write a recommendation of a governess or a cook. Her letter on
the subject is so unique, and it is so impossible that it should have
been written to any one but Godwin, that it is well worth while quoting
part of it. She sent him a note of introduction to the lady in question,
who, she writes,--
"... is in every sense formed to make one of your disposition
really happy. She has a pleasing voice, with which she accompanies
her musical instrument with judgment. She has an easy politeness in
her manners, neither free nor reserved. She is a good housekeeper
and a good economist, and yet of a generous disposition. As to her
internal accomplishments, I have reason to speak still more highly
of them; good sense without vanity, a penetrating judgment without
a disposition to satire, good nature and humility, with about as
much religion as my William likes, struck me with a wish that she
was my William's wife. I have no certain knowledge of her fortune,
but that I leave for you to learn. I only know her father has been
many years engaged in an employment which brings in L500 or L600
per annum, and Miss Gay is his only child."
Not even this report could kindle the philosophical William into warmth.
He waited many months before he called upon this paragon, and when he
finally saw her, he failed to be enraptured according to Hannah's
expectations. "Poor Miss Gay," as the Godwins subsequently called her,
never received a second visit.
When it came to the point he found that something depended upon himself,
and that he could not be led by his sister's choice, satisfactory as it
might be. That he should for a moment have supposed such a step possible
is the more surprising, because he afterwards showed himself to be not
only fond of the society of women, but unusually nice and discriminating
in selecting it. His women friends were all famous either for beauty or
cleverness. Before his marriage he was on terms of intimacy with Mrs.
Inchbald, with Amelia Alderson, soon to become Mrs. Opie, and with the
beautiful Mrs. Reveley, whose interest in politics and desire for
knowledge were to him greater charms than her personal attractions.
Notwithstanding his unimpassioned nature, William Godwin was never a
philosophical Aloysius of Gonzaga, to voluntarily blind himself to
feminine beauty.
Indeed, there must have been beneath all his coldness a substratum of
warm and strong feeling. He possessed to a rare degree the power of
making friends and of giving sympathy to his fellow-beings. The man who
can command the affection of others, and enter into their emotions, must
know how to feel himself. It was for more than his intellect that he was
loved by men like Holcroft and Josiah Wedgwood, like Coleridge and Lamb,
and that he was sought after by beautiful and clever women. His talents
alone would not have won the hearts of young men, and yet he invariably
made friends with those who came under his influence. Willis Webb and
Thomas Cooper, who, in his earlier London life, lived with him as pupils,
not only respected but loved him, and gave him their confidence. In a
later generation, youthful enthusiasts, of whom Bulwer and Shelley are
the most notable, looked upon Godwin as the chief apostle in the cause of
humanity, and, beginning by admiring him as a philosopher, finished by
loving him as a man. Those who know him only through his works or by
reading his biography, cannot altogether understand how it was that he
thus attracted and held the affections of so many men and women. But the
truth is that, while Godwin was naturally a man of an uncommonly cold
temperament, much of his emotional insensibility was artificially
produced by his puritanical training. He was perfectly honest when in his
philosophy of life he banished the passions from his calculations. He was
so thoroughly schooled in stifling emotion and its expression, that he
thought himself incapable of passional excitement, and, reasoning from
his own experience, failed to appreciate its importance in shaping the
course of human affairs. But it may be that people brought into personal
contact with him felt that beneath his passive exterior there was at
least the possibility of passion. Mary Wollstonecraft was the first to
develop this possibility into certainty, and to arouse Godwin to a
consciousness of its existence. She revolutionized not only his life, but
his social doctrines. Through her he discovered the flaw in his
arguments, and then honestly confessed his mistake to the world. A few
years after her death he wrote in the Introduction to "St. Leon:"--
"... I think it necessary to say on the present occasion ... that
for more than four years I have been anxious for opportunity and
leisure to modify some of the earlier chapters of that work
["Political Justice"] in conformity to the sentiments inculcated in
this. Not that I see cause to make any change respecting the
principle of justice, or anything else fundamental to the system
there delivered; but that I apprehend domestic and private
affections inseparable from the nature of man, and from what may be
styled the culture of the heart, and am fully persuaded that they
are not incompatible with a profound and active sense of justice in
the mind of him that cherishes them."
When Godwin met Mary, after her desertion by Imlay, he was forty years of
age, in the full prime and vigor of his intellect, and in the height of
his fame. She was thirty-seven, only three years his junior. She was the
cleverest woman in England. Her talents had matured, and grief had made
her strong. She was strikingly handsome. She had, by her struggles and
sufferings, acquired what she calls in her "Rights of Women" a
_physionomie_. Even Mrs. Inchbald and Mrs. Reveley, hard as life had gone
with them, had never approached the depth of misery which she had
fathomed. The eventful meeting took place in the month of January, 1796,
shortly after Mary had returned from her travels in the North. Miss Hayes
invited Godwin to come to her house one evening when Mary expected to be
there. He accepted her invitation without hesitation, but evinced no
great eagerness.
"I will do myself the pleasure of waiting on you Friday," he
wrote, "and shall be happy to meet Mrs. Wollstonecraft, of whom I
know not that I ever said a word of harm, and who has frequently
amused herself with depreciating me. But I trust you acknowledge in
me the reality of a habit upon which I pique myself, that I speak
of the qualities of others uninfluenced by personal considerations,
and am as prompt to do justice to an enemy as to a friend."
The meeting was more propitious than their first some few years earlier
had been. Godwin had, with others, heard her sad story, and felt sorry
for her, and perhaps admired her for her bold practical application of
his principles. This was better than the positive dislike with which she
had once inspired him. But still his feeling for her was negative. He
would probably never have made an effort to see her again. What Mary
thought of him has not been recorded. But she must have been favorably
impressed, for when she came back to London from her trip to Berkshire,
she called upon him in his lodgings in Somer's Town. He, in the mean
time, had read her "Letters from Norway," and they had given him a higher
respect for her talents. The inaccuracies and the roughness of style
which had displeased him in her earlier works had disappeared. There was
no fault to be found with the book, but much to be said in its praise.
Once she had pleased him intellectually, he began to discover her other
attractions, and to enjoy being with her. Her conversation, instead of
wearying him, as it once had, interested him. He no longer thought her
forward and conceited, but succumbed to her personal charms. How great
these were can be learned from the following description of her
character written by Mrs. Shelley, who obtained her knowledge from her
mother's intimate acquaintances. She says:--
"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 circumstance 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 in 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 which enchants
while it enlightens. She was one whom all loved who had ever seen
her. Many years are passed since that beating heart has been laid
in the cold, still grave, but no one who has ever seen her speaks
of her without enthusiastic veneration. Did she witness an act of
injustice, she came boldly forward to point it out and induce its
reparation; was there discord between friends or relatives, she
stood by the weaker party, and by her earnest appeals and
kindliness awoke latent affection, and healed all wounds. '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.
"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 naught,
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."
Godwin now began to see her frequently. She had established herself in
rooms in Gumming Street, Pentonville, where she was very near him. They
met often at the houses of Miss Hayes, Mr. Johnson, and other mutual
friends. Her interests and tastes were the same as his; and this fact he
recognized more fully as time went on. It is probably because his
thoughts were so much with her, that the work he accomplished during this
year was comparatively small. None of the other women he knew and admired
had made him act spontaneously and forget to reason out his conduct as
she did. He really had at one time thought of making Amelia Alderson his
wife, but this, for some unrecorded reason, proving an impossibility, he
calmly dismissed the suggestion from his mind and continued the friend he
had been before. Had Mrs. Reveley been single he might have allowed
himself to love her, as he did later, when he was a widower and she a
widow. But so long as her husband was alive, and he knew he had no right
to do so, he, with perfect equanimity, regulated his affection to suit
the circumstances. But he never reasoned either for or against his love
for Mary Wollstonecraft. It sprang from his heart, and it had grown into
a strong passion before he had paused to deliberate as to its
advisability.
As for Mary, Godwin's friendship coming just when it did was an
inestimable service. Never in all her life had she needed sympathy as she
did then. She was virtually alone. Her friends were kind, but their
kindness could not quite take the place of the individual love she
craved. Imlay had given it to her for a while, and her short-lived
happiness with him made her present loneliness seem more unendurable. Her
separation from him really dated back to the time when she left Havre.
Her affection for him had been destroyed sooner than she thought because
she had struggled bravely to retain it for the sake of her child. The
gayety and many distractions of London life could not drown her heart's
wretchedness. It was through Godwin that she became reconciled to
England, to life, and to herself. He revived her enthusiasm and renewed
her interest in the world and mankind; but above all he gave her that
special devotion without which she but half lived. In the restlessness
that followed her loss of Imlay's love, she had resolved to make the tour
of Italy or Switzerland. Therefore when she had returned to London,
expecting it to be but a temporary resting-place, she had taken furnished
lodgings. "Now, however," as Godwin says in his Memoirs, "she felt
herself reconciled to a longer abode in England, probably without exactly
knowing why this change had taken place in her mind." She moved to other
rooms in the extremity of Somer's Town, and filled them with the
furniture she had used in Store Street in the first days of her
prosperity, and which had since been packed away. The unpacking of this
furniture was with her what the removal of widows' weeds is with other
women. Her first love had perished; but from it rose another stronger and
better, just as the ripening of autumn's fruits follows the withering of
spring's blossoms. She mastered the harvest-secret, learning the value of
that death which yields higher fruition.
In July, Godwin left London and spent the month in Norfolk. Absence from
Mary made him realize more than he had hitherto done that she had become
indispensable to his happiness. She was constantly in his thoughts. The
more he meditated upon her, the more he appreciated her. There was less
pleasure in his excursion than in the meeting with her which followed it.
They were both glad to be together again; nor did they hesitate to make
their gladness evident. At the end of three weeks they had confessed to
each other that they could no longer live apart. Henceforward their lines
must be cast in the same places. Godwin's story of their courtship is
eloquent in its simplicity. It is almost impossible to believe that it
was written by the author of "Political Justice."
"The partiality we conceived for each other," he explains, "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.... It was
friendship melting into love."